Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Man

Introduction
The Renaissance was a time in which humanism and classical order united in the height of Christendom’s cultural power. The Renaissance would eventually be eclipsed by the Protestant Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the Age of Enlightenment—all of which in some way reduced the achievements of the Renaissance and undermined the accomplishments of the era’s greats. Leonardo da Vinci was one such great of the Renaissance: in fact, it may be said that he was the very first Renaissance Man, as he was interested in everything—from painting to physiology to mathematics to military tactics. He certainly did it all and his notebooks, drawings, inventions and ideas show just how capable he was of doing everything required of a truly Renaissance Man.
Leonardo at the Beginning
Like many young men in Italy in the 15th century, Leonardo carved out a path for himself in Florence: after six years of apprenticeship, he was admitted into the Guild of St. Luke in 1472.[footnoteRef:2] The Guild of St. Luke, like its namesake,[footnoteRef:3] was formed for artists and medical doctors—which shows that Leonardo was not just interested in art from the beginning but also in the human body and how to heal it. He had a powerful, scientific mind that was constantly searching for new challenges—thus, for all the work that Leonardo actually took on, he rarely completed much of it. He was an idea man who was always looking to throw himself into something different. Thus, before leaving for Milan in 1482, he left behind the unfinished Adoration of the Magi that he had been commissioned to paint by the monks of San Donato a Scopeto.[footnoteRef:4] He was off to work for the Milanese Court, where he would take up an interest in human anatomy and produce many of the medical notebooks with various drawings and notes on the human body that would be studied for ages to come. [2: Leonardo da Vinci, The Art Story, https://www.theartstory.org/artist-da-vinci-leonardo-life-and-legacy.htm] [3: Joseph B. Frey, Introduction to the New Testament (NY: Ave Maria, 1948), 442.] [4: Leonardo da Vinci, The Art Story, https://www.theartstory.org/artist-da-vinci-leonardo-life-and-legacy.htm]
It was in Milan that Leonardo painted two of his most famous works—Virgin of the Rocks (an altarpiece) and the Last Supper. True to his revolutionary nature, the Last Supper fresco was not done in the same style as previous frescoes, which were done with water color on fresh plaster; Leonardo made his with oil-based paint—which, ultimately, turned out to be a disaster as the paint did not stick and before half a century had passed, the paint had become mainly a bunch of splotches on the wall.[footnoteRef:5] Today, the Last Supper is a reconstruction of Leonardo’s original—so when one views the work now, one is seeing the work of many artists over the centuries. Nonetheless, the Last Supper in its own right remains revolutionary for many other reasons, which will be discussed in the next section. [5: Leonardo da Vinci, World Biography, https://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Leonardo-da-Vinci.html]
Artwork
Leonardo’s artwork was revolutionary for its time as he pushed the boundaries of what had come before and sought to introduce an aspect of realism in his work that had never before been tried. He was so dedicated to achieving perfection in his art—and yet was simultaneously conscious of failing to achieve the sublime ideals that he felt he should reflect in his work—tthat he once said, “I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.”[footnoteRef:6] This from the man who painted the Mona Lisa, the Salvator Mundi, and the Last Supper: above all, the Last Supper is recognized for the profound manner in which it revolutionized painting of religious matters. [6: Leonardo da Vinci, The Art Story, https://www.theartstory.org/artist-da-vinci-leonardo-life-and-legacy.htm]
The stylistic development of the Last Supper is very humanistic in its earthliness, which was revolutionary in itself at the time. The earlier paintings of the Last Supper mainly carried with them a kind of Byzantine formalism—the characters were clean, the setting formal, the piety and saintliness of the Apostles evident and the separation of Judas from the others obvious. With Leonardo’s painting, the human side of the story emerged: each Apostle is seen attempting to cope with an idea that he simply cannot understand: the idea of Christ becoming the meal—the bread and the wine that Catholics in Leonardo’s day would receive in Holy Communion.[footnoteRef:7] Unlike in prior paintings, which depicted the saints of the Last Supper scene, in Leonardo’s their halos are gone. There is no direct symbolism or attempt by Leonardo to portray these beings in a formalistic way. The focus is on the human rather than the divine—though the divine is certainly manifested in Christ’s calmness and in the vanishing point that passes through his head. Christ Himself is, moreover, framed by the rectangular window behind him—and this serves to give the effect of a halo—a naturalistic one to be sure but one nonetheless. Thus, Leonardo incorporates the setting—the architecture—in order to convey the idea of holiness to Christ. The serenity of the blue sky out the window couples with Christ’s serene expression, rooting the composition in the heavenly while the rest of the Apostles at the table grapple with the same—and while the viewer himself must also work both to view and understand the multiple narratives coming through at once. [7: Fulton Sheen, Life of Christ (NY: Image Books, 2008), 317.]
