Yes Vinci project. Leonardo da Vinci

In the traditional view, Leonardo da Vinci is a man who alternates several professions: architect, painter, sculptor, anatomist, engineer, writer.

He was invited to Milan as an architect, to Rome as an engineer. He designed the dome of the Milan Cathedral and worked on hydraulics. Lodovico Moro ordered him a giant bronze statue, the Florentines ordered a huge painting “The Battle of Anghiari” (both were not completed, abandoned halfway). In the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, he painted the fresco “The Last Supper,” the soil of which began to flow (however, the fresco was spared another misfortune - it survived the British bombs of World War II). He was the first artist in the world to master oil painting (the first is said to be the Sicilian Antonello, who brought the recipe from Burgundy; however, Leonardo came to oil painting with his own thoughts in parallel, his technique is different from that of Antonello da Messina). Leonardo was engaged (“for himself,” as they would say today) in oil painting on boards; conducted experiments with paints, invented the sfumato technique, the technical aspects of which are unknown. They say that he took the board with the “Mona Lisa” with him everywhere - he loved to add another stroke, another light touch to what he had done. He painted a few paintings - and all the paintings are mysterious, they all require decoding. He was also a chemist, his original oil paints testify to the success of his experiments: making oil paint from a mineral is chemistry, after all. However, it should be noted that these paints, used for Florentine wall painting, failed him - they spread. His engineering inventions are confirmed in modern mechanics, that is, five hundred years later. However, during his lifetime, not one of the inventions found embodiment; however, the double helix staircase of the Chateau de Francis in Chambord can be considered the first illustration of DNA and an unprecedented staircase design in principle. Leonardo planned - and no less - to write 120 books; He didn’t write a single book, he left manuscripts and fragments. He was a good anatomist - he took part in autopsies, described internal organs, but did not become a doctor. However, he made several medical discoveries: for example, he was the first to notice the phenomenon of blood vessels narrowing due to old age, which leads to a slowdown in blood flow in the heart; called the limestone layer deposited on the walls of vessels (salt, etc.) “aging powder.” He did not become a doctor, but his punctual knowledge of the human body was useful in his drawings and paintings. He was going to build an aircraft and studied birds. But the apparatus was built (similar to his drawings) only after five hundred years; Moreover, both Tatlin and the American engineers followed his path, repeating his schemes. His work was characterized by understatement, he left things unfinished, and abandoned a task (even a completed order) easily.

Egregious cases, such as the bronze equestrian statue in Milan or the large oil painting on the theme of the adoration of the Magi, commissioned by the monastery of San Donato in Florence, provoked bad publicity. Leonardo easily left in Florence an unfinished masterpiece, a huge board, two and a half meters square on the side. Preparing a board of this size for painting is a gigantic labor in itself; the work already done is perfect and beautiful; There was very little left to bring the picture to completion; unexpectedly Leonardo left for Milan, taking with him a model of the lyre he had constructed, which he alone knew how to play. The contract for the painting was formally drawn up for two and a half years (from 1481 to 1483), Leonardo could have returned to work, but he returned to Florence after 18 years. The monks were offended. The inability to complete the work was a common reproach of Leonardo. Moving from city to city (and in fact from state to state), Leonardo left behind great projects and little that was actually accomplished and brought to completion. They say that Michelangelo reproached his old rival with these very words (Leonardo was older in years). Others believe that the scattered nature of his studies, the inability to concentrate on one subject did not allow Leonardo to succeed fully in any of his studies. Others, on the contrary, are sure that a genius is a genius in everything; the phenomenon of Leonardo began to denote interest in all phenomena of the world, and the specific occupation of the genius no longer matters.

It is difficult to agree with this position (both in its negative and positive aspects. Leonardo was not at all an eclecticist and had a very specific profession - he was a painter. The products of professional labor are obvious, they are easy to list: “La Gioconda”, “Benois Madonna”, “Madonna Litta”, “John the Baptist”, “Bacchus”, “Lady with an Ermine”, “Annunciation”, “Saint Jerome”, “Adoration of the Magi”, “St. Anne with Mary and the Christ Child”, “Last Supper”, “ Madonna in the Grotto." There are not very many paintings, but they are busy. Piet Mondrian or Maurice Vlaminck painted quantitatively more paintings than Leonardo da Vinci, but, you see, the work expended by the masters is unequal. There are artists whose legacy is quantitatively modest. And Jan Vermeer, Pieter Bruegel, and Matthias Grunewald also have few paintings.

Leonardo da Vinci did not mix professions at all, and this must be clearly stated. There was only one profession - painting; and he insisted on the advantages of painting over other pursuits. He was engaged in painting, and all side activities are preparatory work for painting work. He simply viewed painting in its ideal form - as the queen of all arts and crafts. To do quality painting, you need to be an engineer and a musician - what is not clear here?

It is no longer a revelation for us that Cezanne united two disciplines into one: painting and drawing became a single process for Cezanne (for the eighteenth century, such a combination of two principles into one was an impossible blasphemy); We understand Cezanne’s phrase “as you write, you draw” - a phrase that a representative of the Bolognese school would not be able to understand. Cézanne meant that the very process of applying color to a depicted object can become not the painting of a form, but the formation of a form, that is, drawing. Now imagine that, just as Cezanne combined the process of painting and drawing into one whole, Leonardo combined painting, sculpture, anatomy, engineering and architecture into one discipline. It is difficult to name a discipline formed from the combination of these dissimilar activities, but Leonardo da Vinci believed that the final product was painting, an oil painting.

It would not be out of place to ask: why did Leonardo gain the fame of a world genius, superior to everyone else, why are his paintings considered unsurpassed masterpieces, although at the same time masters are working with him who are hardly inferior to him in plastic or coloristic talent? Hugo van der Goes, Rogier van der Weyden, Albrecht Dürer, Sandro Botticelli, Jan van Eyck - these are all painters, undoubtedly brilliant, and their pictorial heritage, by the way, is much more extensive than that of Leonardo. And yet, the name Leonardo stands immeasurably higher than any of the listed masters. There is a secret, probably a simple and easily guessed secret; but you need to understand it.

A painting, according to Leonardo, is not a decoration of a home; he was not trying to see the picture on the wall. Things went well in Santa Maria delle Grazie, he painted a fresco; and left Florence without finishing the work. The picture is also not evidence of faith (and cannot be so, since the purpose of the picture is analysis, and scientific analysis contradicts faith). A picture is painted for oneself - in the process of painting one gets to know the world. The picture is a kind of project of a community life, even a project of an ideal state (like Plato’s), a conglomerate of human efforts.

To paraphrase Cézanne, in relation to Leonardo’s method it should be said: while you are doing engineering work, you are drawing, while you are building a building, you are drawing, while you are studying anatomy, you are drawing, while you are pouring bronze, while you are drawing drawings,
while you are writing treatises, while you are reading sermons, you are painting; you comprehend the world from different sides, and all this is summed up in drawing with paints, all together is painting.

He considered painting to be the pinnacle of all arts, the acme of human activity. Painting with oil paints (he wrote about this very clearly, there can be no double interpretation) accumulates a lot of knowledge and allows you to comprehend the world with a single glance - this is the advantage of painting over music, and over poetry, and even over philosophy. Painting in Leonardo’s view is by no means a handmaiden of philosophical discourse, not an illustration of other people’s concepts; on the contrary, painting is the ultimate expression of the sum of human knowledge. Actually, painting represents the very eidos that Neoplatonists (slightly correcting Plato’s idea) considered Logos. Painting, according to Leonardo, is the Logos visibly revealed to us.

This reasoning is all the more valuable today because in our era, when we abolish painting, replacing it with installation or video art, we do not take into account the fact that initially painting is not a narrow specialization at all, but, on the contrary, a conglomerate of skills, it is a discipline that includes several different, including installation, of course. Engineering knowledge, music, prose and architecture, philosophy and medicine are the essence of the emanation of a single Logos, an integral eidos, which is revealed to us in the form of a perfect picture. The painting “La Gioconda” does not contradict the fortifications and diving suits, but the Gioconda seems to exude the knowledge that the fortifications and diving suits produce.

The above explains the cold calm with which Leonardo approached the work of a painter. His paintings are unemotional; they radiate a kind of tension, but this is not religious delight, not romantic passion.

This is a kind of calm greatness, even, perhaps, indifferently calm. Expecting a passionate, ecstatic, sloppy brushstroke from Leonardo’s painting is as absurd as expecting Dante to stumble in triple rhyme or Plato to sacrifice the construction of the state for the sake of the poet’s glory. It is common to blame Leonardo for the fact that, while creating gentle images of Madonnas, he simultaneously created the design of fortification machines or devices for chariots (sickles for the outside of the chariot at the level of the wheels), which cut the legs of the enemy’s horses. The widespread assertion of Leonardo’s “indifferent cruelty” also calls into question the spirituality of his paintings.

Leonardo’s “cruelty” is of the same nature as Machiavelli’s “cynicism”; ideas about such are based on the insufficient information of the observer. Both of them, Leonardo and Machiavelli, are extremely rational people, cold, unemotional - that’s true.

The characters of Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli have a lot in common, which is not surprising: both Florentines lived at the same time, the world was changing rapidly before their eyes - they were looking for a foothold to avoid catastrophe. The idea of ​​a struggle for absolute power at any cost (this is how “The Prince” is often interpreted) and accusations of Machiavelli’s treachery almost always come from those people who have never looked into Machiavelli’s works and have no idea why they were written. “Discourses on the First Decade of Titus” provides a different view of government than “The Prince,” and friendship with the staunch confederate Guicciardini (an opponent of absolute power in Italy) calls into question the predilection for absolutism. Machiavelli did not glorify Cesare Borgia at all (it is customary to say that “The Prince” is the justification of the insidious Borgia), he only described the pattern of the rise of this type of power in the conditions of contemporary Italy. The fire of Savonarola (and Machiavelli observed the entire evolution: oligarchy-signoria-republic of Jesus Christ-occupation of Charles VIII) forced him to look for a design that is practical. Machiavelli's piles should be perceived in all their contradictions; that is, the way Leonardo's paintings should be perceived.

