ART

SHOPPING MALL > DEPARTMENT STORE > ART > ART HISTORY

COMPARISON SHOPPING SEARCH ENGINE

Fine Art Prints

Best Sellers Art Prints

Sale Art Prints

Limited Edition Art Prints

Buy Modern Art Prints, Fine Art Prints, Framed Art Prints and Art Prints Posters.

Select the first letter of the artist's last name to search the Fine Art Prints: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

L E O N A R D O

Florence 1499 - 1506

During Leonardo's 18-year absence, the political and artistic climate of Florence had changed considerably. The Medici were no longer in power; following a few unsuccessful attempts to govern the city- state, Lorenzo de' Medici's son had drowned in the river Garigliano during military action. Medici rule had been replaced by a republic under the leadership of their most hated enemy, the stern, fanatical Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, who supervised a puritan regime in the bankrupt city. Even Botticelli became a supporter and destroyed all his early works, while Pico delta Mirandola abandoned Neoplatonism and Boccaccio's books were burnt. Some of Leonardo's old friends were still alive but many of those who had made Florence the artistic and philosophical center of Europe were dead: Ficino, Poliziano, Mirandola, the Pollaiuolo brothers, Domenico Ghirlandaio and above all, his old master Verrocchio.

It is possible that Leonardo was planning only an extended visit to Florence. In December 1499 he had lodged a letter of exchange for six hundred gold florins with the monastery of Santa Maria
Novella in Florence. On his arrival in the city he cashed fifty of the florins; the transaction was dated 25 April 1500. With the Medici court dispersed, Leonardo had little chance of finding a new patron or attracting many commissions. Fortunately, Leonardo's father was now the procurator of the Servite monastery of the Annunciation, where the monks had already commissioned Filippino Lippi to complete two paintings for the high altar of their church. While Vasari tells us that Lippi happily gave up the commission to Leonardo, it is more likely that Ser Piero used his influence to get the commission transferred to his son.

In September 1500 Leonardo was hard at work, but not on the bella d'Este had written Novellara, the Vicar-General of the Florentine Carmelites, in April 1501 enquiring about Leonardo's activities - no doubt she wanted to know when she was going to receive the finished portrait based on the cartoon and asking Fra Pietro to persuade Leonardo to 'do a little Madonna , devout and sweet as is his wont. Fra Pietro replied that as far as he knew , all Leonardo had done since his return to Florencewas study for the Virgin and Child with St. Anne for the Servite monastery. Evidently Leonardo was spending much os his time studying geometry.

There are several cartoons and studies of the Virgin and Child with St Anne, at Windsor Castle, in the Louvre, in the Accademia in Venice and in the British Museum. The unfinished oil painting in the Louvre, Virgin and Child with StAnne and a Lamb, is usually dated around 1508-1510 but there is disagreement about Fra Pietro's description of the cartoon that he saw. He described the figures as turned to the left but it is unclear whether he meant his left or the sitter's left. He also described St Anne as preventing her daughter from discouraging the Christ Child as he grasps the lamb. The lamb is the sacrificial animal and the symbol of Christ's Passion, and St Anne's action of restraint thus signifies that the Church did not want to prevent the Passion. Matters are further complicated by the existence of a largescale cartoon, the Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London, which Vasari described and on which he said Leonardo was working as the basis for the altarpiece in Santa Annunziata. It is possible that the cartoons are re-workings of a theme that Leonardo was investigating, or that they related to two 'Madonnas of different sizes' which Leonardo referred to in his manuscript of early 1508 and which he claimed were intended for Louis XII, who had expressed an interest in a painting.

Leonardo's unsettled life in the first years of the sixteenth century makes it very difficult to work out exactly what he painted and in what order. One painting that can be attributed to the first years or so of his return to Florence, however, is the Madonna of the Yamwinder. This painting is known to us in the form of a number of copies, the best of which Leonardo may well have had a hand in painting. It also conforms to the description of a small painting mentioned in Fra Pietro's letter to Isabella d'Este as having been executed for Florimund Robertet, Secretary of State to Louis XII of France.Fra Pietro describes how the Virgin is intent on spinning yarn but the child, whose feet rest on a basket of flax, takes hold of the yarnwinder and gazes intently at the four spokes which form the shape of a cross.

