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Portrait
of the Artist
Artist, engineer, scientist, inventor, musician-Leonardo da Vinci did
it
all-and did it well. As a painter he created the Mona Lisa, the most
famous
work of art in the world today. As an inventor, he made sketches of
tanks,
planes, submarines, and helicopters, machines that were not actually
produced
until hundreds of years after his death. Called one of the greatest
thinkers
and creators of all time, Leonardo is regarded as highly skilled in
architecture,
sculpture, biology, botany, anatomy, geology, optics, and city
planning.
Those who knew him said he sang beautifully and was a fine musician.
And
that's not all. Contemporaries described him as kind, generous, and
charming.
Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15,1452, in or near the town of
Vinci,
in central Italy ("da Vinci" means "from Vinci.").
Little is known of
his
early life, except that he was brought up by his father's
parents and probably only had an elementary education. So, how
did this
son
of a peasant mother and a notary (a
law clerk) grow from a curious child to a person of startling
brilliance
and one of the world's most talented artists?
Leonardo lived in Italy during the time of Renaissance ( 1400
A.D. to 1600 A.D. in Europe). The word renaissance means
"rebirth"
in French. During the Renaissance, people admired the ancient Greek
and
Roman civilizations and tried to improve upon the achievements of those
times. Many changes were made by writers, thinkers, and scientists,
who
looked at the world with a new set of ideas and attitudes. A
"human-centered"
way of thinking challenged the teachings of the Catholic Church.
(Catholicism
was the dominate religion in Europe.) |
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