test please delete

[n5gooner]

Geoffrey retells this story in Historia Regum Britanniae with some embellishments, and gives the fatherless child the name of the prophetic bard, Merlin. He keeps this new figure separate from Aurelius Ambrosius, and to disguise his changing of Nennius, he simply and baldly states that Ambrosius was another name for Merlin. He goes on to add new episodes that tie Merlin into the story of King Arthur and his predecessors.

Geoffrey dealt with Merlin again in his third work, Vita Merlini. He based the Vita on stories of the original 6th century Myrddin. Though set long after his timeframe for the life of "Merlin Ambrosius," he tries to assert the characters are the same with references to King Arthur and his death as told in the Historia Regum Britanniae.

[Moscow Mule]

Old age
Clos Lucé, in France where Leonardo died in 1519.
Clos Lucé, in France where Leonardo died in 1519.

From 1513 to 1516, Leonardo lived in Rome, where Raphael and Michelangelo were both active at the time. In Florence, he was part of a committee formed to relocate, against the artist’s will, Michelangelo’s statue of David.

In 1515, François I of France retook Milan. Leonardo was commissioned to make a centrepiece (a mechanical lion) for the peace talks between the French king and Pope Leo X in Bologna. In 1516, he entered François' service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé[13] next to the king's residence at the royal Chateau Amboise. It was here that he spent the last three years of his life. The King granted Leonardo and his entourage generous pensions: the surviving document lists 1,000 écus for the artist, 400 for Count Francesco Melzi, (his pupil, named as "apprentice"), and 100 for Salaino ("servant"). In 1518 Salaino left Leonardo and returned to Milan, where he eventually perished in a duel.

Leonardo died at Clos Lucé, France, on May 2, 1519. François I had become a close friend. Vasari records that the King held Leonardo’s head in his arms as he died, although this story, beloved by the French and portrayed by Ingres in a romantic painting, has been shown to be legend rather than fact.[14] Vasari also tells us that in his last days, Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the Holy Sacrament. According to his wish, sixty beggars followed his casket. He was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in the castle of Amboise. Although Melzi was his principal heir and executor, Salaino was not forgotten, receiving half of Leonardo's vineyards and the Mona Lisa.

Some twenty years after Leonardo's death, François was reported by the goldsmith and sculptor Benevenuto Cellini as saying:
“ No man ever lived who had learned as much about sculpture, painting, and architecture, but still more that he was a very great philosopher. ”

[DS23]

As an engineer, Leonardo conceived ideas vastly ahead of his own time, conceptually inventing a helicopter, a tank, the use of concentrated solar power, a calculator, a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics, the double hull, and many others. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were feasible during his lifetime


yeah, yeah, this stuff! is good.

[n5gooner]

Hunter School of the Performing Arts (HSPA) is a specialist primary and secondary school which offers a comprehensive curriculum with a performing arts specialty and is located at Lambton Road, Broadmeadow, New South Wales, Australia. Since 2000 enrolment has been by audition only and is the only Performing Arts High School north of Sydney. Students come from Newcastle, the Hunter Valley, Central Coast and beyond.

The school is run by the New South Wales Department of Education and Training.

The school focuses on the disciplines of Drama, Dance and Music also focusing on the technical aspects of the performing arts. Drama is really hard to get into to. Prospective students with talent in related areas such as set design, sound and lighting are admitted alongside performers. HSPA has piloted a vocational Entertainment Industry course with modules on sound and lighting, front of house and stage management. Students have also known to be admitted based on creative writing and visual arts skills, often placed into drama oriented programs.

[Moscow Mule]

Relationships and influences
Ghiberti's 'Gates of Paradise' were a source of communal pride. Many artists assisted in their creation.
Ghiberti's 'Gates of Paradise' were a source of communal pride. Many artists assisted in their creation.

Florence — Leonardo's artistic and social background

Leonardo commenced his apprenticeship with Verrocchio in 1466, the year that Verrocchio’s master, the great scuptor Donatello, died. The painter Uccello whose early experiments with perspective were to influence the development of landscape painting, was a very old man. The painters Piero della Francesca and Fra Filippo Lippi, sculptor Luca della Robbia, and architect and writer Alberti were in their sixties. The successful artists of the next generation were Leonardo's teacher Verrocchio, Antonio Pollaiuolo and the portrait sculptor, Mino da Fiesole whose lifelike busts give the most reliable likenesses of Lorenzo Medici's father Piero and uncle Giovanni.