Stylistically, Leonardo’s Last Supper contains much more depth than Castagno’s which has a Byzantine flatness to it. Ghirlandaio’s has a little more depth—but not nearly as much as Leonardo’s—which appears to reach back forever, into eternity in fact in those blue skies out the window. The way that the bodies of the Apostles are stacked on atop another in their clusters of threes as gives it depth and a degree of realism lacking in the other two earlier paintings.[footnoteRef:8] [8: The Last Supper, Khan Academy, https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/early-europe-and-colonial-americas/renaissance-art-europe-ap/a/leonardo-last-supper]
Overall, Leonardo’s Last Supper (which is emblematic of all his artistic work) is revolutionary because it takes one of the most important scenes in the Gospel and renders it in new, accessible terms while mashing multiple narratives together at once so that a degree of mystery about the exact sequence of events transpiring in the composition is open for debate. The painting challenges the viewer to meditate on multiple lines of activity and contrast themes while contemplating the depth, structure, and manifestation of the divine in a painting that is deeply rooted in the human. Leonardo’s Last Supper thus builds on the works of earlier painters by breaking out of the formalism of the Byzantine model into the expressive, humanistic arena where emphasis is placed on realism. In this manner, Leonardo foreshadowed the coming Baroque Era because the composition focuses on the dramatic tension of the scene and explores several different ideas in the reactions of the Apostles as Christ opens up to them and presents mysteries to them that are overpowering. The viewer is asked to equally bear this openness by attempting to lift himself up to the level of the painting while still feeling blocked—like a layman at the sanctuary railing, able to see what is happening at the altar where the Body and Blood of Christ is made present in the Eucharist. Leonardo’s table in the Last Supper is a symbol of the altar—and the Eucharistic miracle is apparent amidst the swirling chaos of the concept of betrayal. Thus, Leonardo makes a long-standing ritual of the Church into a dramatic, tension-filled situation that the Renaissance Christian could easily recognize and be moved by while considering the various symbolic, stylish and compositional qualities of the work. In doing so, Leonardo single-handedly redefined the art of the ages.
Leonardo was also interested in architecture, sculpture, music and drawings. His (would-be) sculpture of Charles II d’Amboise based on the Study of horse sketching from Leonardo’s journal and the wax model (which was as far as Leonardo got on that project) show the refinement in Leonardo’s design.[footnoteRef:9] His Vitruvian Man stands out as one of the most iconic drawings of all time, and his sketching of a fetus in the womb shows his keen sense of medical knowledge, too. His scientific drawings were studied for their anatomical correctness,[footnoteRef:10] and Michelangelo was one who would go on to follow in the footsteps of Leonardo by focusing on the muscles and anatomy of the human body when developing his most famous forms. In 1499, when he left Milan, he ventured to Venice and took up work as a military architect. Here some of his accomplishments brought him even more renown and he would later be enlisted in Cesana in 1502 under the son of the Pope to be military engineer for Cesare Borgia. Leonardo’s map of Imola was a work of genius and prompted Cesare to hire Leonardo on the spot.[footnoteRef:11] Every detail of the city was illustrated in the map—every street, church, square, parcel of land—nothing was left out. As a cartographer, Leonardo would have been remembered as one of the greats, yet that was barely one small aspect of what Leonardo did for the world. The fact that he is not known as a map-maker is further testimony of his genius and true Renaissance nature: he was everywhere, not just dabbling in everything but actually pushing the boundaries of every field and expanding on what had came before and taking old ideas in new directions. [9: Marmor, Max. "Achademia Leonardi Vinci: Journal of Leonardo Studies & Bibliography of Vinciana. Ed. Carlo Pedretti. Renaissance Quarterly 47, no. 3 (1994): 721-723.] [10: A. E. Popham, The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, 1946.] [11: Angela Ottino della Chiesa, The Complete Paintings of Leonardo da Vinci (Penguin Classics of World Art series, 1967), 85.]
Inventions
One of Leonardo’s most sophisticated inventions while in Venice at the turn of the century was a series of portable barricades that could be moved and situated to protect the city of Venice from being siege by the enemy. He worked with Machiavelli on a project to alter the course of the Arno River and in his notebooks are a number of other ideas that he sketched, such as a design for a flying machine—one which mimicked the flight of birds, called an ornithopter, which flies by use of wings that flap; and one which utilized a helical rotor like a modern day helicopter.[footnoteRef:12] Flight was a constant obsession for Leonardo and he was always watching the birds to understand how they lifted themselves off the air (which is why he developed a flying machine modeled after their wing flapping). He produced the Codex on the Flight of Birds, which consisted of his own thoughts on flight, various designs, and various insights into how birds engaged taking wing. [12: Daniel Arasse, "Leonardo da Vinci: The Rhythm of the World, trans." Rosetta Translations. New York: Koecky & Konecky(1998).]
