Tag Archives: Art

Leonardo da Vinci

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Leonardo da Vinci

The greatest inventor, Leonardo da Vinci.

  • Leonardo da Vinci’s full name is Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci.
  • Leonardo da Vinci was the son of a lawyer and a peasant woman, and was born on 15 April 1452, in Italy and died at the age of 67 on 2 May 1519 in France.
  • Leonardo da Vinci is known as a ‘polymath’, a person who has significant ability and knowledge in a wide variety of fields, with skills in art, mathematics, engineering and science, such as human anatomy, botany and geology.
  • Leonardo da Vinci became an apprentice under Verrocchio (Andrea di Cione) the artist, at fourteen years of age and became a qualified master artist at the age of 20.
  • Leonardo da Vinci is often thought to be one of the most outstanding painters in history and the most remarkable polymath of all time.

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Self-portrait by Leonardo da Vinci
Image courtesy of Erik Drost/Flickr
  • Leonardo da Vinci created notable invention concepts for vehicles, such as helicopters and bicycles, calculators and concentrated solar power.
  • On 5 August 1473, Leonardo da Vinci created an artwork named ‘Arno Valley’, with pen and ink mediums and this is his earliest known drawing.
  • Leonardo da Vinci was left handed and mostly wrote in mirror reversed cursive writing, and during his life-time he wrote and recorded 13,000 pages of notes and complex diagrams.
  • Leonardo da Vinci is known as an artist throughout the world for his famous paintings like the ‘Mona Lisa’, ‘The Last Supper’ and the ‘Virgin of the Rocks’.
  • Some of Leonardo da Vinci’s machine designs were physically constructed and tested for a documentary for the Channel Four British television station in 2003.
Bibliography:
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), 2013, BBC, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/da_vinci_leonardo.shtml>
Leonardo da Vinci, 2013, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci>

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Mona Lisa

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Mona Lisa

She smiles well…

  • The Mona Lisa is a portrait of a woman, believed to be Lisa Gherardini, and the painting was probably commissioned by her husband, Francesco del Giocondo, a cloth merchant.
  • The Mona Lisa is also known as ‘La Gioconda’, a reference to her married name, or ‘La Joconde’, meaning ‘the happy one’.
  • The Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo da Vinci, an Italian artist, and was painted between 1503 and 1506.
  • The Mona Lisa is an oil painting on a poplar wood panel, and has the dimensions of 77 cm by 53 cm (30 inches by 21 inches), and is the most famous painting in the world.
  • It is believed that the person who commissioned the Mona Lisa was never given the painting, and remained in da Vinci’s possession until his death, and eventually was obtained by the French king, King Francis I.

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Mona Lisa
Image courtesy of Edwin/Flickr
  • The Mona Lisa was stolen on the 21 August 1911 by an Italian Louvre employee, Vincenzo Peruggia, and was missing for two years, and eventually turned up in Italy, where Peruggia had taken it.
  • The fame of the Mona Lisa painting was partly fueled by its theft in 1911, as the media reported it across the world.
  • The Mona Lisa has had acid, rocks, paint and a cup thrown at it, but it is still in good condition due to the restoration, touch-ups and cleaning it has had.
  • The Mona Lisa has been located at the Louvre (Musée du Louvre) in Paris since 1797, and approximately 6 million people visit it every year, even though most of the visitors only get to see it in a crowded room and choose to look at it for approximately 15 seconds.
  • The Mona Lisa is not insured as it is considered priceless, and it has a current estimated value of almost US$760 million, based on an insurance assessment in the early 1960s, valued then at $100 million.
Bibliography:
Mona Lisa, 2013, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa

Statue of Liberty

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Statue of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty, the liberty statue.

  • The Statue of Liberty is a neoclassical sculpture, depicting a woman or goddess with connotations of freedom, and can be found on Liberty Island, New York, in the United States of America.
  • The Statue of Liberty was designed by sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi, and given as a gift to the United States by France as a symbol of liberty.
  • The exterior of the Statue of Liberty, known as its ‘skin’, is made from copper and was originally a copper colour, although after a number of years in the weather it gained a green patina, which is still present today.
  • The Statue of Liberty is 46 meters (151 feet) in height and weighs 204.1 tonnes (450,000 pounds).
  • The Statue of Liberty was originally built in France, and was dismantled into 350 pieces and then packed in 214 crates and carted by ship to America.
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Statue of Liberty
Image courtesy of Bill Longshaw/ Free Digital Photos
  • The official opening of the Statue of Liberty was on 28th October, 1886, and the statue has since become iconic of the United States.
  • The Statue of Liberty, originally known as ‘Liberty Enlightening the World’, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1984.
  • Gustave Eiffel, the designer and engineer of the Eiffel Tower, was one of the main engineers used by Bartholdi for the Statue of Liberty.
  • On the tablet in one of the hands of the Statue of Liberty, the date “JULY IV MDCCLXXVI” is inscribed, a reference to the day of United States Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
  • At the Statue of Liberty’s feet is a broken chain, and is the most overlooked feature of the statue.
Bibliography:
Statue of Liberty, 2013, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty>
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