Leonardo's youth was spent in a Florence that was ornamented by the works of these artists and by Donatello's contemporaries, Masaccio whose figurative frescoes were imbued with realism and emotion and Ghiberti whose "Gates of Paradise", gleaming with gold leaf, displayed the art of combining complex figure compositions with detailed architectural backgrounds. Piero della Francesca had made a detailed study of perspective, and was the first painter to make a scientific study of light. These studies and Alberti's Treatise were to have a profound effect on younger artists and in particular on Leonardo's own observations and artworks.

Massaccio's depiction of the naked and distraught Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden created of powerfully expressive image of the human form, cast into three dimensions by the use of light and shade which was to re-emerge in the works of Leonardo in a way that was to change the course of painting. The Humanist influence of Donatello's David can be seen in Leonardo's late paintings, particularly John the Baptist.
A small devotional picture by Verrocchio, c. 1470
A small devotional picture by Verrocchio, c. 1470

A prevalent tradition in Florence was the small altarpiece of the Virgin and Child. Many of these were created in tempera or glazed terracottta by the workshops of Lippi, Verrocchio and the prolific Robbia family. Leonardo's early Madonnas such as the The Madonna with a carnation and The Benois Madonna followed this tradition while showing indiosyncratic departures, particularly in the case of the Benois Madonna in which the Virgin is set at an oblique angle to the picture space with the Christ Child at the opposite angle. This compositional theme was to emerge in Leonardo's later paintings such as The Virgin and Child with St. Anne

Leonardo was the contemporary of Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino who were all slightly older than he was. He would have met them at the workshop of Verrocchio, with whom they had associations, and at the Academy of the Medici. Botticelli was a particular favourite of the family and thus his success as a painter was assured. Ghirlandaio and Perugino were both prolific and ran efficient workshops. They competently delivered commissions to well-satisfied patrons who appreciated Ghirlandaio's ability to portray the wealthy citizens of Florence within large religious frescoes, and Perugino's ability to deliver a multitude of saints and angels of unfailing sweetness and innocence.
The Portinari Altarpiece, by Hugo van der Goes for a Florentine family
The Portinari Altarpiece, by Hugo van der Goes for a Florentine family

These three were among those commissioned to paint the walls of the Sistine Chapel, the work commencing with Perugino's employment in 1479. Leonardo was not part of this prestigious commission. His first significant commission, The Adoration of the Magi for the Monks of Scopeto, was never completed.

In 1476, during the time of Leonardo’s association with Verrocchio’s workshop, Hugo van der Goes arrived in Florence, bringing the Portinari Altarpiece and the new painterly techniques from Northern Europe which were to profoundly effect Leonardo, Ghirlandaio, Perugino and others. In 1479, the Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina, who worked exclusively in oils, travelled north on his way to Venice, where an older painter, Giovanni Bellini adopted the media of oil painting, quickly making it the preferred method in Venice. Leonardo was also later to visit Venice.

Leonardo was also the contemporary of the two architects, Bramante and Sangallo. Like these artists, he experimented with designs for centrally-planned churches, a number of them appearing in his journals, as both plans and views, but none was ever realised.
Lorenzo de' Medici between Antonio Pucci and Francesco Sassetti, with Giulio de' Medici, fresco by Ghirlandaio.
Lorenzo de' Medici between Antonio Pucci and Francesco Sassetti, with Giulio de' Medici, fresco by Ghirlandaio.

Leonardo’s political contemporaries were Lorenzo Medici (il Magnifico), who was three years older, and his popular younger brother Giuliano who was slain in the Pazzi Conspiracy in 1478. Ludovico il Moro who ruled Milan between 1479–99 and to whom Leonardo was sent as ambassador from the Medici court, was also of Leonardo’s age.

With Alberti, Leonardo visited the home of the Medici and through them came to know the older Humanist philosophers of whom Marsiglio Ficino, proponent of Neo Platonism and Cristoforo Landino, writer of commentaries on Classical writings, were foremost. Also associated with the Academy of the Medici was Leonardo's contemporary, the brilliant young poet and philosopher Pico della Mirandola. Leonardo later wrote in the margin of a journal "The Medici made me and the Medici destroyd me." While it was through the action of Lorenzo that Leonardo was to receive his important Milanese commissions, it is not known exactly what Leonardo meant by this cryptic comment. [7]

Although usually named together as the three giants of the High Renaissance, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael were not of the same generation. Leonardo was 23 when Michelangelo was born and 31 when Raphael was born. The short-lived Raphael died in 1520, the year after Leonardo, but Michelangelo went on creating for another 45 years.

Section references: Brucker,[15] Rachum.[16]

Assistants and pupils
Salai as John the Baptist
Salai as John the Baptist

Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno,[17] nicknamed Salai or il Salaino ("The little devil), was described by Giorgio Vasari as "a graceful and beautiful youth with fine curly hair, in which Leonardo greatly delighted."

