the-french-artist/wikipedia_20220301.simple_sentence_split huggingface dataset:
In addition, the system has a safety release valve to allow excess steam to escape without driving the wheels.
500 Boulton & Watt engines were built by the firm between 1775 and 1800.
Watt went into partnership with a fellow member of the Midlands Lunar Society, Matthew Boulton.
The firm of Boulton & Watt designed and built steam engines, and was very important in the Industrial Revolution.
The Soho Foundry
At first the partnership made the drawing and specifications for the engines, and supervised the work to erect it on the customer's property.
They produced almost none of the parts themselves.
Watt did most of his work at his home in Harper’s Hill in Birmingham, while Boulton worked at the Soho Manufactory.
Gradually the partners began to actually make more and more of the parts, and by 1795 they purchased a property about a mile away from the Soho manufactory, on the banks of the Birmingham Canal.
There they built a new foundry for making the engines.
The Soho Foundry opened in 1796 at a time when Watt’s sons, Gregory and James Jr. were heavily involved in the management of the enterprise.
In 1800, the year of Watt’s retirement, the firm made a total of forty-one engines.
Watt retired in 1800, the same year that his fundamental patent and partnership with Boulton expired.
The famous partnership was transferred to the men's sons, Matthew Robinson Boulton and James Watt Jr. Longtime firm engineer William Murdoch was soon made a partner and the firm prospered.
History of Steam Engines
1736 births
1819 deaths
British engineers
British mathematicians
Members of the Lunar Society
By topic
War and politics
February 16 – King Afonso III of Portugal and King Alfonso X of Castile sign the Badajoz Convention, figuring out the border between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Kingdom of Leon, and ensuring Portuguese sovereignty over Algarve.
May 27 – Treaty of Viterbo: Emperor Baldwin II of Constantinople gifts the Principality of Achaea to King Charles I of Sicily in the hope that Charles can help him restore the Latin Empire.
The Second Barons' War in England ends, as the rebels and King Henry III of England agree to peace terms as laid out in the Dictum of Kenilworth.
Treaty of Montgomery: King Henry III of England acknowledges Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's title of Prince of Wales.
The city of Ostrava is founded.
Roger Bacon completes his work Opus Majus and sends it to Pope Clement IV, who had requested it be written; the work contains wide-ranging discussion of mathematics, optics, alchemy, astronomy, astrology, and other topics, and includes what some believe to be the first description of a magnifying glass.
Bacon also completes Opus Minus, a summary of Opus Majus, later in the same year.
The only source for his date of birth is his statement in the Opus Tertium, written in 1267, that "forty years have passed since I first learned the alphabet".
The 1214 birth date assumes he was not being literal, and meant 40 years had passed since he matriculated at Oxford at the age of 13.
If he had been literal, his birth date was more likely to have been around 1220.
The leadership of Vienna forces Jews to wear Pileum cornutum,a cone-shaped head dress, in addition to the yellow badges Jews are already forced to wear.
In England, the Statute of Marlborough is passed, the oldest English law still (partially) in force.
By place
Asia and Africa
The "Grand Capital" is constructed in Khanbaliq (present-day Beijing) by Kublai Khan, having moved the capital of the Mongol Empire there three years prior.
Malik ul Salih establishes Samudra Pasai, the first Muslim state in Indonesia.
Spain attempts an invasion of Morocco, but the Marinids successfully defended against the invasion and drive out Spanish forces.
February 3 – Richard FitzAlan, 8th Earl of Arundel (d. 1302)
August 10 – King James II of Aragon (d. 1327)
December 17 – Emperor Go-Uda of Japan (d. 1324)
Giotto di Bondone, Italian artist (d. 1337)
Roger de Flor
March 3 or March 4 – Lars, Archbishop of Uppsala
John FitzAlan, 6th Earl of Arundel (b. 1223)
Hugh II of Cyprus (b. 1253)
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer.
Along with Leonardo da Vinci, he is often called a "Renaissance Man" which means that he had great talent in many areas.
Michelangelo lived an extremely busy life, creating a great number of artworks.
Some of Michelangelo's works are among the most famous that have ever been made.
They include two very famous marble statues, the Pieta in Saint Peter's Basilica and David which once stood in a plazza in Florence but is now in the Accademia Gallery.
His most famous paintings are huge frescos, the Sistine Chapel Ceiling and the Last Judgement.
His most famous work of architecture is the east end and dome of Saint Peter's Basilica.
A lot is known about Michelangelo's life because he left many letters, poems and journals.
Because he was so famous, he became the very first artist to have his biography (story of his life) published while he was still living.
His biographer, Giorgio Vasari, said that he was the greatest artist of the Renaissance.
He was sometimes called Il Divino ("the divine one").
Other artists said that he had terribilità, (his works were so grand and full of strong emotion that they were scary).
Many other artists who saw his work tried to have the same emotional quality.
From this idea of terribilità came a style of art called Mannerism.
Michelangelo was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese near Arezzo, Tuscany.
His father was Lodovico di Leonardo di Buonarroti di Simoni, and his mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena.
The Buonarrottis were a banking family from Florence.
They claimed they were descended from the noble Countess Matilda of Canossa.
Michelangelo's father had lost most of the bank’s money, so he worked for the local government in the town of Chiusi.
When Michelangelo was a baby, the family moved back to Florence.
As he was sickly, Michelangelo was sent to live on a small farm with a stonecutter and his wife and family.
