My Visual Artist

Leonardo da Vinci

    For ny Arts IDP, I chose Leonardo da Vinci as my visual artist because I find his paintings and also his life very interesting. His real name was Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci. He was born on 15th of April 1452. He was from Italy and besides being an artist, he was also an Italian polymath, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and a writer. But mostly, I chose him because he was a painter, a really good one. He is widely considered as one of the greatest painter of all time and perharps, the most diversely talented person ever to have lived in this world.

Mona Lisa

    Two of his famous paintings are the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, are the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied potrait and religious paintings of all time. I bet you're wondering what did I meant by the most parodied potrait right? Well, it means that his paintings especially the Mona Lisa is always being copied by people in the current century which we are living right now, and a lot of people imitate and change the picture, example like the face maybe, to another face but in a funny way, like the one with Mr. Bean's face and a lots more.

    Well, let's not talk more about his paintings first. Let's get to that later. His life, I bet you're wondering, even though he's famous all that, not every one knows about his life right? So let me tell you about it a little, okay? Well, you already know from up there that Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was born on the 15th of April 1452. He was born in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the lower valley of the Arno River in Florence. He was the son of the wealthy Messer Piero Fruasino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine notary and Caterina, a peasant.

    In his early life, he had spent five years in the hamlet of Anchiano in the home of his beloved mother, then lived in the household of his father, grandparent and uncle, Francesco, in the small town of Vinci. His father married a young sixteen-year old girl named Albiera, who loved Leonardo dearly but died young. Leonardo received an education in Latin about Geometry and Mathematics.

    When Leonardo was sixteen, his father remarried with a twenty-year old Francesca Lanfredini. And for your information, Leonardo's father remarried quite a lot of times, maybe around three to four times. Well, in later life, Leonardo had two childhood incidents. The first one was when a kite had dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail brushing his face. Well, it wasn't that serious but it's still called an incident, right? The second one happened when Leonardo was exploring in the mountains and he discovered a cave and he was both terrified and curious to go in, so he went in.

The Last Supper

    Leonardo died at Clos Luce, on the 2nd of May, 1519. Some twenty years later after his death, Francis, one of his close friends was reported by a scultor, Benevenuto Cellini saying: "There had never been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculptures and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher."

    Among of all his works, Mona Lisa or "la Gioconda" was the most famous paintings and also the laughing one, believe it or not. The picture of Mona Lisa was so detailed and the smile on her face was one of the things that made the painting very famous in the present era. During his years of life, he made a lot of paintings inspired by the people around him and the environment around him. He even kept a journal with him along the way. He's like a legend. Oh wait, he is a legend. His paintings are just so great and everyone knows that and that's why he's one of the most famous painters of all time.

source: wikipedia