In those years, the main pain of humanists was the thought of the state - how to organize society so that democracy does not turn into tyranny? The humanists who studied antiquity had two examples: Sparta, which maintained a barracks democracy with elected kings for 800 years, and Athens, where periods of freedom and democratic laws alternated with tyranny, transferring power by inheritance, and with the rule of oligarchs. How to build a state without infringing on rights and providing the opportunity for development? The diversity of oligarchies and signories in Italy led to some variety of tyrannies (compare the 20th century with variants of totalitarian dictatorships), but a general recipe was required on how to avoid the infection corroding society. Machiavelli composed texts of praise to the cruel Romulus (he gave credit to Romulus, not Borgia) on the basis that Romulus avoided arbitrary interpretations of statehood. Florence (the birthplace of Leonardo and Machiavelli) constantly changed its structure: Botticelli compared it with the ever-transforming Venus - in his time it is necessary to say more about this picture - Leonardo painted “The Lady with an Ermine”, a picture in which the Madonna, instead of the Savior, is nursing a predator.

What is shown in the picture: a mysterious project? Construction of society? A parody of motherhood? As usual with Leonardo, everything is depicted at once: both, and the third, and even left an unpleasant prophecy. Conveying statehood through the image of an ermine is as natural as suggesting an underwater bathyscaphe - this is just the most accessible explanation. Leonardo da Vinci persistently instills in us the idea: the design of the universe is rational; its elements are interconnected. With a drawing you can express a state thought as simply as with a drawing you can declare your love. Leonardo's engineering drawings and sketches of figures are woven into a single drawing. Look at the drawings of machines made by Leonardo, and his drawings of human organs, the heart, for example, and compare these drawings with his own portraits, you will see that all the lines are made with the same movement: Leonardo does not see the difference between an engineering design, human internal and external device - this is all a single world of phenomena.

As if on purpose, in order to make it easier for posterity to analyze his method, Leonardo left the huge panel “Adoration of the Magi” (now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence) unfinished. In the picture we literally see how a complex architectural drawing grows into a swirling drawing of human figures, and the drawing, in turn, is overgrown with the flesh of the painting. This is all a single substance: drawing-drawing-painting; There is no contradiction in these elements of the universe; they flow freely into one another.

By the way, our confidence that this work is not finished is based on the opinion of the monks of San Donato, but it is by no means impossible that Leonardo, revolutionary in many aspects of painting, had a different opinion. A combination of drawing, drawing and painting, that is, a project visibly revealed to us - what could be the best embodiment of the idea of ​​the Savior who appeared in the world, whom Caspar, Balthasar and Melchior came to worship? A moving project is depicted, a growing tree (“God is a growing baobab” - as Tsvetaeva randomly determined in “New Year’s Eve”, dedicated to Rilke). And what, if not the intended project, does the famous half-smile of Mona Lisa, the pregnant Mother of God carrying Jesus, mean - she already knows what she is smiling at. A project growing out of itself is the main theme of Leonardo. Man is a microcosm, similar in its joints and organic matter to the universe; mechanics is an organic discipline, rooted in nature, and not contrary to it; By constructing, a person complicates nature and himself - a person constantly improves his own project. All this, if it does not make Leonardo an agnostic, then greatly reduces his faith. Leonardo's credo can be compared with the concept of Pico della Mirandola, but Leonardo goes much further - he does not simply place man at the center of the universe; but he even places the product of human consciousness and labor on a par with the creation of God. In fact, he thinks about the symbiosis of man and machine, in which the machine is an organic project, invented by man in exactly the same way as man himself was once created by God. The creation of creators is capable of creativity; the ability to design is endowed with the project; painting turns out to be the quintessence of design - in Leonardo’s painting technique there is no chiaroscuro because there is no isolated object that can be walked around from all sides; a person is a project unfolding into the future.

The infinity of design is best conveyed by the picture in which St. Anne holds the Virgin Mary on her lap, and she, in turn, holds the baby Jesus. This composition reproduces the principle of the “matryoshka doll” - one thing appears from the other; in essence, Leonardo depicted the literal movement of generations. But this is a project open to the future, an endless creation, an always renewed creation of a design project.

To convey the endless transition of project to project, to create a continuous design, Leonardo invented the sfumato technique.

The sfumato technique is a soft, non-contrasting style of writing, with hidden contradictions and contrasts, as if enveloping the form, as if weaving a web of color, rather than building color plans. Leonardo did not leave the technical secret of sfumato to his descendants; most likely, the method was to rub paint into the surface; This was probably possible due to the low oil content of the pigment. Leonardo himself prepared the paints and (indirectly evidenced by unsuccessful experiments with wall painting) changed the proportion of binding oils and pigment in relation to the Burgundian recipe. The paints did not stick to the wall (as happened with the “Battle of Anghiari” in Florence), but on a rough board even a low binder content should have been sufficient. Oil darkens over the years - this happened with most Burgundian paintings, this happened with absolutely all Dutch paintings of subsequent centuries; this also happened with the paintings of the Italians, who copied the Burgundian technique. Leonardo's paintings did not change their tones - this can only mean one thing: he added oil very sparingly when composing the paint, and the binder during writing was not linseed oil at all. They say that in the “Battle of Anghiari” the master used mastic (that is, mastic varnish), and mastic led to even more destructive consequences than linseed oil: the painting began to flow. It is quite possible that in his easel oil paintings he used not linseed oil, nor mastic varnish, nor cedar resin (as the Burgundians recommended - in particular, Karel van Mander writes about this), but some kind of drier, which used in other experiments. A drier (that is, a hardener for oil paint) can be a salt of cobalt, lead or manganese; These salts were used by alchemists at that time as indicators of substances. Leonardo could well have used lead salt, for example, adding it to oil paint.

Van Mander replaced the effect of the drier by recommending pouring glycerin and honey into cedar resin as plasticizers; but the result was inconclusive. So, other doctors, prescribing a medicine that treats one organ but harms another organ, stop the harmful effect with another medicine, which, in turn, also causes harm, and so on until the patient dies. But what if, by mixing medications, we record the patient’s condition and confirm the stage of his health? Leonardo mixed paints to infinity (see the treatise “On the mixing of colors with each other, which extends to infinity”) - completely in the spirit of the idea of ​​​​infinite design, and this can be achieved, so as not to produce dirt in the mixture, only if each the next mixture is fixed as an unprecedented autonomous color. That is, it is necessary to record the intermediate result in any mixture. A kind of periodic table of colors emerges. In other words, Leonardo’s palette is significantly richer than the spectrum known to us. (By the way, it should be said that Leonardo came up with a unique form of palette, which - this is an assumption, but based on knowledge of the practical use of the palette - allows paints to be placed in two levels. Most likely, the primary paints lay in the first semicircle, and the inner semicircle formed mixtures).

Leonardo did not always achieve positive results in his experiments (in the technology of wall living -
he made a mistake in writing), but he succeeded with easel painting. Generally speaking, the belief that Leonardo adopted the technique of oil painting from Burgundy (that is, through Antonello from the van Eycks?) has a shaky foundation. His oil painting is not similar to the painting of the Burgundians. Most likely, Leonardo invented the oil painting technique on his own, in parallel with Hubert and Jan van Eyck; It should be added that oil painting on canvas reigned supreme only after 1530, and before that tempera painting on boards was widely used, and in tempera (there is several evidence of this) they carefully and arbitrarily began to add oil to make the technique more flexible and plastic; the adhesive base and the oily substance did not mix well, but mixed; this was called “oil painting.” Why oil painting at all? Why did artists adopt this innovation? All professionals were seduced by the flexible line of color, which can be drawn using a stroke, like a pencil. The covering effect of the paint was replaced with transparent layers; Bellini's blue sky, across which light transparent clouds rush, cannot be painted in tempera. Mantegna, who rubbed tempera in such transparent, gossamer layers (see the portrait of the Madonna in Berlin), could not help but welcome the oil, which facilitated the work in the complex Triumphs. Leonardo obviously took a different path.

Today's restorers are against oils and varnishes in principle, assuring that the drier will perform their functions, but will not darken over time. It can be assumed that by using a drier, Leonardo achieved a high concentration of pigment in the paint and was able to work with an almost dry brush (that is, not draw a wet line, do not fill the surface with flowing paint), but maintain variability, literally rub pigment into pigment. Look closely at a chip of marble or granite - you will see myriads of crystals, each of the grains retains its color, although together they form a surface that is uniform in tone and shade. Leonardo achieved the same effect in the colorful surface. Sfumato gave his colors a stony hardness, but eliminated the inevitable clashes of tones within the same color with the wet oil method. The problem of “contact” of shades, “merging” of the shadow side of the depicted object and its light side is extremely important for the painter. How do dark colors and light colors meet within the same object? What will the border look like? Let's say a character's cheek is in the shadow, and his forehead is in the light - does the complexion change its nature in the shadow or not? The Sienese solved this issue simply - they painted the light with warm paint, and the shadow with cold, sometimes even green, contrasting the green with the pink shade of the skin (see, for example, the characteristic technique of the Siena master Lippo Memmi). The Venetians, first of all Paolo Veronese (and after him his follower Delacroix and, in turn, the followers of Delacroix), believed that the shadow contrasts with the subject. Thus, Delacroix writes in his diary that the yellow carriage casts a purple shadow. Rembrandt, the small Dutch and especially the Caravaggists make a shadow from the same color as the illuminated part of the object, but take the color lower, that is, darker, adding dark brown to the brown color. This sometimes seems like a primitively simple solution, nevertheless, in its lapidarity there is the logic of Caravaggism.