The stonecutter worked at a marble quarry owned by Michelangelo's father.
Many years later Michelangelo said that the two things that had helped him to be a good artist were being born in the gentle countryside of Arezzo and being raised in a house where, along with his nurse's milk, he was given the training to use a chisel and hammer.
His mother died when he was only six.
Michelangelo’s father then brought him back to Florence and sent him to study with a tutor, Francesco da Urbino.
Michelangelo was not interested in his school lessons.
He explored the great churches of the city and drew copies of the frescos that he saw there.
When he was thirteen, he was apprenticed to the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio.
Ghirlandaio had a large busy studio.
He had rich patrons who worked for the Medici.
He painted frescos in their family chapels.
Michelangelo was able to learn the art of fresco painting very well, from Ghirlandaio.
In a large workshop such as Ghirlandaio’s, artists would have been working in all sorts of different media, including sculpture, metalwork and painting altarpieces.
Michelangelo would have learned about all these things.
When Michelangelo was only fourteen, his father persuaded Ghirlandaio to pay his apprentice as an artist, which was highly unusual at the time.
Working for the Medici
The richest, most powerful family in Florence were the Medici.
They had an academy where some of the most famous philosophers, poets, and artists met to share their ideas.
The Medici family were important patrons of the arts.
In 1489, Lorenzo de' Medici, the head of the family, asked Ghirlandaio to send his two best pupils to the academy.
Michelangelo was one of the students chosen and he attended the academy from 1490 to 1492.
He heard the teaching and discussion of Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Angelo Poliziano.
The philosophy that they taught was called Humanism.
It was based on the philosophy of the ancient Greek Plato.
Michelangelo’s ideas and his art were influenced by these teachings.
Michelangelo and another young sculptor called Pietro Torrigiano studied sculpture under Bertoldo di Giovanni.
Michelangelo had an argument with Torrigiano, who punched him on the nose so that it was badly broken and spoilt his appearance for the rest of his life.
Michelangelo sculpted some reliefs (flat panels with raised figures on them).
One was ‘’the Battle of the Centaurs’’ which was made for Lorenzo de Medici.
In 1492, Michelangelo’s patron, Lorenzo de' Medici died.
This brought about a big change in Michelangelo’s life.
He went back to live at his father’s house.
Michelangelo asked the prior at the Church of Santo Spirito to allow him to study the anatomy of the bodies of people who had died at the church’s hospital.
In 1493, as a “thank-you” gift to the prior, Michelangelo carved a large wooden Crucifix which still hangs in the church.
In January 1494, there were very heavy snowfalls.
Lorenzo de’ Medici’s son, Piero de Medici commissioned Michelangelo to make a snow statue.
So Michelangelo began to work for the Medici again.
In 1494, a new leader rose up in Florence.
He was a Dominican friar called Savonarola.
His strong preaching caused people to burn their books, throw away their jewellery and chase the rich families out of the city.
The Medici had to go.
For Michelangelo, it was a good time to travel.
He stayed for a while in Venice, then moved to Bologna.
In Bologna he soon got work sculpting three figures for the big marble Shrine of Saint Dominic.
When things calmed down in Florence, Michelangelo returned and worked for another member of the Medici family,  Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici.
Michelangelo made a marble statue of Cupid asleep.
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco told Michelangelo that it looked just like a real  Ancient Roman statue and said that if he made it dirty and knocked a few chips off, someone would pay a lot of money for it.
Lorenzo sold it to a Cardinal who discovered that it was a fraud.
He thought that Michelangelo’s work was so good that he told the pope about it.
The pope then invited Michelangelo to go to Rome and work for him.
Michelangelo arrived in Rome 25 June 1496 at the age of 21.
He lived near the Church of Santa Maria di Loreto on the Gianicolo hill.
In 1496 he got an important “commission” (he was given a paid job) from Cardinal Raffaele Riario.
The Cardinal wanted Michelangelo to make a marble statue, larger than life-size,  of Bacchus, the Ancient Roman God of wine.
Michelangelo worked hard at the statue.
He carved Bacchus as a young man who was quite drunk and looked as if he was staggering as he raised his cup to make a toast.
The cardinal did not like the drunken Bacchus and would not pay for it.
A banker called Jacopo Galli bought it for his garden.
Michelangelo’s next important commission was from the French Ambassador who asked him to make a statue of the Virgin Mary mourning over the dead body of her son Jesus.
This type of artwork, either a painting or a statue, is called by the Italian name “Pieta” (say: “Pe-ay-ta”).
Michelangelo’s Pieta is the most famous Pieta that has ever been made.
It is now in Saint Peter's Basilica and is visited by thousands of people every day.
Giorgio Vasari  wrote: "It is a miracle that a shapeless block of stone could have been carved away to make something so perfect that even nature could hardly have made it better, using real human flesh."
Statue of David
In 1499 Michelangelo returned to Florence.
The priest Savonarola had made so many people angry that he had been put to death in 1498.
Life in Florence started to return to normal.
Many years earlier the Guild of Woolworkers had commissioned some artists to make statues of the heroes of the city.
A sculptor called Agostino di Duccio had started carving a huge statue of  David, the hero of the Bible story of David and Goliath.
For 40 years the Guild of Woolworkers owned the huge block of marble, with the statue hardly begun.
In 1501 they commissioned the young Michelangelo to carve it.
It took him three years to complete.
Once again Michelangelo made a statue that became world-famous.