The records show that in July 1501 Leonardo signed a receipt for the rent of his vineyard outside Milan, and that Manfredo di Manfredi came to see him on Isa bella d'Este' behalf . Despite her request, Leonardo neither returned to the court at Mantua, nor painted anything for the Duchess. In the following year, 1502, Leonardo was asked by Francesco Malatesta to appraise four jeweled vases that had once belonged to the Medici family and which were now being offered for sale.At this time Leonardo had found himself a new patron, Cesare Borgia, who employed him as his architect and chief engineer.

Cesare Borgia, like Ludovico Sforza, dreamed of ruling all Italy; his motto read 'Either Caesar or Nothing'. His father, Pope Alexander VI, had made his son the Marshal of the Papal Troops and appointed him Duke of Romagna, thereby ousting the legitimate rulers of the area in the name of the Catholic Church. Florence was subdued by its powerful neighbor and a treaty named Cesare as 'Condottiere' of the Florentine Republic, a title that carried with it a handsome annual income of 30,000 gold ducats.

Borgia, with a mix of Arab and Castillian blood in his veins and suffering from syphillis), had a reputation for intelligence, a foul temper and odd behavior; he went to bed in the morning, breakfasted at four in the afternoon and walked about all day wearing a mask. His driving political ambitions also made him capable of murder; in his personal retinue Cesare maintained the services of a hired assassin called Grifonetto. He dispatched Paolo Orini and the Pope's favorite, Perrotta, and executed his own governor of Romagna, Don Ramiro del Lorqua, officially for being an extortionist but actually because he fell in love with Cesare's sister Lucrezia [herself no angel) who had just married. Later Cesare was to murder his brother-in-law as well.

Busy creating his kingdom — the duchies of Faenza, Imola, Rimini, Pesaro and Urbino had already surrendered to him — Cesare was set to invade Umbria. Leonardo accompanied him on his military campaigns, producing maps and surveys. Cesare's charge d'affaires, whose task as political observer was to report on the general situation, was Niccolo Macchiavelli, the first writer to develop a theory and program of political realism.His book The Prince, the main character of which was based on his employer, was a sort of handbook on how to be successful in politics.

In the summer of 1502 Leonardo accompanied Cesare on his conquering mission through Emilia and the Marches, operating as the chief inspector of military buildings. Manuscript L in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris is Leonardo's diary of the journey and in it he records the stops in the region between Imola, Cesena, Rimini, Urbino and Pesaro. Apart from some sketches for the docks at Porto Cesenatico, we do not have any further insight into Leonardo's official activities. He did, however, draw up the area of Borgia's military operations; part of a map of Tuscany and Romagna was made for Cesare, as was the magnificent circular Plan of Imola dated around 1502, an immensely accurate and beautiful plan in which every detail is pinpointed and color-coded. The houses are in pink, public squares in yellow, the streets in white. The castle is at the lower left and is surrounded by the blue moat. The notes at either side of the plan, written very neatly but nevertheless in Leonardo's famous 'mirror handwriting' (from left to right with the letter forms reversed) refer to the geography, distance and bearings of Bologna and other cities of strategic importance or interest to Borgia.

