The Charioteer
Each day hundreds of tourists flock to the Louvre Museum in Paris to admire the most famous painting in the world, the "Mona Lisa." This artist's legacy lives today as his creations continue to inspire artists, scientists, and the common man even four hundred years after his death. This artist, Leonardo da Vinci, known for his unlimited desire for knowledge, proved to be the most versatile genius of the Renaissance. His influence on sixteenth century art and his scientific research were far in advance of his time, for he anticipated the attitudes of more recent intellectual epochs. Leonardo was born at the height of the age of discovery in a background that offered little promise for either art or profound thought. On April 15, 1452, near the small Tuscan hill town of Vinci, Leonardo was born illegitimately to a peasant woman known as Caterina and a prominent Florentine notary, Ser Piero da Vinci (Wallace 6). Shortly after his birth, his mother married a local artisan. Ser Piero, however, married several times, but it wasn't until his third and fourth marriages that he had legitimate children, the first when Leonardo was already grown. Thus Leonardo was able to grow up in his father's household where he was treated as
" This cartoon was displayed to the public and was greeted with popular enthusiasm. " It was as an artist that Leonardo appreciated geometry as the visualization of abstractions which produced exact arithmetical definition. A beautiful youth, Leonardo seems always to have attracted admirers. Leonardo continued to perfect his talent, and as his reputation grew, so did his confidence. Since Leonardo was left-handed, his text is written in reverse-read from right to left. It was at this !time Ser Piero noticed his young son's talent; he began to wonder "whether the boy might not make a profession of art" (Williams 15). Aside from a number of architectural projects, he focused largely on another equestrian monument for the marshal Giacomo Trivulzio. Finally in 1517, Leonardo moved to France at the invitation of King Francis I. It was precisely this type of tonal painting that established an influential model for various artists and schools of Italian painting in the sixteenth century, thereby "opening up a new world of beauty to future generations of artists by showing them how to paint the inner truth of their subjects" (Williams 7). He worked on no major works and had little contact with the artistic life that was turning the city into the capital of the High Renaissance art. Upon his return to Florence in 1503, Leonardo was surprised at the many changes that had taken place in the eighteen years of his absence. He chose instead to remain in his teacher's workshop for an additional five years ("da Vinci" Britannica 2).
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