The statue shows a young man, naked in the way that statues of ancient gods were made, just pausing for a moment and looking with fierce eyes at the huge soldier Goliath that he is about to kill.
The statue is 5.17 meter (17 ft) tall.
It was placed in the piazza (public square) outside the Palazzo Vecchio where the town council met.
After many years, the statue was put into an art gallery, the Accademia.
A copy now stands in the piazza.
People still go great distances to see the statue that he made.
Sistine Chapel ceiling
In 1505 Michelangelo was invited to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II.
Pope Julius was an old man.
He wanted Michelangelo to design a grand tomb.
It was to stand inside a church and have many carved figures which were to include several slaves to hold up part of the tomb and Old Testament prophets to sit in niches (openings in the walls).
Michelangelo started work.
He made a magnificent statue of Moses  which is now in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli (St. Peter in Chains) in Rome.
Many people go to look at this statue.
The slaves were only partly carved.
Four of them are now in the Accademia in Florence.
The rest of the great plan was unfinished.
The main reason that Pope Julius' tomb was not finished was that the Pope had an idea for another artwork.
The Sistine Chapel near St. Peter's Basilica had its walls painted by some famous artists from Florence.
The Pope decided that Michelangelo should paint the ceiling.
Michelangelo did not want to.
He said that he was not a painter.
But the Pope bullied Michelangelo until he agreed to do it.
He told the Pope that he would do it "for God" and that he would only do it if the Pope let him paint it "in his own way".
The chapel was long and wide.
Its curved ceiling was held up by twelve fan-shaped pieces of wall called "pendentives".
Pope Julius told Michelangelo to paint one of the twelve apostles of Jesus on each pendentive.
Michelangelo started to do this.
Then he got a different idea and scraped off the work that he had done.
Instead of apostles, he painted twelve prophets.
Seven of them were men from the Old Testament but the other five were women and did not come from the Bible.
They were five prophets from the Classical world.
Like the prophets in the Bible, they had all told people about the birth of Jesus.
On the middle of the ceiling, instead of painting a starry sky, Michelangelo painted scenes from the Bible telling the story of Creation and the downfall of humanity.
The most famous scene is the picture of God creating Adam.
The ceiling was so famous that many artists tried to copy the way that Michelangelo had arranged and painted the figures.
Buildings and tombs in Florence
In 1513 Pope Julius II died.
The next pope was Pope Leo X, a member of the Medici family.
He gave Michelangelo several jobs in Florence, including designing the Medici Chapel to hold the tombs of his family members.
Although not all the tombs were built, Michelangelo finished seven large statues including a "Madonna and Child".
His pupils later completed the chapel.
In 1527, the people of Florence became angry at the Medici for acting like princes.
That was not the right way for a family to act, in a city that was a republic.
The people threw the Medici out, but the Medici came back with an army and took over the city.
Michelangelo was so upset at the behaviour of the Medici that he left his beloved city and never went back.
Pope Clement VII called Michelangelo back to the Sistine Chapel to paint the wall behind the altar with a huge scene of The Last Judgement.
He worked on it from 1534 to 1541.
At the centre it shows Jesus, surrounded by saints, sitting in judgement over the people of the Earth.
To the left, people are rising from their graves and many are welcomed into Heaven.
To the right, other people are being sent to Hell where they are dragged down by demons.
It is a huge painting with many figures in it.
Like Adam and Eve on the ceiling, all the figures were shown naked.
Some of the cardinals in the church said that it was wicked to paint saints, including the Virgin Mary, with no clothes on.
They called Michelangelo "the painter of rude bits".
There was a long argument about this because some people said that God had created everyone naked, so clothes would not be needed in Heaven.
After Michelangelo's death another artist, Daniele da Volterra was called in to paint drapes on the figures.
For the rest of his life, he was known as "the painter of pants".
In 1546, when Michelangelo was in his seventies, he was given one of his most important jobs.
The old St. Peter's Basilica had been partly demolished and a new one designed by Bramante.
But many architects had worked on it and it was still just at the beginning stages.
Michelangelo was made the architect.
He immediately improved the plan, had important parts made much stronger, and designed a huge dome, taller than any other domes in the world.
He died before it was completed, but he left drawings and models so that the next architect, Giacomo della Porta, could finish what he had started.
The dome of St. Peter's Basilica still stands as one of the greatest monuments of Christianity, and as a symbol of the city of Rome.
When Michelangelo died, his body was taken back to Florence and buried in the Basilica of Santa Croce (Church of the Holy Cross).
On his tomb sit three mourning figures who symbolize Architecture, Painting and Sculpture.
List of Italian painters
Barenboim, Peter (with Heath, Arthur).
500 years of the New Sacristy: Michelangelo in the Medici Chapel, LOOM, Moscow, 2019.
Einem, Herbert von (1973).
Michelangelo.
Ronald Taylor.
London: Methuen.
Gilbert, Creighton (1994).
Michelangelo On and Off the Sistine Ceiling.
New York: George Braziller.
Hibbard, Howard (1974).
New York: Harper & Row.
Hirst, Michael and Jill Dunkerton. (
1994) The Young Michelangelo: The Artist in Rome 1496–1501.
London: National Gallery Publications.
Pietrangeli, Carlo, et al. (
The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration.
New York: Harry N. Abrams
Saslow, James M. (1991).
The Poetry of Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Seymour, Charles, Jr. (1972).
Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel Ceiling.
New York: W. W. Norton.
Summers, David (1981).