From remarks he made in Manuscript L, we also learn that Leonardo visited the area of Piombino, part of Borgia's dominion at the northern end of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Iron ore from the island of Elba was unloaded in Piombino's fortified harbor, but the port was more important politically since the city occupied the central point between the bordering territories of the Papal States in the south, Lombardy and Genoa to the north, and Florence to the east. Following a long seige in 1501 Borgia succeeded in wresting Piombino from its ruler Jacopo IVAppiani. In 1502 Leonardo also made the map showing Arezzo and the valley of the Chiana, using an imaginary perspective that gives the illusion of an aerial view. But by the spring of 1503 Leonardo had given up his position with Borgia and returned to Florence. Pope Alexander VI had died and Cesare, back in Rome after an officers' rebellion against him, also fell ill - some say from poison - but he rallied after being immersed in the steaming entrails of a mule. According to Macchiavelli, it was only because of his father's death and his own ill-health that Cesare was prevented from extending his rule throughout Italy. Ironically, had Cesare decided to launch a campaign against Tuscany, Florence might well have fallen, precisely because of Leonardo's map- making skills and the strategic engineering plans he had made for the Duke.

In Florence, Savonarola had been excommunicated and subsequently tried and burnt at the stake, but the system of government he had introduced, consisting of a chamber of 3000 enfranchized citizens, was to continue until 1512. This large council, the Signoria, needed a suitably large and magnificent meeting hall. In 1495 Antonio da Sangallo the Elder had designed a vast hall 178 feet long, 77 feet wide and 60 feet high. Having ousted the Medici, the new ruling Council needed to demonstrate its legitimacy and, hopefully, its expected longevity; the council hall became the vehicle for a decorative scheme demonstrating the virtues and achievements of republican power.

Filippino Lippi was commissioned to produce an altarpiece, depicting St Anne accompanied by numerous saints who all had particular associations with Florence. Some time in the fall of 1503, Leonardo was commissioned to execute a larger wall painting depicting a scene from the Battle of Anghiari, while the young Michelangelo was asked to produce an accompanying scene of the Battle of Cascina. Both battles were famous Floren- tine victories; Michelangelo's subject showed an episode in the war against Pisa when bathing Florentine soldiers were ambushed and rushed for the weapons they had left on the river bank, while Leonardo's was the 1440 triumph over Milanese mercenaries.

Like so many of Leonardo's paintings, The Battle of Anghiari was never completed and what he did complete had been lost by around 1560. Although no original contract for the commission survives, we know that on 24 October 1503 Leonardo was given the keys to a large room in Santa Maria Novella in which to produce a full-size cartoon for the painting. By the time the contract was signed, around May 1504, he had been supplied with paper, other drawing materials, and scaffolding. Records show that the contract was witnessed by Macchiavelli, who, clearly aware of Leonardo's reputation for not working to deadlines, stipulated that the cartoon must be complete by February 1505 or, failing that, Leonardo should have started painting the part of the cartoon that had been finished. If the latter was the case, the deadline would be extended.

Throughout 1504 and on past the deadline of February 1505, Leonardo continued to receive supplies for making whitewash, flour for sticking the cartoon to the wall, wall plaster, Greek pitch, lin- seed oil and Venetian sponges. These materials suggest that he intended to paint the pitch over the smoother plaster base as a ground for oil-based paint. Much to the chagrin of the mayor of Florence, Piero Soderini, however, work on the Battle ofAnghiari was abandoned in May 1506. Boards were erected to protect the painting in 1513, and several copies were made of it before it finally disappeared under Vasari's frescoes in 1560. It is only from these copies and some preparatory drawings that we know something about this lost work.

Leonardo's work on the Battle of Anghiari was no doubt interrupted by other pressing needs. In 1503 the Republic of Florence had once again embarked on a new campaign against its old enemy Pisa and between 24 and 26 July 1503 Leonardo was in the Florentine camp, where plans were being laid to divert the river Arno and cut off Pisa's access to the sea, thus starving the city into submission. One of the chief promoters of this scheme was the Florentine war minister, Macchiavelli. Leonardo must have had some knowledge of this plan, but whether he was actually involved in its implementation remains in doubt. In July 1503, at the order of the Council, Leonardo set off to inspect the trench digging on the project. For well over a year the Arno plan was in action but the cost of manpower — which had been underestimated at 2000 men completing the work in 20 days - and the technical problems of securing the canal walls against collapse led to the scheme being abandoned in October 1504.