Il Salaino entered Leonardo's household in 1490 at the age of ten. The relationship was not an easy one. A year later Leonardo made a list of the boy’s misdemeanours, calling him "a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton." The "Little Devil" had made off with money and valuables on at least five occasions, and spent a fortune on apparel, among which were twenty-four pairs of shoes. Nevertheless, Leonardo’s notebooks during their early years contain many pictures of the handsome, curly-haired adolescent. Il Salaino remained his companion, servant, and assistant for the next thirty years.[18]

As a painter, Salaino’s work is generally considered to be of less artistic merit than others among Leonardo's pupils such as Marco d'Oggione and Boltraffio. In 1515 he painted, under the name of Andrea Salai, a nude portrait of "Lisa del Giocondo", based upon the Mona Lisa and known as Monna Vanna.[5] The Mona Lisa was bequeathed to Salaino by Leonardo, and in Salaino's own will it was assessed at the high value of £200,000.

In 1506, Leonardo took as a pupil Count Francesco Melzi, the fifteen-year-old son of a Lombard aristocrat. Salaino, at first jealous of Melzi, eventually accepted his continued presence and the three undertook journeys throughout Italy. Melzi became Leonardo's life companion, and is considered to have been his favourite student. He travelled to France with Leonardo and was with him until his death.
Study for a painting of Isabella d'Este
Study for a painting of Isabella d'Este

Personal life

Main article: Leonardo da Vinci's personal life

Leonardo had many friends who are figures now renowned in their fields, or for their influence on history. These included the mathematician Luca Pacioli with whom he collaborated on a book in the 1490s and Cesare Borgia, in whose service he spent the years 1502 and 1503. During that time he also met Niccolò Machiavelli, with whom later he was to develop a close friendship. Also among his friends are counted Franchinus Gaffurius and Isabella d'Este. Isabella was probably his closest female friend. He drew a portrait of her while on a journey which took him through Mantua which appears to have been used to create a painted portrait, now lost.

Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. He commented "the act of procreation and anything that has any relation to it is so disgusting that human beings would soon die out if there were no pretty faces and sensuous dispositions".[19]

Leonardo appears to have had no close relationships with women beyond his friendship with Isabella d'Este. His most intimate relationships were with his pupils Salai and Melzi, Melzi writing that Leonardo's feelings for him were both loving and passionate. It has been claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of an erotic nature and since that date much has written about this aspect of Leonardo's life.[20]

[The Lone Gunman]

Will the interweb self destruct when we pass 10K?

What happens? I am getting woried.

[n5gooner]

The Tobacco Factory is part of the remains of the old Wills Tobacco site on Raleigh Road, Southville, Bristol. Architect George Ferguson saved it from demolition. It now is used for a restaurant, a performing arts school, loft-style apartments, a café bar, offices and a performance venue.

[MrsGoof]

9975

[DS23]

29! no 24!

[Moscow Mule]

Leonardo’s painting

Despite the recent awareness and admiration of Leonardo as a scientist and inventor, for the better part of four hundred years his enormous fame rested on his achievements as a painter and on a handful of works, either authenticated or attributed to him that have been regarded as among the supreme masterpieces ever created.

These painting are famous for a variety of qualities which have been much imitated by students and discussed at great length by connoisseurs and critics. Among the qualities that make Leonardo’s work unique are the innovative techniques that he used in laying on the paint, his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and geology, his interest in physiognomy and the way in which humans register emotion in expression and gesture, his innovative use of the human form in figurative composition and his use of the subtle gradation of tone. All these qualities come together in his most famous works, the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper and the Virgin of the Rocks.

Early works
Annunciation
Annunciation

Leonardo’s early works begin with the Baptism of Christ painted in conjunction with Verrocchio. Two other paintings appear to date from his time at the workshop, both of which are Annunciations. One is small, 59 cms long and only 14 cms high. It is a “predella” to go at the base of a larger composition, in this case a painting by Lorenzo Di Credi from which it has become separated. The other is a much larger work, 217 cm long. In both these Annunciations, Leonardo has used the very formal arrangement of Fra Angelico’s two well known pictures of the same subject, the Virgin Mary sitting or kneeeling to the right of the picture, approached from the left by an angel in profile, with rich flowing garment, raised wings and bearing a lily.