Michelangelo and the Language of Art.
Princeton University Press.
Tolnay, Charles de. (
The Art and Thought of Michelangelo.
New York: Pantheon Books.
Wilde, Johannes (1978).
Michelangelo: Six Lectures.
"The Divine Michelangelo - Timeline of Michelangelo's Life and Major Works"
Michelangelo in the "A World History of Art"
Photographs of details at the Campidoglio
The BP Special Exhibition Michelangelo Drawings — closer to the master
Michelangelo's Drawings: Real or Fake?
How to decide if a drawing is by Michelangelo.
Models he used to make his sculptures and paintings
"The Michelangelo Code" , suggesting Michelangelo's coded use of his knowledge of anatomy.
"Michelangelo: The Man and the Myth"
1475 births
1564 deaths
15th-century Italian painters
16th-century Italian painters
Italian architects
Italian sculptors
Italian poets
Leonardo da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian man who lived in the time of the Renaissance.
He is famous for his paintings, but he was also a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician, and a writer.
Leonardo wanted to know everything about nature.
He wanted to know how everything worked.
He was very good at studying, designing and making all sorts of interesting things.
He is not to be confused with Leonardo Vinci, Italian music composer.
Leonardo was born at Vinci which is a small town near Florence, Italy.
He was trained to be an artist by the sculptor and painter Verrocchio.
He spent most of his life working for rich Italian noblemen.
In his last years, he lived in a beautiful home given to him by the King of France.
Two of his pictures are among the best-known paintings in the world: the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.
He did many drawings.
The best-known drawing is Vitruvian Man.
Leonardo was often thinking of new inventions.
He kept notebooks with notes and drawings of these ideas.
Most of his inventions were never made.
Some of his ideas were a helicopter, a tank, a calculator, a parachute, a robot, a telephone, evolution, and solar power.
Childhood, 1452–1466
Leonardo was born on 15 April 1452, in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the valley of the Arno River.
His grandfather, Antonio da Vinci, wrote down the details of the birth.
Leonardo's parents were not married.
His father was a Notary, Ser Piero da Vinci.
His mother, Caterina, was a servant.
She may have been a slave from the Middle East.
or from China.
His father later on took custody of Leonardo and his mother remarried and had 5 more children.
Leonardo's full name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", which means "Leonardo, the son of Messer (Mister) Pierdaom Vinci".
Leonardo spent his first five years living in a farm house with his mother.
Then he lived at Vinci with his father, his father's new wife Albiera, his grandparents and uncle, Francesco.
When Leonardo grew up, he only wrote down two memories from his childhood.
He remembered that when he was lying outside in his cradle a large bird flew from the sky and hovered over him.
Its tail feathers brushed his face.
Leonardo's other important memory was how he found a cave while exploring in the mountains.
He was terrified that some great monster might be hiding there.
But he was also very excited and wanted to find out what was inside.
Leonardo started painting while he was still a boy.
Giorgio Vasari wrote about Leonardo's life shortly after his death.
He tells many interesting stories about how clever Leonardo was.
He says that Leonardo painted a round wooden shield with a picture of snakes spitting fire.
Messer Piero took his son's painting to Florence and sold it to an art dealer.
Verrocchio's workshop, 1466–1476
Florence was a very exciting place for a young person who wanted to be an artist.
Many famous artists had lived in Florence, starting with Cimabue and Giotto in the 1200s.
Everywhere a person looked there were famous and beautiful artworks.
The huge cathedral had an enormous new dome.
The church of St John had doors that gleamed with gold and were said to be the most beautiful doors in the world.
Another church had statues all around it by the most famous sculptors, including one by Leonardo's teacher Verrocchio.
If an artist was lucky, they would find a rich patron who would buy lots of their paintings.
The richest family in Florence were the Medici.
They had built themselves the finest palace in Florence, and liked buying paintings, statues and other beautiful things.
They were also interested in the study of literature and philosophy.
Many young artists hoped to get work from the Medici and their friends.
Verrocchio had a big workshop that was one of the busiest in Florence.
Leonardo was learning to be an artist, so he had to learn drawing, painting, sculpting and model making.
While he was at the workshop, he was able to learn all sorts of other useful skills: chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry.
Leonardo was not the only young painter at Verrocchio's workshop.
Many other painters were trained there, or often visited.
Some of them later became famous: Ghirlandaio, Perugino and Botticelli.
These artists were all just a few years older than Leonardo.
Giorgio Vasari tells an interesting story from this time of Leonardo's life.
Verrocchio was painting a large picture of the Baptism of Christ.
He gave Leonardo the job of painting one of the angels holding Jesus' robe on the left side of the picture.
Vasari said that Leonardo painted the angel so beautifully that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again.
When the painting is examined closely it is possible to see that many other parts of the picture, such as the rocks, the brown stream and the background may have been painted by Leonardo as well.
Verrocchio made a bronze statue of David at this time.
It is believed that he used Leonardo as his model.
In about 1472, when he was twenty, Leonardo joined the Guild of St Luke, an organisation of artists and doctors of medicine.
Even after his father set him up in his own workshop, Leonardo still enjoyed working at Verrocchio's workshop.
Leonardo's earliest known work is a drawing in pen and ink of the Arno River valley.
It has the date 5 August 1473.
It is now in the Uffizi Gallery.
Working life 1476–1499
When Vasari writes about Leonardo, he uses words like "noble", "generous", "graceful" and "beautiful".