The sfumato technique generally avoids shadows; there are no shadows in Leonardo's paintings. Sfumato is absolute light. This is the direct opposite of hard light and shadow. Caravaggio or La Tour, adherents of chiaroscuro (let's leave aside Rembrandt as the author of a more complex statement), theatrically bring to light the most significant in the picture and plunge the insignificant into darkness; They denote by shadow what is evil and by light what is virtuous. For the sfumato technique, such a naive division of the world into positive and negative is impossible: sfumato accepts the whole world; Only God accepts the world this way. We know very well what La Tour considers interesting and significant; but we don’t know what exactly makes Leonardo stand out. He appreciates everything in the world. One can imagine a philosophical judgment in the style of sfumato, which does not contain “yes” or “no”, but expresses what in German is conveyed by the word jain - both yes and no at the same time. This “yes-no” does not occur at all from relativism, as one might imagine, but only because the superficial opposition of subjective predicates is unimportant for wisdom. Whether it is raining or not, whether the shoe is tight or free, the answers to these questions are insignificant in relation to the problem of the finitude of being; and Leonardo neglects the contrast of light and shadow.

This “sfumato” of judgment extends so widely for Leonardo that it blurs the line between the main definitions: Is John the Baptist a man or a woman? Is the government republican or monarchical? He deliberately complicates the judgment and avoids one-dimensionality. Even in the portrait of the lovely Mona Lisa, some today find a self-portrait of the elderly artist.

For him, painting is not an emotion; painting is an exploration of the world. But the way this research is presented to us (the final product, the solved theorem) leaves the impression of an easy, magical work. He rubbed color onto color to achieve an unprecedented shade. Five hundred years later, Cézanne would do almost the same thing, sequentially placing tiny strokes on top of each other with a flat brush. Slightly different in color saturation (blue, blue-green, green-blue, etc.), these strokes fused into each other create in Cezanne an unprecedented shade and appearance of a stone surface. Leonardo achieved the same effect at the level of pigments. In all likelihood, Leonardo believed that he helped discover a hitherto unknown color by grinding stones in a mortar; he associated different properties of human nature with those stones that were ground into pigment. The color (obtained as a result of the experiment) was hidden in nature, and Leonardo found the color. Thus, sfumato is the result of alchemical science, the overall product is a kind of philosopher's stone.

When we use the word “alchemy” in relation to Leonardo, we must make a reservation so as not to fall into mysticism, Leonardo rejected mysticism, he despised everything artificial: artificial talent, artificial art, artificial gold, “And if senseless stinginess led you to such an error, why won’t you go to the mountain mines where nature produces gold?” Leonardo believed that reason manifests itself in union with nature, experience is meaningful only when it helps to reveal the organic forces of nature and man. Alchemy for Leonardo is not a desire for the supernatural, on the contrary, for the most natural, but hitherto unidentified. The impact of stones and minerals on the human psyche is organic, there is no mysticism here; identifying patterns is the painter’s task. It is natural to take into account the power of the elements, it is natural for the mind to direct the elements.

Sfumato hides all the preparatory studies and even hides the artist’s emotions. In the 19th century, the expression “sweat in a painting must be hidden” took root among painters - this means that the viewer does not have to see the artist’s efforts; the viewer is shown the glossy surface of the work, but the study and efforts are not shown. The 20th century, on the contrary, flaunted the effort: Van Gbg did not do it on purpose, but hundreds of Van Gogh’s epigones demonstrated effort (often artificially produced, not necessary for work) very consciously: look how painfully I make a stroke, how I pile up paint, this comes from tension of thought and the intensity of passions. Very often this demonstration is deceitful: no mental and moral effort is required to pile up paint and sharp gestures. Moreover, such a work does not convey anything other than a demonstration of effort. However, in the minds of the 20th century viewer, this demonstration of effort is already associated with the titanic work of the thinker-artist; the viewer naively believes that the efforts made correspond to the scale of the statement; Of course, this is nonsense.

Leonardo's paintings look as if they were made easily, not at all with ecstatic tension, but with pleasure; and it is not clear how this was done. Leonardo (I believe, deliberately flaunting and misleading the viewer) wrote that the work of a painter is pleasant because one can indulge in it in festive clothes, to the sound of a lute, etc. This, of course, does not correspond to reality: the work of a painter is hard manual labor, and dirty work. But Leonardo teased, wanted to show a miracle: like a magician, he takes a flower out of the top hat - and the audience is perplexed: how did he put the flower there? Made masterfully, magically, how? In the case of artists of the 20th century - expressionists, dadaists, fauvists - we clearly know how exactly the painting was made - this is how they poured paint, this is how they laid out the paint layer, here the paint flowed... In most cases, Leonardo's contemporaries did not know how to hide their efforts - painful compositions van der Goes, Dürer's difficult foreshortenings practically reveal to us the method: Dürer, for example, does not hide the technical aspects of drawing foreshortening, and the stages of priming, sanding, the sequence of layers on the board - imprimatura, etc. - are widely described. The craftsmen applied the initial drawing to the board, then painted the white primer in transparent layers.

Leonardo does not give such a gift to the viewer. We do not know how the painter made his product. And this is paradoxical, but true, despite the fact that Leonardo da Vinci left us a detailed work plan - what exactly an artist needs to know, what he needs to be able to do in order to paint an oil painting. We can say that Leonardo left a detailed outline of the painter’s activities, but they did not read the concept as a guide to action, they were only surprised by the abundance of interdisciplinary points. Drawing a variety of facial expressions is understandable; examining tendons and arteries is also understandable, although less necessary; but why know the laws of hydraulics and the principle of bird flight? Five centuries later, the artist Tatlin (originally a painter) decided to create an aircraft (the so-called “Letatlin”) and, following the path of Leonardo, began to study the structure of birds and the properties of various materials, this took him away from the painting workshop (although, in fact, he directed work exactly to the main thing).

The so-called “New Time,” that is, the time of capitalism, became a time of narrow specializations, and painting became a narrow professional skill - the structure of guilds and private orders of the rich, the structure of the art market only exacerbated this situation. The artists belonged (and tried to achieve this social status) to the guild, just as in our time people of creative professions want to join creative unions: writers, artists, directors. Guilds provided benefits, but established dependence on the environment. Just as today creative people belong to PEN and other clubs and associations, taking advantage of the mutual guarantee of guild solidarity, but paying tribute to conventions, so the artists of the Middle Ages entered the Guild of St. Luke: this helped to receive orders, but the artist ended up (wittingly or unwittingly) but inevitably) depending on the views of the workshop, on the beliefs of the circle of colleagues, on the tastes of customers, on the manner of the local school. A few went the other way: to refuse a place in the guild and seek an individual destiny meant literally risking one’s life: one could be left without a means of subsistence.

Michelangelo could tell Pope Julius II that he would throw the pope off the scaffolding if he interfered with his work, but a 17th-century Dutch painter could not tell a burgher who commissioned a still life that he would not paint a curled lemon peel because it was vulgar.

Some great masters, who were men of character, refused to work in the guild's market assembly line; Thus, in the Quattrocento era, the type of wandering artist appeared (cf. knight errant, not belonging to the army). Masters like Michelangelo or Leonardo did not categorically fit into the circles; This determined Leonardo’s wanderings through cities - the artist was looking for conditions consistent with his genius. The conditions were created by the court of Lorenzo Medici, the court of Ludovico Gonzaga, the court of d'Este or Francis I, or Ludovico Moro. Leonardo managed to change several courts: apparently, he did not want his name to be identified with the position of court artist. He accepted worship, lived several lay down at the court - and left. Absolute freedom was for Leonardo the first condition of the contract with the court; the slightest non-compliance with this contract, which could make his personal will dependent on the will of the customer, led to a break. Leonardo was a great proud man, like Dante, their wanderings defined by an over-individualistic character. Leonardo easily abandoned the work unfinished if he felt that his rights were being infringed. So, I believe, he left the Florentine panel “Adoration of the Magi” as soon as he felt a semblance of dictate from the customer (the monastery of San Donato).

During Leonardo's time, the Mediterranean commercial world comes to life, and, according to Fernand Braudel, this world forms a kind of “common market”; Aragonese maritime trade expansion makes the Southern Mediterranean a kind of (let us say carefully after the French historian) “world of economics.” Simultaneously with the Aragonese (later Castilian) economic world, a powerful Hanseatic League emerged in northern Europe, uniting 50 cities. This, without exaggeration, is a new concept of Europe, a commercial, capitalist, merchant Europe, alternative to the imperial one. It is tempting to say that art falls under the laws of the common market; but to say so would not be entirely accurate. The power of the Strozzi or Fugger banking houses is great; but neither Leonardo, nor Mantegna, nor any of the significant humanists seeks the patronage of Strozzi or Fugger. Moreover, the Medici banking family - and it is to this family that Italy owes a short period of social balance and a fragile agreement that contributed to the flourishing of humanism - is actually reducing its financial and business hypostasis in order to join the circle of humanists on equal terms. Members of the Medici family (Lorenzo, first of all) are made primarily humanists - interlocutors of humanists. Lorenzo the Magnificent is not a nobleman who condescends to converse with a patronized artist, but an equal interlocutor, a humanitarian and poet who understands the superiority of spirit over matter.