In the smaller picture Mary averts her eyes and folds her hands in a gesture that symbolised submission to God’s will. In the larger picture, however, Mary is not in the least submissive. The beautiful girl, interrupted in her reading by this unexpected messenger, puts a finger in her bible to mark the place and raises her hand in greeting. This calm young woman accepts her role as the Mother of God not with resignation but with confidence. In this painting the young Leonardo presents the Humanist face of the Virgin Mary, a woman who recognises humanity’s role in God’s incarnation.
St Jerome
St Jerome

Paintings of the 1480s

In the 1480s Leonardo received two very important commissions, and commenced another work which was also of ground-breaking importance in terms of composition. Unfortunately two of the three were never finished and the third took so long that it was subject to lengthy negotiations over completion and payment. One of these paintings is that of St Jerome in the wilderness. Although the painting is barely begun the entire composition can be seen and it is very unusual. Jerome, as a penitent, occupies the middle of the picture, set on a slight diagonal and viewed somewhat from above. His kneeling form takes on a trapezoid shape, with one arm stretched to the outer edge of the painting and his gaze looking in the opposite direction. Across the foreground sprawls his symbol, a great lion whose body and tail make a double spiral across the base of the picture space. The other remarkable feature is the sketchy landscape of craggy rocks against which the figure is silhouetted.

The daring display of figure composition, the landscape elements and personal drama were to reappear in the great unfinished masterpiece, the Adoration of the Magi, a commission from the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto. It is a very complex composition about 250cm square. For it Leonardo did numerous drawings and preparatory studies, including a detailed one in linear perspective of the ruined Classical architecture which makes part of the backdrop to the scene. But in 1482 Leonardo went off to Milan at the behest of Lorenzo de’ Medici in order to win favour with Ludovico il Moro and the painting was abandoned.
Virgin of the Rocks, London.
Virgin of the Rocks, London.

The third important work of this period is the Virgin of the Rocks which was commissioned in Milan for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. The painting, to be done with the assistance of the de Predis brothers, was to fill a large complex altarpiece, already constructed.

Leonardo chose to paint an apocryphal moment of the infancy of Christ when the Infant John the Baptist, in protection of an angel, met the Holy Family on the road to Egypt. In this scene, as painted by Leonardo, John recognizes and worships Jesus as the Christ. The painting demonstrates an eerie beauty as the graceful figures kneel in adoration around the infant Christ in a wild and rocky landscape of tumbling rock and whirling water.

While the painting is quite large, about 200 x 120 cms, it is nowhere as complex as the painting ordered by the monks of St Donato, having only four figures rather than about 50 and a rocky landscape rather than architectural details. The painting was eventually finished; in fact, two versions of the painting were finished, one which remained at the chapel of the Confraternity and the other which Leonardo carried away to France. But the Brothers did not get their painting, or the de Predis their payment, until the next century.

Paintings of the 1490s

The most famous painting the 1490s is Last Supper, also painted in Milan. The painting represents the last meal shared by Jesus with his desciples before his capture and death. It shows, specifically the moment when Jesus has said “one of you will betray me.” See painting reproduced further down this page.

Leonardo tells the story of the consternation that this statement caused to the twelve followers of Jesus. Vasari[8] describes in detail how he worked on it, how some days he would paint like fury, how other days he would spend hours just looking at it, and how he walked the streets of the city looking for the face of Judas, the traitor.

When finished, the painting was acclaimed as a masterpiece of design and characterisation. But its artist was also denounced for the fact that it was no sooner finished than it began to fall off the wall. Leonardo, instead of using the reliable technique of fresco had experimented with different paint-binding agents, which were subject to mold and to flaking. Despite this, the painting has remained one of the most reproduced works of art, countless copies being made in every medium from carpets to cameos.
Virgin and Child with St. Anne
Virgin and Child with St. Anne

Paintings of the 1500s

Among the works created by Leonardo in the 1500s is the small portrait known as the Mona Lisa or “la Gioconda”, the laughing one. The painting is famous, in particular, for the elusive smile on the woman’s face, its mysterious quality brought about perhaps by the fact that the artist has subtly shadowed the corners of the mouth and eyes so that the exact nature of the smile cannot be determined. The shadowy quality for which the work is renowned came to be called “sfumato” or Leonardo’s smoke. Other characteristics found in this work are the unadorned dress, in which the eyes and beautiful hands have no competition from other details, the dramatic landscape background in which the world seems to be in a state of flux, the subdued colouring and the extremely smooth nature of the painterly technique, employing oils, but laid on much like tempera and blended on the surface so that the brushstrokes are indistinguishable.

In the Virgin and Child with St. Anne the composition again picks up the theme of figures in a landscape. It harks back to the St Jerome picture with the figure set at an oblique angle. What makes this painting unusual is that there are two obliquely-set figures, superimposed. Mary is seated on the knee of her mother, St Anne. She leans forward to support the Christ Child as he plays (rather roughly) with a lamb, the sign of his own impending sacrifice. In the composition of this painting, Leonardo is showing trends which would be adopted in particular by the Venetian painters, Titian and Tintoretto as well as by Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo and Correggio.

Section references for Leonardo's painting: della Chiesa,[21] Wasserman.[22