Vasari tells us that as an adult Leonardo was a tall handsome man.
He was so strong that he could bend horseshoes with his bare hands.
His voice was so beautiful that it charmed everyone that heard it.
Almost everyone wanted to be his friend.
He loved animals, was a vegetarian and would buy birds at the market and set them free.
Very little is known about Leonardo's life and work between 1472 and 1481.
He was probably busy in Florence.
In 1478, he had an important commission to paint an altarpiece for the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto.
The painting was to be the Adoration of the Magi (The Three Wise Men).
The painting was never finished because Leonardo was sent away to Milan.
Leonardo was a very talented musician.
In 1482, he made a silver lyre (a musical instrument) in the shape of a horse's head.
At that time there was a new ruler in the city of Milan, in the north of Italy.
Duke Ludovico il Moro was making other rulers nervous.
Lorenzo Medici sent Leonardo to Milan as an ambassador.
Lorenzo de' Medici wanted Leonardo to give Ludovico the lyre as a present from him.
Leonardo wrote a letter to the Duke of Milan, telling him about all the clever and useful things that he could do, like making war machines.
He wrote in the letter that he could "also paint".
Leonardo did not know at the time that it was for painting that he would be mostly remembered.
Leonardo stayed in Milan and worked for the Duke between 1482 and 1499.
Part of his work was to design festivals and carnival processions.
In Leonardo's note books are drawings of theatre costumes, amazing helmets and scenes that might be for the theatre.
Leonardo, like most other well-known artists of his time, had servants, young students and older assistants in his workshop.
One of his young students was a boy whose name was Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno.
He was a handsome boy with beautiful long golden curls.
He looked perfect as an artist's model for an angel.
But he was such a difficult and dishonest boy that Leonardo called him "Salai" or "Salaino" which means "the little devil".
Leonardo wrote in his notebook that Salai was very greedy, that he was a liar and that he had stolen things from the house at least five times.
Salai stayed in Leonardo's household for thirty years as a pupil and a servant.
Gran Cavallo
Leonardo's most important work for Duke Ludovico was to make a huge statue of the previous ruler, Francesco Sforza, on horseback.
He started with the horse.
After studying horses and drawing designs, he made a huge horse of clay.
It was called the "Gran Cavallo".
It was going to be cast in bronze.
It was going to be the biggest bronze horse that had been made for more than a thousand years.
Unfortunately, the bronze horse was never made.
In 1494, Ludovico gave the bronze to be made into cannons because the French army was invading Milan.
The huge clay horse was still standing when the French army invaded again in 1499.
This time it was used for target practice and was completely destroyed.
The Virgin of the Rocks
While Leonardo was working for Duke Ludovico, he had two important painting commissions.
One was to do an oil painting to go in a big altarpiece for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception.
Leonardo did the painting twice.
He left one with the monks in Milan, and took the other painting to France where it is now in the Louvre Museum.
The paintings are both called the Virgin of the Rocks.
They show a scene of the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus in a rocky mysterious landscape.
Mary and Jesus are meeting with John the Baptist.
There is a story (which is not in the Bible but is part of Christian tradition) about how the baby John and the baby Jesus met on the road to Egypt.
In this scene John is praying and the baby Jesus raises his hand to bless John.
The paintings have a strange eerie light with soft deep shadows.
In the background is a lake and mountains in the mist.
No painting like this had ever been done before.
Leonardo's other important painting in Milan is even more famous.
It is the Last Supper.
The painting shows the last meal shared by Jesus with his disciples, before his capture and death.
Leonardo chose to paint the moment when Jesus has said "one of you will betray me".
Leonardo tells the story of the surprise and upset that this caused to the twelve followers of Jesus.
He tells the story through the actions and faces of the people in the painting.
Some of them are talking, some of them have stood up, some are raising their hands in horror.
The novelist Matteo Bandello saw Leonardo at work.
Bandello wrote that on some days he would paint from morning till night without stopping to eat.
Then for three or four days he would not paint at all.
He would often just stand and look at the painting.
Vasari said that the prior of the convent was very annoyed.
He asked Ludovico to tell Leonardo to work faster.
Vasari said that Leonardo was worried because he did not think that he could paint the face of Jesus well enough.
Leonardo told the Duke that he might use the face of the prior as his model for Judas, the traitor.
When it was finished, everyone that saw it said that the painting was a masterpiece.
But Leonardo had not used proper fresco for the painting.
He had used tempera over gesso, which is not usually used for wall painting.
Soon the painting started to grow mold and flake off the wall.
In a hundred years it was "completely ruined".
Working life 1499–1513
In 1499, Ludovico il Moro was overthrown.
Leonardo left Milan with his servant Salai and a friend, Luca Pacioli, who was a mathematician.
They went to Venice.
Leonardo worked as a military architect and engineer.
Because Venice is a city on many islands, Leonardo tried to think of ways to defend the city from a naval attack.
In 1500, Leonardo went back to Florence, taking his "household" of servants and apprentices with him.
The monks from the monastery of The Holy Annunciation gave Leonardo a home and a large workshop.
In 2005, some buildings which were used by the Department of Military Geography were being restored.
The restorers discovered that part of the building was Leonardo's studio.
The Virgin and Child with St Anne and John the Baptist
Leonardo started work on a new painting.
He drew a large "cartoon". (
This means a drawing that is a plan for the painting.)
The cartoon showed the Virgin Mary sitting on the knee of her mother, St Anne.