In this sense, there is no market power over art in the Renaissance, or rather, the power is mutual. However, having said this, we have to carefully amend the statement: we would not know the Portinari Altarpiece, commissioned from Hugo van der Goes by the banker Tommaso Portinari (by the way, a representative of the same Medici bank in Brussels), we would not know a dozen paintings by Durer, if not for Jakob Fugger. The market is enveloping, merchants are buying paintings from Botticelli along with Lorenzo; a merchant can act as a donor of a painting in a temple, and the artist Jos van Cleve literally goes crazy (remained in history as “mad Cleve”) when he does not get the place of court painter of the Spanish crown. The artist is freed, but the free artist begins to seek the friendship of the nobleman.

Leonardo da Vinci exists outside the market, in addition to the market, parallel to the market. “A man is worth as much as he values ​​himself,” wrote Francois Rabelais, and Leonardo is a living example of this rule: he cannot be assessed. He allows himself to be read, but does not allow himself to be bought. He did not complete work on “The Adoration of the Magi,” but no one would have thought of demanding the money back: Leonardo’s time and talent are priceless; The pay is symbolic, he doesn’t work for money. Whatever the terms of Leonardo's agreement with the customer, he did not work for the customer. We know very well how much “The Night Watch” costs, we even know the history of Rembrandt’s order, but if we learn about the price paid for “La Gioconda” by Francis the First, this will not make Leonardo’s work a phenomenon of market labor. Like Van Gogh or Cezanne (they did this five hundred years later), Leonardo emerged from the power of the market and imposed his idea of ​​\u200b\u200bwhat should be on it. How the illegitimate son of a notary achieved such respect for himself from the kings is unknown; We do not know what property, besides his unyielding disposition, distinguished him among his contemporaries. How did he conquer the rulers of the earth? The universality of Leonardo’s knowledge is not exceptional: for example, the great artist Matthias Grunewald was also a hydraulic engineer (having lost his position due to sympathy for Protestants in the peasant war, the artist went to the Saxon town of Halle, where he worked as an engineer until the end of his short life). However, from the very appearance of the illegitimate son of a notary, greatness emanated; his mission, everyone felt it, was grandiose.

Most artists during Leonardo's life stuck to a certain court, not looking for change - they preferred a guaranteed salary. After the death of Lorenzo Medici, the dialogue between humanitarians and the authorities fell into disrepair - the participants in the dialogue were divided into customers and executors; The logic of the market has conquered the world of Europe. The time for chivalric ethics is over. Emperor Charles V was elevated to the throne by the money of Jakob Fugger, no one hid the bribery intrigue; Louis XI paid the English Edward compensation and an annual annuity for neutrality in the conflict with Burgundy (Louis appropriated the Burgundian lands as a result); The era of commercialization of politics and the era of market relations in art has arrived.

The wandering artist, perhaps the only type of human activity that now resembled knight errantry, became a unique figure for society. Today, looking at the life of the knight errant Leonardo, we can say that with his unyielding pride he created a precedent that allowed Van Gogh or Gauguin to follow the same path. Wandering from city to city, Van Gogh actually repeated the strategy of Leonardo da Vinci, not wanting (in the case of Van Gogh and not being able) to join the market process of making and selling art objects.

They (Leonardo and Van Gogh) had a predecessor who can safely be placed third on this list - we are talking about Dante Alighieri.

“And if there is no path of honor leading to Florence, then I will never return to Florence,” said Dante in exile, and these words were probably repeated to himself dozens of times by Leonardo da Vinci, leaving the once hospitable court to go to new journey. The powerful, unquestioning individualism that permeated Dante’s Comedy, which made Dante a witness and analyst of the construction of the entire universe, this same individualism fueled the creativity and painting of Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo did not and could not have like-minded people. The greatest Florentine, Dite Alighieri, Leonardo's predecessor in solitude, formulated his social status in this way;

“You will become your own party,” says Dante in his “Comedy,” putting this credo into the mouth of his ancestor Cacciaguida, whom he meets in Paradise.

In the 17th canto of “Paradise”, Dante conducts a conversation with the crusader Cacciaguida, who predicts the future of the poet and characterizes his deeds. “You will become your own party,” Cacciaguida says exactly what Dante himself managed to decide about himself, in connection with the party struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. He was a white Guelph formally, but, in the end, this partisanship did not suit him: “The Guelphs also go along the disastrous road”; Dante was left to himself, and as centuries passed, Italy learned from him alone. This is exactly what Leonardo did, retaining his unique (even at that time) autonomy.

We cannot name his students; to be a student of Leonardo - just like to be a student of Dante - means to become an infinitely free person; do not depend on the place, do not depend on the circle and school; do not depend on the market and customers; to lead his own life according to his convictions, but who could afford this luxury?

Leonardo da Vinci did not leave a portrait of his beloved, most likely he did not have one; He didn't have a family either. The master's loneliness gave rise to gossip and suspicions of homosexual predilections. However, no matter what Leonardo’s passions were, Leonardo had no time for carnal pleasures or a taste for carnal pleasures. His nomadic lifestyle made family life impossible; so Daite had to leave Gemma and the children, going into exile; so Van Gogh did not have a family, and Michelangelo did not have a family.

The lifestyle of a knight errant, unfortunately, is not conducive to family life.

The role of the family was played by paintings, which the master did not part with - he carried them with him in his luggage, constantly improving them. More precisely, to put it this way: since painting is an endless project open to the future, since the painter’s occupation is endless design, it is logical to continue to improve the image endlessly. Design cannot be stopped.

In this sense, Leonard’s image of John the Baptist, an effeminate handsome man who seems to lure the viewer into the project of Christianity, is extremely important. The evil face, almost the face of the tempter, does not promise anything good in the future, and yet it will not be possible to evade Christianity. Leonardo depicts the inevitability of temptation by Christianity; we have already gone down this path.

The important thing is that in the world created by Leonardo da Vinci, in a world that knows no shadows and is permeated with eternal light, every project is valuable. In the dispute between Oxford and the Sorbonne, in the dispute between nominalists and realists (that is, in the opposition of fact and general design), Leonardo occupied a very special position - he decisively affirmed every fact of existence as a project of the whole: be it an aircraft, a bathyscaphe, a drawing of a human heart, a portrait of a Madonna, the adoption of Christian doctrine, or the design of a palace staircase - any of these noumena is a phenomenal project of an integral being. There are no service disciplines, but everything is combined into painting; there are no shadows, but everything merges into an evenly shining light; there is no death - there is a transition to another, no less significant state of natural life.

Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci is a man of Renaissance art, sculptor, inventor, painter, philosopher, writer, scientist, polymath (universal person).

The future genius was born as a result of a love affair between the noble Piero da Vinci and the girl Katerina (Katarina). According to the social norms of that time, the marriage of these people was impossible due to the low origin of Leonardo’s mother. After the birth of her first child, she was married to a potter, with whom Katerina lived the rest of her life. It is known that she gave birth to four daughters and a son from her husband.

Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci

The first-born Piero da Vinci lived with his mother for three years. Leonardo's father, immediately after his birth, married a rich representative of a noble family, but his legal wife was never able to give him an heir. Three years after the marriage, Pierrot took his son to him and began raising him. Leonardo's stepmother died 10 years later while trying to give birth to an heir. Pierrot remarried, but quickly became a widower again. In total, Leonardo had four stepmothers, as well as 12 paternal half-siblings.

Creativity and inventions of da Vinci

The parent apprenticed Leonardo to the Tuscan master Andrea Verrocchio. During his studies with his mentor, son Pierrot learned not only the art of painting and sculpture. Young Leonardo studied the humanities and engineering, leather craftsmanship, and the basics of working with metal and chemicals. All this knowledge was useful to Da Vinci in life.

Leonardo received confirmation of his qualifications as a master at the age of twenty, after which he continued to work under the supervision of Verrocchio. The young artist was involved in minor work on his teacher’s paintings, for example, he painted background landscapes and clothes of minor characters. Leonardo only got his own workshop in 1476.

In 1482, da Vinci was sent by his patron Lorenzo de' Medici to Milan. During this period, the artist worked on two paintings, which were never completed. In Milan, Duke Lodovico Sforza enrolled Leonardo in the court staff as an engineer. The high-ranking person was interested in defensive devices and devices for entertaining the courtyard. Da Vinci had the opportunity to develop his talent as an architect and his abilities as a mechanic. His inventions turned out to be an order of magnitude better than those proposed by his contemporaries.

The engineer stayed in Milan under Duke Sforza for about seventeen years. During this time, Leonardo painted the paintings “Madonna in the Grotto” and “Lady with an Ermine”, created his most famous drawing “The Vitruvian Man”, made a clay model of the equestrian monument of Francesco Sforza, painted the wall of the refectory of the Dominican monastery with the composition “The Last Supper”, made a number of anatomical sketches and drawings of devices.

Leonardo's engineering talent also came in handy after his return to Florence in 1499. He entered the service of Duke Cesare Borgia, who relied on Da Vinci's ability to create military mechanisms. The engineer worked in Florence for about seven years, after which he returned to Milan. By that time, he had already completed work on his most famous painting, which is now kept in the Louvre Museum.

The master's second Milanese period lasted six years, after which he left for Rome. In 1516, Leonardo went to France, where he spent his last years. On the journey, the master took with him Francesco Melzi, a student and main heir of da Vinci’s artistic style.

Despite the fact that Leonardo spent only four years in Rome, it is in this city that there is a museum named after him. In three halls of the institution you can get acquainted with devices built according to Leonardo’s drawings, examine copies of paintings, photos of diaries and manuscripts.

The Italian devoted most of his life to engineering and architectural projects. His inventions were both military and peaceful in nature. Leonardo is known as the developer of prototypes of a tank, an aircraft, a self-propelled carriage, a searchlight, a catapult, a bicycle, a parachute, a mobile bridge, and a machine gun. Some of the inventor's drawings still remain a mystery to researchers.

