The story of painting goes as far back as 20,000 years ago, to a time when Man had not yet learned to write. He looked around the world, and tried to reproduce what he saw in drawings. Man was just a caveman in those days, and the history of art began in caves.
Art has progressed through the ages. It has organized itself into different styles in terms of form, as well as content. Many painters belong to certain movements, giving different treatment to space, perspective, light and colour. History tells us of many great geniuses who led such movements, and revolutionized the world of art. A few examples are Edgar Degas, Vincent Van Gogh, and Pablo Picasso who created history by initiating great movements
like Impressionism, Expressionism and Cubism.
This book presents to you some of these great painters whose works have stood the test of time. Inevitably, we had to make many reluctant omissions, and many names had to be left out for the lack of space. We have not included living painters either.
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Florentine artist, one of the great masters of the High Renaissance, celebrated as a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist. His profound love of knowledge and research was the keynote of both his artistic and scientific endeavours. His innovations in the field of painting influenced the course of Italian art for more than a century after his death, and his scientific studies—particularly in the fields of anatomy, optics, and
hydraulics—anticipated many of the developments of modern science.
Leonardo was born in the small town of Vinci, in Tuscany (Toscana), near Florence. He was the son of a wealthy Florentine notary and a peasant woman. In the mid-1460s the family settled in Florence, where Leonardo was given the best education that Florence, a major intellectual and artistic center of Italy, could offer. He rapidly advanced socially and intellectually. He was handsome, persuasive in conversation, and a fine musician and improviser.
About 1466 he was apprenticed as a garzone (studio boy) to Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his day. In Verrocchio’s workshop Leonardo was introduced to many activities, from the painting of altarpieces and panel pictures to the creation of large sculptural projects in marble and bronze.
In 1472 he was entered in the painter’s guild of Florence, and in 1476 he was still considered Verrocchio’s assistant. In Verrocchio’s Baptism of Christ (1470, Uffizi, Florence), the kneeling angel at the left of the painting is by Leonardo.
In 1478 Leonardo became an independent master. His first commission, to paint an altarpiece for the chapel of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Florentine town hall, was never executed. His first large painting, The Adoration of the Magi (begun 1481, Uffizi), left unfinished, was ordered in 1481 for the Monastery of San Donato a Scopeto, Florence. Other works ascribed to his youth are the so-called Benois Madonna (1478, Hermitage, Saint Petersburg), the
portrait Ginevra de’ Benci (1474, National Gallery, Washington, D.C.), and the unfinished Saint Jerome (1481, Pinacoteca, Vatican).
About 1482 Leonardo entered the service of the duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, having written the duke an astonishing letter in which he stated that he could build portable bridges; that he knew the techniques of constructing bombardments and of making cannons; that he could build ships as well as armoured vehicles, catapults, and other war machines; and that he could execute sculpture in marble, bronze, and clay. He served as principal engineer in the duke’s numerous military enterprises and was active also as an architect. In addition, he assisted the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli in the celebrated work Divina Proportione (1509).
Evidence indicates that Leonardo had apprentices and pupils in Milan, for whom he probably wrote the various texts later compiled as Treatise on Painting (1651; translated 1956). The most important of his own paintings during the early Milan period was The Virgin of the Rocks, two versions of which exist (1483-1485, Louvre, Paris; 1490s to 1506-1508, National Gallery, London); he worked on the compositions for a long time, as was his custom, seemingly unwilling to finish what he had begun. From 1495 to 1497 Leonardo laboured on his masterpiece, The Last Supper, a mural in the refectory of the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. Unfortunately, his experimental use of oil on dry plaster (on what was the thin outer wall of a space designed for serving food) was technically unsound, and by 1500 its deterioration had begun. Since 1726 attempts have been made, unsuccessfully, to restore it; a concerted restoration and conservation program, making use of the latest technology, was begun in 1977 and is reversing some of the damage. Although much of the original surface is gone, the majesty of the composition and the penetrating characterization of the figures give a fleeting vision of its vanished splendour.
During his long stay in Milan, Leonardo also produced other paintings and drawings (most of which have been lost), theatre designs, architectural drawings, and models for the dome of Milan Cathedral. His largest commission was for a colossal bronze monument to Francesco Sforza, father of Ludovico, in the courtyard of Castello Sforzesco. In December 1499, however, the Sforza family was driven from Milan by French forces; Leonardo left the statue unfinished (it was destroyed by French archers, who used the terracotta model as a target) and he returned to Florence in 1500.
In 1502 Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, duke of Romagna and son and chief general of Pope Alexander VI. In his capacity as the duke’s chief architect and engineer, Leonardo supervised work on the fortresses of the papal territories in central Italy. In 1503 he was a member of a commission of artists who were to decide on the proper location for the David (1501-1504, Accademia, Florence), the famous colossal marble statue by the Italian sculptor Michelangelo, and he also served as an engineer in the war against Pisa. Toward the end of the year Leonardo began to design a decoration for the great hall of the Palazzo Vecchio. The subject was the Battle of Anghiari, a Florentine victory in its war with Pisa. He made many drawings for the decoration and completed a full-size cartoon, or sketch, in 1505, but he never finished the wall painting. The cartoon itself was destroyed in the 17th century, and the composition survives only in copies, of which the most famous is the one by the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1615, Louvre).
During this second Florentine period, Leonardo painted several portraits, but the only one that survives is the famous
Mona Lisa (1503-1506, Louvre). One of the most celebrated portraits ever painted, it is also known as La Gioconda, after the presumed name of the woman’s husband. Leonardo seems to have had a special affection for the picture, for he took it with him on all of his subsequent travels.
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