Mary holds the baby Jesus in her arms.
Jesus stretches out his hands to his young cousin John the Baptist.
Vasari says that everyone was so amazed by the beautiful drawing that "men and women, young and old" came in large groups to see it "as if they were attending a great festival".
The drawing is now in the National Gallery, London.
Even though it is old and faded and is kept in a dark room, people go to the gallery to sit in front of it every day. .
The Battle of Anghiari
In 1502 and 1503, Leonardo worked for Cesare Borgia, a powerful noble who was the son of Pope Alexander VI.
Leonardo travelled around Italy with Borgia, as a military architect and engineer.
Late in 1503, Leonardo returned to Florence.
He rejoined the Guild of St Luke.
He was given a very important commission.
The Signoria (Town Council) of the City of Florence wanted two large frescos painted on the walls of the most important room of the Signoria Palace.
Michelangelo was to paint The Battle of Cascina and Leonardo was to paint The Battle of Anghiari.
Leonardo began the project by studying and drawing the faces of angry men and fighting horses.
These drawings can still be seen in his notebooks.
But unfortunately, this was to be another failure for Leonardo.
When he painted the picture on the wall, instead of using fresco, he mixed the paints with oil.
The paint would not dry.
Leonardo lit some fires to dry it, and the painting melted.
Peter Paul Rubens drew a copy of the middle part.
After a time, the town council covered it up and got somebody else to paint the wall.
Michelangelo did not finish his painting either, because the Pope called him to Rome.
In about 1503 Leonardo began painting the portrait of a woman known as Mona Lisa, the most famous portrait that has ever been painted.
He continued working on it for many years.
It is a small picture, painted in oil on a wooden panel.
It shows the face, upper body and hands of a woman.
She is very plainly dressed.
For a portrait, a woman would usually put on her best clothes and jewellery.
Mona Lisa has a dark dress and a fine black veil over her head.
Leonardo often left symbols in his paintings that give clues about the person.
The unusual thing about this picture is the smile.
The smile is the clue to her name: Mona Lisa Giacondo.
Giacondo means "the joking one". (
Mona is short for Madonna which means "My Lady".)
The reason why the painting is so famous is that it seems to be full of mystery.
Mona Lisa's eyes look out at the viewer.
But no-one can guess what she is thinking.
Her eyes and her mouth seem to be smiling.
This is very unusual in a portrait painting.
Most people in portraits look very serious.
It is hard to tell what Mona Lisa's exact expression is.
When a person wants to read another person's feelings, they look at the corners of their mouth and eyes.
But Leonardo has painted soft shadows in the corners of Mona Lisa's mouth and eyes, to disguise her expression.
The soft shadows are also found on the sides of her face, her neck and hands.
The way that Leonardo uses shadow is called "sfumato" (which is an Italian word for "smoke").
Vasari said that the picture was so beautifully painted that every other artist who looked at it thought that they could never paint so well.
Working life, 1506–1516
In 1506, Leonardo went back to Milan with his pupils, and lived in his own house in Porta Orientale.
D'Oggione made several copies of the Last Supper.
Luini made a copy of the Virgin of the Rocks.
Boltraffio (and the others) painted many Madonna and Child pictures which can still be seen in art galleries and churches.
One of pupils was a young nobleman called Count Francesco Melzi.
Melzi never became a very good painter, but he loved Leonardo and stayed with him until the day he died.
In September 1513 Leonardo went to Rome and lived there until 1516.
He lived in the Vatican.
The three greatest painters of the High Renaissance, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael were all working in Rome at the same time.
Even though their names are often said together as if they were friends, they were not.
Leonardo at this time was in his sixties, Michelangelo was middle-aged.
He was not friendly to either Leonardo or Raphael.
Raphael was a very clever young painter who learnt a lot by looking at the pictures painted by Leonardo and Michelangelo.
But neither of them was ever his teacher.
In October 1515, King Francis I of France captured Milan.
On December 19, there was a meeting of Francis I and Pope Leo X, in Bologna.
Leonardo went to the meeting with Pope Leo.
Leonardo made an amazing toy to entertain King Francis.
It was a life-sized mechanical lion that could walk.
It had doors in its chest which opened, and a bunch of lilies came out.
Lilies were the royal symbol of the French Kings.
Old age, 1516–1519
In 1516, Francis I invited Leonardo to go to France with him.
He gave Leonardo a beautiful house called Clos Lucé (sometimes called "Cloux").
It is near the king's palace, Chateau Amboise.
Leonardo spent the last three years of his life at Clos Lucé, with his faithful friend and apprentice, Count Melzi.
The king gave Leonardo a pension of 10,000 scudi.
One of the last paintings that Leonardo did was a picture of John the Baptist.
His model was Salai, with his beautiful long curling hair.
Leonardo died at Clos Lucé, on May 2, 1519.
King Francis had become a close friend.
Vasari says that the King held Leonardo's head in his arms as he died.
In his will, he asked that sixty beggars should follow his casket in procession.
He was buried in the Chapel of the Chateau Amboise.
Leonardo had never married and had no children of his own.
In his will, he left his money, his books and most of his paintings to Count Melzi.
Leonardo also remembered his other pupil Salai and his servant Battista di Vilussis, who each received half of Leonardo's vineyards near Milan.
Leonardo's left to his serving woman a black cloak with a fur edge.
Salai was the owner of Leonardo's most famous oil painting, the Mona Lisa.
He still owned it a few years later when he died, after fighting in a duel.