In 2009, the Discovery TV channel aired the series of films “Da Vinci Apparatus.” Each of the ten episodes of the documentary series was devoted to the construction and testing of mechanisms based on Leonardo's original drawings. The film's technicians tried to recreate the inventions of the Italian genius using materials from his era.

Personal life

The master's personal life was kept in the strictest confidence. Leonardo used a code for entries in his diaries, but even after deciphering, researchers received little reliable information. There is a version that the reason for secrecy was da Vinci’s unconventional orientation.

The theory that the artist loved men was based on researchers’ guesses based on indirect facts. At a young age, the artist was involved in a case of sodomy, but it is not known for certain in what capacity. After this incident, the master became very secretive and stingy with comments about his personal life.

Leonardo's possible lovers include some of his students, the most famous of whom is Salai. The young man was endowed with an effeminate appearance and became a model for several paintings by da Vinci. John the Baptist is one of Leonardo's surviving works for which Szalai sat.

There is a version that the “Mona Lisa” was also painted from this sitter, dressed in a woman’s dress. It should be noted that there is some physical similarity between the people depicted in the paintings “Mona Lisa” and “John the Baptist”. The fact remains that da Vinci bequeathed his artistic masterpiece to Salai.

Historians also include Francesco Melzi among Leonardo's possible lovers.

There is another version of the secret of the Italian’s personal life. It is believed that Leonardo had a romantic relationship with Cecilia Gallerani, who is supposedly depicted in the portrait “Lady with an Ermine”. This woman was the favorite of the Duke of Milan, the owner of a literary salon, and a patron of the arts. She introduced the young artist to the circle of Milanese bohemia.

Among Da Vinci's notes was found a draft of a letter addressed to Cecilia, which began with the words: “My beloved goddess...”. Researchers suggest that the portrait “Lady with an Ermine” was painted with clear signs of unspent feelings for the woman depicted in it.

Some researchers believe that the great Italian did not know carnal love at all. He was not attracted to men or women in a physical sense. In the context of this theory, it is assumed that Leonardo led the life of a monk who did not give birth to descendants, but left a great legacy.

Death and grave

Modern researchers have concluded that the probable cause of the artist’s death was a stroke. Da Vinci died at the age of 67 in 1519. Thanks to the memoirs of his contemporaries, it is known that by that time the artist was already suffering from partial paralysis. Leonardo could not move his right hand, as researchers believe, due to a stroke suffered in 1517.

Despite the paralysis, the master continued his active creative life, resorting to the help of his student Francesco Melzi. Da Vinci's health deteriorated, and by the end of 1519 it was already difficult for him to walk without assistance. This evidence is consistent with the theoretical diagnosis. Scientists believe that a repeated attack of cerebrovascular accident in 1519 ended the life of the famous Italian.

At the time of his death, the master was in the castle of Clos-Lucé near the city of Amboise, where he lived for the last three years of his life. In accordance with Leonardo's will, his body was buried in the gallery of the Church of Saint-Florentin.

Unfortunately, the master's grave was destroyed during the Huguenot wars. The church in which the Italian was buried was looted, after which it fell into severe neglect and was demolished by the new owner of the Amboise castle, Roger Ducos, in 1807.

After the destruction of the Saint-Florentin chapel, the remains from many burials over the years were mixed and buried in the garden. Since the mid-nineteenth century, researchers have made several attempts to identify the bones of Leonardo da Vinci. Innovators in this matter were guided by the lifetime description of the master and selected the most suitable fragments from the found remains. They were studied for some time. The work was led by archaeologist Arsen Housse. He also found fragments of a tombstone, presumably from da Vinci's grave, and a skeleton in which some fragments were missing. These bones were reburied in the reconstructed artist's tomb in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert on the grounds of the Castle of Amboise.

In 2010, a team of researchers led by Silvano Vinceti was going to exhume the remains of the Renaissance master. It was planned to identify the skeleton using genetic material taken from the burials of Leonardo's paternal relatives. Italian researchers were unable to obtain permission from the castle owners to carry out the necessary work.

On the site where the Church of Saint-Florentin used to be located, at the beginning of the last century a granite monument was erected, marking the four hundredth anniversary of the death of the famous Italian. The engineer's reconstructed grave and stone monument with his bust are among the most popular attractions in Amboise.

The secrets of da Vinci's paintings

Leonardo's work has occupied the minds of art critics, religious researchers, historians and ordinary people for more than four hundred years. The works of the Italian artist have become an inspiration for people of science and creativity. There are many theories that reveal the secrets of da Vinci's paintings. The most famous of them says that when writing his masterpieces, Leonardo used a special graphic code.

Using a device of several mirrors, researchers were able to find out that the secret of the looks of the heroes from the paintings “Mona Lisa” and “John the Baptist” lies in the fact that they are looking at a creature in a mask, reminiscent of an alien. The secret code in Leonardo's notes was also deciphered using an ordinary mirror.

Hoaxes surrounding the work of the Italian genius led to the emergence of a number of works of art, the author of which was the writer. His novels became bestsellers. In 2006, the film “The Da Vinci Code” was released, based on Brown’s work of the same name. The film was met with a wave of criticism from religious organizations, but set box office records in its first month of release.

Lost and unfinished works

Not all of the master’s works have survived to this day. The works that have not survived include: a shield with a painting in the form of the head of Medusa, a sculpture of a horse for the Duke of Milan, a portrait of the Madonna with a spindle, the painting “Leda and the Swan” and the fresco “The Battle of Anghiari”.

Modern researchers know about some of the master’s paintings thanks to surviving copies and memoirs of da Vinci’s contemporaries. For example, the fate of the original work “Leda and the Swan” is still unknown. Historians believe that the painting may have been destroyed in the mid-seventeenth century on the orders of the Marquise de Maintenon, wife of Louis XIV. Sketches made by Leonardo's hand and several copies of the canvas made by different artists have survived to this day.

The painting showed a young naked woman in the arms of a swan, with babies hatched from huge eggs playing at her feet. When creating this masterpiece, the artist was inspired by a famous mythical plot. It is interesting that the painting based on the story of Leda’s copulation with Zeus, who took the form of a swan, was painted not only by da Vinci.

Leonardo's lifetime rival also painted a painting dedicated to this ancient myth. Buonarotti's painting suffered the same fate as da Vinci's work. Paintings by Leonardo and Michelangelo simultaneously disappeared from the collection of the French royal house.

Among the unfinished works of the brilliant Italian, the painting “Adoration of the Magi” stands out. The canvas was commissioned by the Augustinian monks in 1841, but remained unfinished due to the master’s departure to Milan. The customers found another artist, and Leonardo saw no point in continuing to work on the painting.

Researchers believe that the composition of the canvas has no analogues in Italian painting. The painting depicts Mary with the newborn Jesus and the Magi, and behind the pilgrims are riders on horses and the ruins of a pagan temple. There is an assumption that Leonardo depicted himself at the age of 29 among the men who came to the son of God.

• In 2009, researcher of religious mysteries Lynn Picknett published the book “Leonardo da Vinci and the Brotherhood of Zion,” naming the famous Italian one of the masters of a secret religious order.
• It is believed that da Vinci was a vegetarian. He wore clothes made of linen, neglecting outfits made of leather and natural silk.
• A group of researchers plans to isolate Leonardo's DNA from the master's surviving personal belongings. Historians also claim to be close to finding da Vinci's maternal relatives.
• The Renaissance was the time when noble women in Italy were addressed with the words “my lady”, in Italian - “ma donna”. In colloquial speech the expression was shortened to "monna". This means that the title of the painting “Mona Lisa” can be literally translated as “Lady Lisa”.

• Rafael Santi called da Vinci his teacher. He visited Leonardo's studio in Florence and tried to adopt some features of his artistic style. Raphael Santi also called Michelangelo Buonarroti his teacher. The three artists mentioned are considered the main geniuses of the Renaissance.
• Australian enthusiasts have created the largest traveling exhibition of the great architect's inventions. The exhibition was developed with the participation of the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in Italy. The exhibition has already visited six continents. During its operation, five million visitors were able to see and touch the works of the most famous engineer of the Renaissance.

Not impressed? Well, the bearing may not be the coolest thing an inventor can do, but a lot of modern technology works with the help of bearings. Ball bearings allow drive shafts to rotate, push goods in a store or factory, and are the basis of almost any moving mechanism. Smooth balls placed between two moving surfaces virtually eliminate friction. For the first time, the idea, as many believe, was born during the Roman Empire, but historians believe that it was in da Vinci’s notebooks that the first sketches of the bearing appeared. Many of the devices invented by the genius would not work without bearings. But as with many of the inventor's concepts, the bearing had to be reinvented by someone else.

The distance from which a body falls depends on two factors: the force of gravity, which pulls it down, and the resistance of the atmosphere in which it falls. In the absence of an atmosphere, a falling body will simply accelerate to tremendous speed until it hits the surface, but the air slows down the fall until the body reaches the so-called terminal velocity. Different objects have different maximum speeds. For a person falling in the Earth's atmosphere - a parachutist, for example - this speed is approximately 193.1 km/h. Slowly, right? Let it be so, but this is enough for a person falling from an airplane to turn into a cake after hitting the surface of the earth. Only a parachute can save him.

Da Vinci, fascinated by the idea of ​​a flying man, conceived his parachute as a means of drifting through the air. Its pyramidal structure was draped with fabric. As da Vinci wrote in his notes, such a device would allow a person to “fall from any height without any injury or damage.” The twenty-first century naturalists who implemented da Vinci's idea recognized that it worked exactly as he predicted.

