Posts filed under ‘Art’

Leonardo da Vinci: High Renaissance Art Icon

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
(April 15, 1452, the town of Vinci, near Florence – May 2, 1519, Chateau Clos-Luce near Amboise, Touraine, in present-day Indre-et-Loire, France) (aged 67)
Nationality: Italy
Category: Art workers
Occupation: Painter, sculptor, scientist, inventor, philosopher
Specification: The most universal genius of all time, the founder of the High Renaissance style
Best Known As: Painter of the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper
Gender: Male
The Lucan portrait of Leonardo da Vinci is believed to be a Self-portrait (c.1505), Museum of the Ancient People of Lucania, Vaglio Basilicata
Leonardo was naturally left-handed and wrote notebook entries in the mirror (backwards) script, a trick that requires a mirror to be read and which helps to keep many of his observations from being widely known.
Leonardo worked for Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, for nearly eighteen years (1482-99). Leonardo was a vegan.
He is best known for his paintings “The Last Supper” and especially the “Mona Lisa” (La Giocondane). Leonardo apparently was quite fond of the completed work, as it accompanied him on all of his travels.
Sigmund Freud said: “Leonardo da Vinci was like a man who awoke too early in the darkness, while the others were all still asleep”.
Read more about Leonardo’s Life and Art on: Genvive

**The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, c. 1501–1519**

October 17, 2012 at 4:06 pm Leave a comment

Masterpieces of Michelangelo: From David to Sistine Chapel

MICHELANGELO
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
(March 6, 1475 Caprese, near Arezzo, Tuscany, Italy – Feb 18, 1564 Rome, Papal States, Italy) (aged 88)
Nationality: Italy
Category: Art workers
Occupation: Sculptor, Architect, Painter, Poet
Specification: One of the giants of the High Renaissance, who exerted the greatest influence on the development of Western art.
Gender: Male
Unique distinction: One of the giants of the High Renaissance, who exerted the greatest influence on the development of Western art.
Read more: Genvive

Portrait of Michelangelo (1535) By Marcello Venusti. Casa Buonarroti Florence, Italy.

Michelangelo Quotes:
1. Only God creates. The rest of us just copy.
2. The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
3. The mind, the soul, becomes ennobled by the endeavour to create something perfect, for God is perfection, and whoever strives after perfection is striving for something divine.
4. The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
5. Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.
6. I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
7. If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.
8. If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn’t call it genius.
9. Genius is eternal patience.
10. Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.
11. A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
12. An artist must have his measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye.
13. Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.
14. I dare affirm that any artist… who has nothing singular, eccentric, or at least reputed to be so, in his person, will never become a superior talent.
15. I live and love in God’s peculiar light.
16. My soul can find no staircase to heaven unless it be through earth’s loveliness.
17. I have a wife too many already, namely this art, which harries me incessantly, and my works are my children.
18. I am still learning.