Leonardo did not paint very many pictures.
But he drew hundreds of quick sketches, plans, maps and detailed drawings.
This is the way that he recorded all the interesting things that he saw, studied and thought about.
Some of Leonardo's drawings are "studies" for paintings.
In these drawings Leonardo planned the things he was going to paint.
Some studies are plans for whole paintings.
One of these paintings is the large beautiful drawing of the Madonna and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist that is now in the National Gallery, London.
Many of the studies show "details" that Leonardo wanted to get just right.
One study shows a very detailed perspective drawing of the ruined buildings in the background of the painting of the Magi.
Other studies show hands, faces, drapery, plants, horses and babies.
The earliest drawing by Leonardo that has a date on it, is a Landscape of the Arno Valley, 1473, which shows the river, the mountains, Montelupo Castle and the farmlands beyond it in great detail.
Leonardo's notebooks
Leonardo studied things all his life.
He did not go to university to study.
He studied by looking at things in the world around him.
He looked at things to see how they were made and how they worked.
He drew the things that he saw and the discoveries that he made into his notebooks, and made notes about them.
Many of his notebooks are now in museums.
There are 13,000 pages of notes and drawings.
Many of these are scientific studies.
Leonardo's notebooks are hard to read because he wrote backwards in "mirror writing".
Some people think that perhaps he was trying to keep his work secret.
Leonardo wrote (and sometimes drew) with his left hand.
In those days pens were made from a quill (a large feather) that was cut with a pen-knife on the end.
It is hard for a left-handed person to write with a quill in the ordinary way, but quite easy to write backwards.
It is likely that Leonardo planned to publish the studies in his notebooks.
He organized many pages carefully, with one study taking up the front and back of each page.
There is a page with drawings and writing about the human heart and a page about the womb and the fetus.
One page shows drawings of the muscles of a shoulder and another page shows how an arm works.
The notebooks were not published in Leonardo's lifetime.
After he died, they were divided between different people who had known him.
They are nearly all in museums or libraries such as Windsor Castle, the Louvre, and the British Library.
The Biblioteca Ambrosiana (a library) in Milan has the twelve-volume Codex Atlanticus.
The geology of the Earth, with its mountains, valleys, rivers and rocks.
The anatomy of the human body with its skeleton, muscles, veins and internal organs.
Leonardo was given dead bodies by a hospital.
He "dissected" (cut up) thirty dead bodies and carefully drew many of the parts.
His drawings of bones and muscles were to help other artists to paint the human body properly.
The anatomy of horses, cows, dogs, and bears.
The expressions on human faces.
The flight of birds .
The weather and its phenomena.
The way that water flows.
The botany of plants.
Light, shadows, mirrors and lenses.
Perspective and the way to make things look near or far.
The geometry of solid objects.
He drew many careful pictures which were used by the mathematician Luca Pacioli in a book called De Divina Proportione.
Designs and inventions
Costumes for parades, carnivals and theatre.
These were probably for Duke Federico's court.
They include armour, and a ferocious dragon.
War machines such as an armour-plated tank, an enormous cross bow and a horrible horse-driven leg-chopper.
None of these things were ever made in Leonardo's lifetime.
Dams and canals for rivers.
A wooden bridge that could be carried flat on wagons and unfolded and put together at the river.
Flying things with wings that flapped, a helicopter, a parachute and a hang glider.
One of Leonardo's servants was injured, trying out the hang glider.
The parachute has been made and tested in modern times, and it does work.
Church (building) and castles.
It is possible that the Castle of Locarno, in the south of Switzerland was designed by Leonardo.
No other building that he designed was built.
Leonardo's studies, designs and inventions
ISBN 0-486-22573-9.
2 volumes.
A reprint of the original 1883 edition.
Silvia e Luca Guagliumi, "Leonardo e l'architettura", Silvia Editrice, Aprile 2015
Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, Design (review)
{{gutenberg | no=7785 | name=Leonardo da Vinci by Maurice Walter Brockwell'}}
Complete text & images of Richter's translation of the Notebooks
Vasari Life of Leonardo : in Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.
Web Gallery of Leonardo Paintings
Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci
Da Vinci Decoded Article from The Guardian''
The true face of Leonardo Da Vinci?
Leonardo da Vinci's Ethical Vegetarianism
Leonardo da Vinci, a biography with description of his major works, written for children; Tamsyn Taylor, 2020
1452 births
1519 deaths
Italian people
Italian mathematicians
People from Florence
Anatomists
February 27 – The Dominican Republic gains independence from Haiti.
An American dentist named Wells invents chloroform.
The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
August 6 – Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
May 22 – Mary Cassatt
June 27 – Joseph Smith, Jr, founder of Mormonismhe was raped and murderd
July 11 – Arthur Balfour becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Marie and Pierre Curie discover radium
The Real Madrid football club starts in Spain
Statue of Boudica unveiled in Westminster, London
February 4 – Charles Lindbergh, American pilot (d. 1974)
February 27 – John Steinbeck, American writer (d. 1968)
July 10 – Kurt Alder, German chemist (d. 1958)
August 8 – Paul Dirac, English physicist (d. 1984)
September 21 – Ruhollah Khomeini, revolutionary leader (d. 1989)
November 9 - Anthony Asquith, British director (d. 1968)
December 5 – Strom Thurmond, American politician (d. 2003)
December 9 – Margaret Hamilton, American actress (d. 1985)
April 30 - Swami Vivekananda - Indian social reformer (b. 1863)
December 14 – Julia Grant – former First Lady of the United States (b. 1826)
September 16 – Levi Strauss, American business person (b. 1829)
Hits songs
"The Entertainer" m. Scott Joplin
Roentgen discovers X-rays
Marconi invents the wireless telegraph
China and Japan sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki
January 5 – Michel Velleman
September 30 - Lewis Milestone
An English doctor invents a vaccination against smallpox.