Da Vinci was inspired by birds. He watched them, drew them and thought about creating his own flying machines. One of the results of this hobby was the ornithopter, a device invented by da Vinci that could theoretically lift a person into the air like a bird. While a da Vinci parachute would allow a man to jump off a cliff and stay alive, an ornithopter would allow him to float in the air above the ground.

On paper, an ornithopter looks more like a bird (or bat) than modern aircraft. Its wings will start working after the pilot turns the handle. This invention demonstrates da Vinci's deep understanding of aerodynamics. Modern attempts to reproduce the ornithopter have shown that it could indeed fly - if it were lifted into the air. Building an aircraft that uses weak human muscles would be more difficult.

The parachute and ornithopter were only two of the flying machines described by da Vinci in his notebooks. Others included a glider and a helicopter-like aircraft, which we may talk about later.

The da Vinci machine gun or "33-barrel organ" was not a machine gun in the modern sense. He could not quickly fire bullets from one barrel. But it could fire volleys at short intervals, and if built, it would effectively mow down the advancing infantry.

The mechanism of this machine gun is simple. Da Vinci proposed assembling 11 muskets on a rectangular board, and then folding three such boards into a triangle. By placing a shaft in the middle, the whole thing could be rotated so that one set of 11 guns would fire while the other two cooled down and reloaded. After this, the entire mechanism turned over and fired another salvo.

And although da Vinci constantly noted in his notebooks that he hated war and cursed killing machines, he needed money, and he could easily convince wealthy patrons that such machines would help them defeat their enemies. Perhaps it was for the best that none of the killing machines conceived by da Vinci were built.

While living in Venice in the late 15th century, da Vinci developed the idea to repel invading ships. It was enough to send men to the bottom of the harbor in diving suits, and there they would simply open the bottoms of ships like tin cans. You may be underwhelmed by this idea because its implementation currently seems quite simple. But in Da Vinci's time this was unheard of. Da Vinci's divers could breathe using an underwater bell filled with air and wore masks with glass holes through which they could see underwater. In another version of the concept, divers could breathe using wine bottles filled with air. In both cases, the men would carry bottles with them to urinate in, so they could stay underwater for a very long time. Da Vinci's plan was not only feasible - it was practical!

These diving suits were actually created, but the invaders they were intended to be used against were successfully defeated by the Venetian fleet before underwater sabotage was needed.

Armored tank

While working for the Duke of Milan, Lodovico Sforza, da Vinci proposed what would become his crowning achievement in the field of military vehicles: the armored tank. Assisted by eight strong men, the armored tank looked like a turtle, bristling with 36 guns on all sides. It was equipped with a system of gears that formed a sequence. Eight people were protected from battle by the outer shell, so they could deliver such a “hedgehog” on foot right into the thick of the battle without being wounded. A weapon firing in all directions from an armored tank could be disastrous for an enemy squad.

The diagram of the armored tank in Da Vinci's notes contains a funny flaw: the wheels for forward movement turned in the opposite direction from the rear wheels. Built this way, the tank would not be able to move. Da Vinci was too smart to make such an unfortunate mistake, so historians have given several reasons why the inventor made such a mistake deliberately. Perhaps he really didn't want this car to be built. Another option is that he was afraid that the scheme would fall into the clutches of enemies, so he made a mistake to make sure that no one else could build the tank except him.

Self-propelled trolley

Working model.

Da Vinci's self-propelled cart is being promoted as the first automobile in history. Moreover, since it did not have a driver, it can also be considered the first robotic vehicle in history.

Da Vinci's drawings did not fully reveal the internal mechanism, so modern engineers had to guess what made the cart move forward. The best guess was a spring mechanism like the one used in watches. The springs were hidden in drum-shaped housings and could be wound by hand. And while the spring unwinds, the cart moves forward like a wind-up toy. The steering wheel could be programmed using a series of blocks in the gear chain, although the fact that the cart could only turn to the right would have significantly limited its usefulness.

Leonardo apparently considered his cart to be something of a toy, but we can be sure that if it had been built, more useful improvements would soon have followed.

Cities of the future

Leonardo da Vinci Bridge.

When Leonardo lived in Milan around 1400, the Black Plague was raging across Europe. Cities suffered far more than the countryside, and da Vinci theorized that there was something special about cities that made them vulnerable to the disease. This idea is surprisingly relatable, considering that germ theory was only developed in the early 20th century. Da Vinci set out to develop his own plan: a city, originally designed and created from scratch, that would be sanitary and habitable.

The result was a triumph of urban planning that was never built. Da Vinci's “ideal city” was divided into several levels, each of which had minimal unsanitary conditions, and a network of canals facilitated the rapid removal of waste. Water was to be supplied to the buildings through a hydraulic system, which served as the prototype of the modern one. The resources needed to create such a city were beyond the means at Da Vinci's disposal, and he was unable to find a philanthropist willing to shell out his money to build such a city.

Air propeller

Da Vinci's propeller is probably the coolest project that was found in his notebooks. It would operate on the principle of a modern helicopter. The flying machine looked like a huge pinwheel. The helicopter's "blades" were made of flax. If spun fast enough, they could create thrust, the aerodynamic phenomenon that allows planes and helicopters to fly. The air would create pressure under each of the blades, thereby lifting the flying car into the sky.

At least that was the idea. Could such a propeller fly? Hardly. But it would be cool.

Robot Knight

Leonardo da Vinci carefully studied human anatomy.

If the da Vinci self-propelled cart was the first working design for robotic transport, the robot knight could be the first humanoid robot, C-3PO of the 15th century. Da Vinci carefully studied the anatomy of the human body and spent hours dissecting corpses to find out how it worked. He realized that muscles move bones. After this, he decided that the same principle could form the basis of a machine. Unlike most of da Vinci's inventions, Leonardo appears to have actually built a robot knight, but it was used primarily as entertainment at the parties of the genius's generous patron, Lodovico Sforza. Of course, that robot was much different from .

Da Vinci's robot has not survived, and no one knows exactly what he was capable of. But apparently, he walked, sat and even worked with his jaws. It used a system of pulleys and gears. In 2002, robotics expert Mark Rosheim took da Vinci's workbooks to build a working model of the 15th century robot. As a result, Rosheim borrowed some ideas to create planetary reconnaissance robots, which.

As you can see, after half a century of space exploration, Leonardo da Vinci's projects finally went into outer space.

“Just as a well-spent day gives a peaceful sleep, so a well-lived life gives a peaceful death.”

Leonardo da Vinci(Italian Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, April 15, 1452, the village of Anchiano, near the town of Vinci, near Florence) - Painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, scientist - all this is Leonardo da Vinci. Wherever such a person turns, his every action is so divine that, leaving behind himself all other people, he reveals himself to be something given to us by God, and not acquired by human art. Leonardo da Vinci. Great, mysterious, attractive. So distant and so modern. Like a rainbow, the master’s fate is bright, mosaic, and colorful. His life is full of wanderings, meetings with amazing people and events. How much has been written about him, how much has been published, but it will never be enough.

The mystery of Leonardo begins with his birth, in 1452 on April 15 in a town west of Florence. He was the illegitimate son of a woman about whom almost nothing is known. We don’t know her last name, age, appearance, we don’t know whether she was smart or stupid, whether she studied anything or not. Biographers call her a young peasant woman. Let it be so. Much more is known about Leonardo's father, Piero da Vinci, but not enough. He was a notary and came from a family that had settled in Vinci at least in the 13th century. Leonardo was brought up in his father's house. His education was obviously the same as that of any boy from a good family living in a small town: reading, writing, beginnings of mathematics, Latin. His handwriting is amazing, He writes from right to left, the letters are reversed so that the text is easier to read with the help of a mirror. In later years, he was interested in botany, geology, observing the flight of birds, the play of sunlight and shadow, and the movement of water. All this testifies to his curiosity and also to the fact that in his youth he spent a lot of time in the fresh air, walking around the outskirts of the town. These surroundings, which have changed little over the past five hundred years, are now almost the most picturesque in Italy. The father noticed and, taking into account the high flight of his son’s talent in art, one fine day selected several of his drawings, took them to Andrea Verrocchio, who was his great friend, and urgently asked him to say whether Leonardo, having taken up drawing, would achieve any success . Struck by the enormous potential that he saw in the drawings of the novice Leonardo, Andrea supported Ser Piero in his decision to devote him to this work and immediately agreed with him that Leonardo would enter his workshop, which Leonardo did more than willingly and began to practice not in just one area, but in all those areas where the drawing is included.

Early period of creativity. Leonardo's first dated work (1473, Uffizi) is a small sketch of a river valley visible from a gorge; on one side there is a castle, on the other there is a wooded hillside. This sketch, made with quick strokes of the pen, testifies to the artist’s constant interest in atmospheric phenomena, about which he later wrote extensively in his notes. Landscape depicted from a high vantage point overlooking the floodplain was a common device in Florentine art in the 1460s (although it always served only as a background to the paintings). The silver pencil drawing of an ancient warrior in profile demonstrates Leonardo's full maturity as a draftsman; it skillfully combines weak, flaccid and tense, elastic lines and attention to surfaces gradually modeled by light and shadow, creating a living, vibrant image.

Leonardo da Vinci was not only a great painter, sculptor and architect, but also a brilliant scientist who studied mathematics, mechanics, physics, astronomy, geology, botany, anatomy and physiology of humans and animals, consistently pursuing the principle of experimental research. His manuscripts contain drawings of flying machines, a parachute and a helicopter, new designs and screw-cutting machines, printing, woodworking and other machines, accurate anatomical drawings, thoughts related to mathematics, optics, cosmology (the idea of ​​the physical homogeneity of the universe) and other sciences.