Leonardo himself had for many years had a strong interest in diverting the Arno, not for military purposes, but to make the river navigable between Florence and Pisa and thereby increase the volume of trade in Tuscany. He drew up maps showing the course of the river and schemes for its canalization on several occasions. Aware of the man power required to effect such a scheme, Leonardo also designed a huge treadmill powered digging machine.

When the plan to cut Pisa off from the sea collapsed (along with much of the canal itself), military activities were temporarily halted. The Signoria recalled its troops and instead planned to isolate Pisa through political channels. In 1504 Macchiavelli went to Piombino to treat with Jacopo IV Appiani, who had returned to power in the city after Borgia's fall. Macchiavelli had to win back Jacopo's trust and confidence in Florence - in 1499 Jacopo had been passed over in favor of Borgia for the position of Condottiere - in order to win his neutrality regarding Florence's hostilities with Pisa and Siena. Neutrality toward Pisa was easy; Jacopo still bore a grudge against the city for having ousted his family four generations earlier. In order to woo him into neutrality toward Siena, Leonardo was sent to Piombino in the fall of 1504 to advise Jacopo on fortifications for the city - a scheme Leonardo had originally devised for Cesare Borgia!

This information is of relatively recent origin, made available by the 'rediscovery' of the Madrid Codices. These had been erroneously catalogued and then recorded as missing, but were found in 1965 on the shelves of the national Library in Madrid. In the Madrid Codex II, Leonardo drew up plans for the reconstruction of the harbor with a breakwater similar to ones devised by Francesco di Giorgio in his Treatise of Architecture, Engineering and Military Art, a copy of which Leonardo owned. From Giorgio, Leonardo also 'borrowed' schemes for citadels with rounded towers and thick inclined walls, well suited to deflecting mortar bombardments. In his sketches of fortresses, Leonardo also drew in cannons on top of the walls; he was one of the first military architects to do so. Many of his sketches also show cannons in towers and diagrams which plot the line of fire.Although it is not known whether any actual construction was carried out at Piombino, the tower of the main gate of the city is still known today as 'Leonardo's Tower'.

Despite his efforts, Leonardo found himself out of favor with the Florentines:
he had failed to complete The Battle of Anghiari; and the plan for diverting the Arno had drained the treasury and some of the collapsed canal had flooded, causing a swampland and resulting in an out break of malaria which claimed the lives of many Florentines. In addition Leonardo had led a somewhat 'aristo- cratic' lifestyle in a very puritan city, and to cap it all his father died in 1504 and he became entangled in a lawsuit with his step-brothers over shares in the family property. Leonardo stood accused of betraying Florence by his earlier association with Borgia and of practicing magic, an accusation no doubt fueled by further allegations of homosexuality. At this time, only Isabella d'Este continued to offer her support but, for reasons known only to Leonardo, he chose to avoid her.When Isabella visited Florence, Leonardo went into hiding in Fiesole !

Cheap Posters

ART

SHOPPING MALL > DEPARTMENT STORE > ART > ART HISTORY

Shopping Mall : Art Gallery, Fine Art Collection, Art History, Art Supply & Art Print

ART Category: Art, Arts, Fantasy Art, Wildlife Art, Art Gallery, Fine Art, Art History, Art Print, Digital Art, Art Supply, African Art, 3d Art, Poster Art, Cartoon Art, Nude Art, Art Wall, Religious Art

Shopping Mall: Art Store offers Arts, Fantasy Art, Wildlife Art, Art Gallery, Fine Art, Art History, Art Print, Digital Art, Art Supply, African Art, 3d Art, Poster Art, Cartoon Art, Nude Art, Art Wall, Religious Art

ART Topics: Art, Arts, Fantasy Art, Wildlife Art, Art Gallery, Fine Art, Art History, Art Print, Digital Art, Art Supply, African Art, 3d Art, Poster Art, Cartoon Art, Nude Art, Art Wall, Religious Art