Leonardo was so mathematically and scientifically inclined that he developed sketches and ideas for new musical instruments, hydraulic pumps, a steam cannon (an idea that Archimedes had developed as well), shells for it (with fins), and even the first robot—a mechanical knight.[footnoteRef:13] He produced a design for a single-span bridge for the Sultan of Constantinople (the Sultan did not produce the design, fearing it would not work), and he envisioned a number of other designs—such as the parachute and a giant crossbow. His active imagination thus enabled him to imagine a range of possibilities that others would never have dreamt of—and his ability to dream them up and design them in his notebooks was partially due to the fact that he enjoyed dreaming up designs more than he did actually developing and finishing them. His unfinished painting of St. Jerome in the Wilderness is one example of a work that remains incomplete—but Leonardo was not a prolific painter in any sense of the word. Other masters of the age focused on one main craft, such as painting or architecture or science. Leonardo focused on them all and set the stage for the next Renaissance Man—Michelangelo, who excelled at sculpture, painting, and architecture, just as Leonardo did. Without Leonardo leading the way, however, it is unlikely that Michelangelo would have been able to transcend the normal boundaries of the artist and hop from sculpture to painting to architectural design. Leonardo paved the way for future Renaissance Men by refusing to stay pinned in any one field. Everywhere he went, his contributions were regarded highly (if not always produced). He was viewed, in a way, as the Elon Musk of his day—engaging in every form of scientific advancement and developing idea after idea, many of which would stay in his notebooks until being developed later on by future scientists. [13: Lianna Bortolon, The life and times of Leonardo (Hamlyn, 1967), ]
Conclusion: Leonardo, the First Renaissance Man
As the first Renaissance Man, Leonardo showed how the individual genius could extend his influence and show off his range of talents by opening himself up to every sort of need that the Renaissance had cause to pursue. Hailing from Florence, the artistic center of Italy during the Renaissance, Leonardo joined the St. Luke Guild, which specialized in art and medicine—and from there Leonardo advanced into experimenting with painting and methods (some of which worked—like his artistic design for the Last Supper—and some of which did not, like his method for making the paint for the Last Supper). The few paintings he created (compared to other master painters) were hailed as masterpieces and pushed the envelope of Renaissance art by obliging all later artists to move away from the Byzantine model and embrace the humanistic form of realism that Leonardo set out.
An indefatigable designer, Leonardo immersed himself in mathematics and represented everything in nature in terms of mathematical symmetry—from the human body to the horse—and this mathematical sense is what gave him the confidence to create (or at least design) his famous inventions—such as the mechanical knight, the 700 ft. single span bridge, or the helicopter. He channeled his inner Archimedes by designing a steam cannon that would shoot projectiles using steam pressure from boiling water, and he created the portable barricade for Venice. He painted the Mona Lisa and drew Vitruvian Man—two of the most iconic and symbolic images in history and still known and recognized in pop culture today. He was a man for whom nothing was off limits, as he applied his intellect and genius to so many different fields that he hardly had time to finish one project before beginning another. As the first Renaissance Man, he set the stage for later Renaissance Men—from Michelangelo to today’s Elon Musk.
Summary
Leonardo da Vinci was a 15th century Renaissance Man from Florence. He grew up practicing arts and working in the field of medicine by making drawings of anatomically correct human beings for medical study. He produced drawings of the skull, of the fetus in the womb, and of the human body (famously known as Vitruvian Man and widely embraced for its sublime proportionality and symmetry). His sketching and drawings alone would have made him one of the most brilliant artists of all time, but Leonardo did not stop there. He also painted some of the most iconic paintings of all time, including the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the Salvator Mundi. He pushed the boundaries in the art world by incorporating realism into the field where before him artists had not gone beyond the Byzantine approaches. His eye for nature and the world around him allowed him to add depth and proportionality to his paintings. His love for mathematics and music allowed him to develop musical instruments and bridges, and his sense of architecture allowed him to develop maps and barricades for cities under the threat of war. He designed various inventions that would not see the light of day for hundreds more years, such as the flying machine and the robot. He was interested in and a master of so many different trades that he can widely be recognized today as the world’s first Renaissance Man—a leader who inspired others like Michelangelo and even today’s own famous Renaissance Man, the leader at Tesla, Elon Musk, who is also seeking to take the planet to Mars. Leonardo started it all by being the first to break all boundaries, advance every field in which he worked, and revolutionize the approaches that others would take after him.
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