By 1480 Leonardo was already receiving large orders, but in 1482 he moved to Milan. In a letter to the ruler of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, he introduced himself as an engineer and military expert, as well as an artist. The years spent in Milan were filled with a variety of activities. Leonardo painted several paintings and a famous fresco last supper, which reached us in a dilapidated state. He painted this composition on the wall of the refectory of the Milan monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Striving for the greatest colorful expressiveness in mural painting, he made unsuccessful experiments with paints and primers, which caused its rapid damage. And then crude restorations and Bonaparte’s soldiers completed the job. After the occupation of Milan by the French in 1796. The refectory was turned into a stable, the fumes of horse manure covered the painting with thick mold, and the soldiers entering the stable amused themselves by throwing bricks at the heads of Leonard’s figures. Fate turned out to be cruel to many of the great master’s creations. And yet, how much time, how much inspired art and how much fiery love Leonardo invested in the creation of this masterpiece. But, despite this, even in its dilapidated state, “The Last Supper” makes an indelible impression. On the wall, as if overcoming it and taking the viewer into a world of harmony and majestic visions, the ancient gospel drama of betrayed trust unfolds. And this drama finds its resolution in a general impulse directed towards the main character - a husband with a sorrowful face who accepts what is happening as inevitable. Christ just told his disciples, “One of you will betray me.” The traitor sits with others; the old masters depicted Judas sitting separately, but Leonardo revealed his gloomy isolation much more convincingly, shrouding his features in shadow. Christ is submissive to his fate, filled with the consciousness of the sacrifice of his feat. His bowed head with downcast eyes and the gesture of his hands are infinitely beautiful and majestic. A lovely landscape opens through the window behind his figure. Christ is the center of the entire composition, of all the whirlpool of passions that rage around. His sadness and calmness seem to be eternal, natural - and this is the deep meaning of the drama shown.

The undated painting of the Annunciation (mid-1470s, Uffizi) was attributed to Leonardo only in the 19th century; perhaps it would be more correct to consider it as the result of a collaboration between Leonardo and Verrocchio. There are several weak points in it, for example, the perspective reduction of the building on the left is too sharp or the scale relationship between the figure of the Mother of God and the music stand is poorly developed in perspective. However, in other respects, especially in the subtle and soft modeling, as well as in the interpretation of the foggy landscape with a mountain vaguely looming in the background, the painting belongs to the hand of Leonardo; this can be inferred from a study of his later works. The question of whether the compositional idea belongs to him remains open.

In Milan, Leonardo began to take notes; Around 1490 he focused on two disciplines: architecture and anatomy. He sketched several versions of the design of a central-domed temple (an equal-pointed cross, the central part of which is covered by a dome) - a type of architectural structure that he had previously recommended Alberti for the reason that it reflects one of the ancient types of temples and is based on the most perfect shape - a circle. Leonardo drew a plan and perspective views of the entire structure, which outlined the distribution of masses and the configuration of the internal space. Around this time, he obtained the skull and made a cross-section, opening the sinuses of the skull for the first time. The notes around the drawings indicate that he was primarily interested in the nature and structure of the brain. Of course, these drawings were intended for purely research purposes, but they are striking in their beauty and similarity to sketches of architectural projects in that both of them depict partitions separating parts of the internal space. In addition to all this, he did not spare his time, even to the point that he drew ligatures from ropes in such a way that it was possible to trace from one end to the other their entire interweaving, which finally filled a whole circle. One of these drawings, very complex and very beautiful, can be seen in the engraving, and in the middle of it are the following words: Leonardus Vinci Academia.

He was not only a genius in art, but also very pleasant in communication, which attracted the souls of people to him. Having, one might say, nothing and working little, he always kept servants and horses, which he loved very much in preference to all other animals, proving this by the fact that often, passing through those places where birds were traded, he took them out with his own hands. cages and, having paid the seller the price he demanded, released them into the wild, returning them their lost freedom. For which nature decided to favor him in that, wherever he turned his thoughts, his mind and his daring, he showed so much divinity in his creations that no one could ever equal him in the ability to bring to perfection the spontaneity characteristic of him, liveliness, kindness, attractiveness and charm.

Mature period of creativity. He brought his first order in 1483, it was the production of part of the altar image for the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception - Madonna in the Grotto (Louvre; the attribution of Leonardo's brush to a later version from the London National Gallery is disputed). A kneeling Mary looks at the Christ Child and baby John the Baptist, while an angel pointing at John looks at the viewer. The figures are arranged in a triangle in the foreground. It seems that the figures are separated from the viewer by a slight haze, the so-called sfumato (blurred and indistinct contours, soft shadow), which from now on becomes a characteristic feature of Leonardo’s painting. Behind them, in the semi-darkness of the cave, stalactites and stalagmites and slowly flowing waters shrouded in fog are visible. The landscape seems fantastic, but we should remember Leonardo's statement that painting is a science. As can be seen from the drawings contemporaneous with the painting, it was based on careful observations of geological phenomena. This also applies to the depiction of plants: you can not only identify them with a certain species, but also see that Leonardo knew about the property of plants to turn towards the sun.

Leonardo's activities in the first decade of the 16th century. was as varied as in other periods of his life. At this time the painting was created Madonna and Child and St. Anna, and around 1504 Leonardo began work on his famous painting Mona Lisa, a portrait of the wife of a Florentine merchant. This portrait is a further development of the type that appeared earlier in Leonardo: the model is depicted from the waist up, in a slight turn, the face is turned towards the viewer, folded hands limit the composition from below and are as beautiful as the slight smile on her face and the primeval rocky landscape in the foggy distance. Gioconda is known as an image of a mysterious, even femme fatale, but this interpretation belongs to the 19th century. It is more likely that for Leonardo this painting was the most complex and successful exercise in the use of sfumato, and the background of the painting is the result of his research in the field of geology. The Mona Lisa was created at a time when Leonardo was so absorbed in studying the structure of the female body, anatomy and problems associated with childbirth that it was almost impossible to separate his artistic and scientific interests. During these years, he sketched a human embryo in the uterus and created the last of several versions of Leda's painting on the plot of the ancient myth about the birth of Castor and Pollux from the union of the mortal girl Leda and Zeus, who took the form of a swan. Leonardo studied comparative anatomy and was interested in analogies between all organic forms. Leonardo invented the principle of scattering (or sfumato). The objects on his canvases have no clear boundaries: everything, like in life, is blurry, penetrates one into another, which means it breathes, lives, awakens imagination. The Italian advised practicing such distraction by looking at stains on the walls, ashes, clouds or dirt caused by dampness. He specially fumigate the room where he worked with smoke in order to look for images in clubs. Thanks to the sfumato effect, the flickering smile of Gioconda appeared, when, depending on the focus of the view, it seems to the viewer that the heroine of the picture is either smiling tenderly or grinning predatorily. The second miracle of the Mona Lisa is that it is “alive.” Over the centuries, her smile changes, the corners of her lips rise higher. In the same way, the Master mixed the knowledge of different sciences, so his inventions find more and more applications over time. From the treatise on light and shadow come the beginnings of the sciences of penetrating force, oscillatory motion, and wave propagation. All of his 120 books have been scattered (sfumato) throughout the world and are gradually being revealed to humanity.

Leonardo was never in a hurry to finish a work, because incompleteness is an essential quality of life. Finishing means killing! The slowness of the creator was the talk of the town. He could make two or three strokes and leave the city for many days, for example, to improve the valleys of Lombardy or create an apparatus for walking on water. Almost every one of his significant works is unfinished. Many were damaged by water, fire, barbaric treatment, but the artist did not correct them. The Master had a special composition, with the help of which he seemed to be specially creating “windows of incompleteness” in the finished painting. Apparently, in this way he left a place where life itself could intervene and correct something.

Finally reached old age; Having been ill for many months and, feeling the approach of death, he began to diligently study everything that related to religion, the true and holy Christian faith. When the king arrived, who was in the habit of often and graciously visiting him, Leonardo, out of respect for the king, sat up straight on his bed and told him about his illness and its progress. At the same time, he proved how sinful he was before God and before people by the fact that he did not work in art as it should be. Then he had a fit, a harbinger of death, during which the king, rising from his seat, held his head in order to ease his suffering and show his favor. His most divine soul, realizing that it could not receive a greater honor, flew away in the arms of this king - in the seventy-fifth year of his life.

Leonardo died in Amboise on May 2, 1519; His paintings by this time were scattered mainly in private collections, and his notes lay in various collections almost in complete oblivion for several more centuries.

The loss of Leonardo beyond measure saddened everyone who knew him, for never was there a man who brought so much honor to the art of painting. This is a master who truly lived his entire life with great benefit for humanity.

Yes, all of his work is full of questions that you can answer all your life, and will remain for future generations.

List of inventions, both real and attributed Leonardo da Vinci:

Parachute - 1483
Wheel lock
Bike
Tank
Lightweight portable bridges for the army
Spotlight
Catapult
Robot
Double lens telescope

Irina Nikiforova Librarian.Ru

Illustrations: "Leonardo da Vinci Architect" State Publishing House of Literature on Construction and Architecture. Moscow 1952

There are activities that you can indulge in without regretting the time spent and with benefit to your mind. For example, look at the drawings and sketches of Leonardo da Vinci - “living sketches” of his original plans and projects, which seem to have no number.

In the master’s drawings, inventions that are familiar to us (and innovative for people of the Renaissance) are easily recognizable: from water skis and a diver’s suit to a parachute and a glider. Many of his ideas remained “in the project”: in the form of images on paper of all kinds of mechanisms, devices and buildings. These drawings are a reliable repository of the author's ideas and research. They allow you to look into da Vinci’s creative laboratory, get acquainted with his method of work and follow his train of thought, how he posed and solved complex technical, construction and other problems step by step.