January 7-Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales
July 26 - George Catlin, American painter
December 27 – Mirza Ghalib, poet of Urdu
Thomas Edison invents the light bulb.
Rutherford B. Hayes State of the Union Address.
August 8 – Emiliano Zapata
November 7– Leon Trotsky, Ukrainian revolutionary and Marxist (d. 1940)
Albert Einstein, scientist.
Samuel Goldwyn, movie producer.
Simon Rodia, creator of the Watts Towers
February 11 – Honoré Daumier, French caricaturist and painter (b. 1808)
February 23 – Albrecht Graf von Roon, Prime Minister of Prussia (b. 1803)
February 25 – Charles Peace, British criminal (executed) (b. 1832)
March 1 – Joachim Heer, Swiss politician (b. 1825)
March 30 – Thomas Couture, French painter and teacher (b. 1815)
April 30 – Sarah Josepha Hale, American writer (b. 1788)
June 1 – Napoleon Eugene, Prince Imperial, son of French Emperor Napoleon III (b. 1856)
June 27 - Sir John Lawrence, British Indian administrator (b. 1811)
August 30 – John Bell Hood, America Confederate general (b. 1831)
November 5 – James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish physicist (b. 1831)
August 11 – George Willison Adams, Ohio abolitionist (b.1799)
James Watt invents an engine driven by steam
August 15 – Napoleon
1807 (MDCCCVII) was .
Robert Fulton builds the steamship
Benz builds the first single-cylinder engine for car.
John K Starley creates the first genuine bicycle, the Rover.
John Boyd Dunlop invents the pneumatic tire.
W.S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan's The Mikado
The Times reports that "A lady well known in literary and scientific circles" has been cremated by the Cremation Society in Woking, Surrey.
She is the first person to be officially cremated in the United Kingdom.
Cholera epidemic in Spain – one of the victims is the king Alfonso XII.
Third Burmese War begins.
Clint Eastwood defeats Mad Dog Tannen.
Sitting Bull joins Buffalo Bill.
Randolph Churchill becomes a viceroy of India.
Nikola Tesla sells a number of his patents to George Westinghouse.
William Stanley, Jr. builds the first practical alternating current transformer device, the induction coil.
Local anesthetic.
First skyscraper – Home Insurance Building in Chicago, Illinois, USA (10 floors) is built.
Bicycle Playing Cards are first produced.
Grover Cleveland replaces Chester A. Arthur as President of the United States
January 8 – John Curtin, Australia's 14th Prime Minister
September 17 – George Cleveland, Canadian actor
March 31 – Charlotte Brontë, British writer
Samuel Morse invents the electric telegraph.
Michigan becomes the 26th state.
Platinum is a soft, heavy, white metal.
It is a precious metal.
It usually costs more than gold.
In chemistry, platinum is element number 78, and its atoms have an atomic weight of 195 a.m.u.. The symbol for platinum is Pt, from Spanish platina meaning "little silver".
Platinum is very malleable and ductile, which means it can be hammered into thin sheets and it can be pulled into wire.
Platinum is very stable.
Acids do not affect platinum.
I Andesite – an intermediate volcanic rock
M Anthracite – a form of hard coal
S Banded iron formation – a fine grained chemical sedimentary rock composed of iron oxide minerals
S Bauxite – the main ore of aluminium.
It is mostly aluminium oxide.
I Basalt – grey/black fine-grained rock from lava which cooled on the  surface of the Earth.
S Blue Lias – a formation of rocks, part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site.
S Breccia – a sedimentary or tectonic rock composed of fragments of other, broken rocks
S Chalk – a fine grained carbonate rock composed mainly of coccoliths
S Chert – a fine grained chemical sedimentary rock composed of silica
S Clastic rock – composed of fragments, or clasts, of pre-existing rock.
S Claystone – a sedimentary rock formed from clay
S Coal – a sedimentary rock formed from peat
S Concretion – a concretion is a rock in which a mineral cement fills the spaces between the sediment grains.
S Conglomerate – a sedimentary rock composed of large rounded fragments of other rocks
S Coquina – a sedimentary carbonate rock formed by accumulation of abundant shell fossils and fragments
I Dacite – a felsic to intermediate volcanic rock with high iron content
S Diatomite – a sedimentary rock fromed from diatom fossils
I Diorite – a coarse grained intermediate plutonic rock
S Dolomite – a carbonate rock composed of calcium magnesium carbonate: CaMg(CO3)2
I Dunite – a rock made mostly of olivine
Evaporite – a chemical sedimentary rock formed by accumulation of minerals after evaporation
S Flint – a form of chert
I Foidolite – a plutonic igneous rock composed of >90% feldspathoid minerals
I Gabbro – a coarse grained plutonic rock chemically equivalent to basalt.
Plutonic = magma cooled below surface of the Earth.
I Granite – a coarse grained plutonic rock composed of orthoclase, plagioclase and quartz
M Granulite – a high grade metamorphic rock formed from basalt; also a facies of metamorphic rocks