In the circle of ideas

The history of discoveries and inventions shows that useful ideas are sooner or later brought to mind and put into practice. A striking example of how this happens is the scientific and technical creativity of Leonardo da Vinci. A born researcher and inventor, he worked primarily with ideas: he generated some himself, borrowed and developed others, and always looked for practical applications for them.

First, Leonardo drew up a solution plan: he made a sketch of the future design, reflecting the general idea. Then he carefully studied the details, drew sketches and provided comments on them. And finally, I collected all the parts into a single whole - a finished, full-fledged illustration. As one researcher of the artist’s work noted, many of his sketches represent “unfinished thoughts about ways and means.” Indeed, when studying these drawings and drawings, sometimes you have to figure out details and details that were missing or deliberately omitted by da Vinci. But some of them are so verified and accurate that even after five centuries their language is understandable without words. Based on the drawings left as a legacy to future generations by the brilliant designer and inventor, modern craftsmen were able to produce working models of various devices.

Miracle staircase

Here is a sketch of the fortress tower (Fig. 1)

Rice. 1. Leonardo da Vinci. Sketch of the fortress tower and spiral staircase. Around 1488

To the left of it is a diagram of one of the important details of the building - the spiral staircase. Its design is reminiscent of the famous Archimedes screw, only there are not enough steps! Take a closer look at the drawing and you will reveal the amazing plan of Leonardo the architect. Its staircase is double: along one part you can climb the tower, and along the other you can go down, without colliding or even seeing each other. The trajectories of both parts of the staircase are non-intersecting helical lines (spatial curves twisting around a vertical support - a round pillar in the center of the structure). Each part of the staircase has its own entrance and exit, and its model is a helical surface, the so-called helicoid. A real staircase has steps fan-shaped around a pillar.

A double spiral staircase adorns the royal castle of Chambord in France. Its construction began in 1519, shortly after the death of Leonardo. As is known, he spent the last years of his life in this country, at the court of Francis I, his patron, and was the First Royal Artist, Engineer and Architect. It is not known for certain whether Leonardo took part in the design of the grandiose castle. Even if not, experts say, its creators used da Vinci’s ideas from the artist’s drawings. It is likely that the architects’ choice was influenced by his sketch (Fig. 1), made back in the late 1480s. There are 77 staircases in Chambord, including several spiral ones, but only this one has become its real attraction.

Double spiral staircase in the royal castle of Chambord (detail)

Other double spiral staircases are also known. The earliest of them were erected in European cathedrals back in the 14th-15th centuries, but they are inferior to the staircase in the Chateau de Chambord not only in size and decor, but also in the simplicity and originality of the design - no one before Leonardo could completely isolate the parts of the double spiral staircase from each other succeeded or did not occur to me.

St. Patrick's Well with two spiral staircases in Orvieto

In 1527, the Italian architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger applied the same idea. By order of Pope Clement VII, he began the construction of a huge water tower - the well of St. Patrick (photo above) - in the city of Orvieto in case of its siege and deprivation of access to external sources of water. Here, access to water at the bottom of the well was provided by two opposite entrances, which led to autonomous spiral staircases: one cart was lowered to fetch water, and the other was used to bring it up. The lighting of the building was natural: light penetrated inside through many arched windows in the walls of the tower.

The embodiment of the idea of ​​screw motion

Leonardo da Vinci also has more complex architectural compositions of stairs. One of them is like a three-dimensional labyrinth with many entrances and exits. Take a look at the following sketch (Figure 2)

Rice. 2. Leonardo da Vinci. A sketch of unconnected staircases with multiple entrances and exits. Early 1490s

You immediately see four external staircases not connected to one another, “twisting” around a massive square pillar, in which, perhaps, some kind of lifting device is hidden. With amazing ease, the artist combines architecture and space geometry, combines lines and shapes and creates complete images and self-sufficient structures.

Da Vinci found another interesting use for the double helix. He used it in the design of an apparatus for breathing under water (Fig. 3).

Rice. 3. Leonardo da Vinci. Sketch of an underwater breathing apparatus and detail of a hose. Around 1507-1508

This is an improved version of the breathing tube that was used by ancient divers. The device consists of a float with a protective floating dome, a mask, breathing hoses and a valve that controls their operation, preventing water from getting inside. The hose is made of several reed tubes connected by inserts made of waterproof material, and inside it there are double springs - a compact elastic element, which, on the one hand, prevents the material from shrinking and losing its shape, and on the other, makes the hose flexible.

The secret of flight

Leonardo was one of the first to use a helical surface in the design of a propeller - the main part with which a flying machine could rise vertically into the air if it was possible to properly spin the propeller, and at the same time cope with its instability during ascent. We are talking about a complex screw motion (rotation around a fixed axis and parallel translation along it, performed simultaneously), but in relation to flight mechanics.

Leonardo da Vinci's propeller (Fig. 4) is considered the prototype of the modern main rotor, and he himself is considered the inventor of the helicopter, or, as it is called in Russia, the helicopter. By the way, the word “helicopter” is related to the word “helicoid” and comes from the Greek words ëλικου (spiral, screw) and πτεoóν (wing). It appeared only in the 1860s, almost four centuries after this drawing was made.

Rice. 4. Leonardo da Vinci. Sketch of a propeller. Around 1486-1490

Da Vinci could well have borrowed the idea of ​​“launching” for his design from the “flying pinwheel” - a toy originally from Ancient China. It was a rod with a bird feather screw at the end. It was untwisted by hand or using a thread wound around a rod and released. A modern version is a primitive “fly” helicopter (Fig. 5), which is easy to make yourself.

Rice. 5. Helicopter “fly”

But da Vinci could choose the shape of the propeller by observing the rotation of the Archimedes screw (Fig. 6).

Rice. 6. Archimedes screw

Leonardo the engineer, in general, tried more than once to adapt this ingenious invention of the ancient Greek scientist to various mechanisms. For example, I used it as a part of a hydraulic machine. Or as elements of a perpetual motion machine (it was a structure of two screws of different diameters: in one the water rose, and in the other it dropped to the original level). But then Leonardo abandoned this fruitless idea and came up with a more interesting and useful application for the Archimedes screw.

Leonardo did not consider his design as a flying machine, but studied the mechanism of its operation. He looked for the secret of flight in nature, which creates optimal forms that perform certain functions: he spent a long time observing “living machines” - birds freely soaring in the sky, describing their movements. In his sketches there is a trajectory of a bird rising upward (Fig. 7), which is a helical curve.

Rice. 7. Leonardo da Vinci. Sketches of birds flying. Around 1505

Devices equipped with artificial wings and capable of rising into the air due to the muscular power of a person (ornithopters, or flywheels) were what occupied Leonardo most of all (by the way, the first to try to implement this idea was the skilled craftsman Daedalus, a hero of ancient mythology). Da Vinci returned to solving this problem more than once. Unsuccessfully. As a result, he decided to reproduce the simplest method of bird flight - he came up with a glider that soars due to air currents. While exploring the problem of flight, he was interested in literally everything, even such a trifle as the sound produced by the wings of a fly! And this, it seems, was the whole of Leonardo - the greatest genius of the Renaissance, “the most insatiably curious man of all time,” as one of his biographers noted.

Dreams Come True

The propeller, which Leonardo shaped into a helicoid, is mentioned in his famous treatise On Flying. According to the description, the screw should have a metal edging and a canvas covering, and the frame of the canvas will be thin, long tubes. And further da Vinci adds: “You can make yourself a small model out of paper, the axis of which, made of thin sheet iron, is twisted with force and which, when released, causes the screw to rotate.” Well, then think for yourself... Judging by the design details, the screw could be rotated using levers attached to the axis. Or it could be “launched” by a spring mechanism. What is a spring? Yes, the same helical line, made of metal, capable of accumulating and releasing energy.

The drawing of a propeller is one of the most famous in Leonardo's collection of works devoted to the problem of flight. It was studied by both amateurs and specialists: scientists, designers, engineers, inventors. None of the models they built were able to take off on their own, without an engine. But something else is much more important. Da Vinci's sketch contained an invaluable idea, and centuries later other inventors and scientists created a real flying machine.

In general, Leonardo has many different useful inventions to his credit, unclaimed in his time, forgotten for a long time and then reinvented.

Details for the curious

Helix and helicoid

A helical line is a curve described by a point moving at a constant speed along the generatrix of a cylinder when it rotates uniformly around its axis. This curve intersects all generatrices at equal angles. If we draw several parallel straight lines on a sheet of paper at an angle to its larger side at equal distances from each other, and then roll the paper into a cylinder, connecting the two smaller sides, then on its surface we will see a helix line: the right one, if viewed from below it twists counterclockwise, or left - if it twists in the opposite direction.

Right helix

When a line, rather than a point, rotates around a fixed axis with simultaneous translation along it, it describes a helical surface in space. Thus, a segment sliding with one end along a helical line and the other along the axis of the cylinder describes a helicoid (from the Greek ελικος - spiral, convolution).

Helicoid

A cylindrical helix can move along itself. It determines the shortest path between two points of different generators on the surface of the cylinder. Helicoid has similar properties. It slides on its own and has a minimum area for a given outer boundary. Simplicity, flexibility, dynamism, “cost-effectiveness” - thanks to these properties, screw forms are common in nature (remember, for example, the “double helix” of the DNA molecule and climbing plants) and are widely used in practice, especially in technology (from a spring and a corkscrew to the screw of a meat grinder and propeller).

The hop stem has the shape of a left helix

The main rotor is a propeller with a vertical axis of rotation and is the source of lift for a helicopter. With its help, flight control and landing of the device are carried out. The idea of ​​using a rotating propeller for flight arose in ancient times and was popular in Europe in the Middle Ages. The design itself had “blades” and looked like a propeller.