Hi guys! This month, we have learnt a lot of things about Leo-nardo Da Vinci: his sociocultural context, his per-sonal life, his style, his works, etc.

Firstly, we must know that Leonardo be-longed to the Ren-aissance. What can we know about this period?The renaissance is a social, artistic and cultural movement that involved the “revival” of the old Greek and Ro-man thinking and culture.

Leonardo Da Vinci excelled in many disciplines such as painting, sculpture, mathe-matics, engineer-ing, biology, phys-ics or architecture. We are going to centered on his

pictorial career so first, let’s go to know more gen-eral information about the Renais-sance painting in Italy!

During the Renaissance, painting under-went great changes. Italian painters started using two main techniques:

Oil painting. It involves using oils of plant or animal origin in order to dissolve colors.

Linear perspec-tive. It involves representing the depth in a picture by means of a line series which converge on a point (the vanish-ing point).

Italian art-ists also took into account the im-portance of light, composition and

movement.

As regards themes, they based their works on: landscapes, por-traits, mythologi-cal, daily or reli-gious scenes.

It is also im-portant to know that three main pictorial schools appeared during this stage: The Florentine School, The Venetian School and The Ro-man School.

INTRODUCTION

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2nd Volume, n. 2

Leonardo Da Vinci told to children

CONTENTS

ONCE UPON A TI-ME A MAN CA-LLED LEONARDO DA . VINCI…

2

HIS TECHNIQUE 2

The oil painting technique

2

HIS WORKS 3

THE MONA LISA 4

THE LAST SUPPER 5

LET’S ENJOY! 5

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

He was born on April 15th, 1452 in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, a city close to Flor-ence.

Leonardo loved nature for its simple beauty and elegance, but he used to have fre-quent nightmares caused by his fear

of the other side of nature: pain, de-struction, wickedness. His biggest dream was flying like a bird. He was a con-vinced vegetarian. He bought the birds in the market in order to release them. He is known because of lots works but we will mention the most important ones.

In 1495, he was commissioned the

decoration of the dining room of St. Mary of Grace. The issue would be the Last Supper of Christ and his disciples. He created the most brilliant composi-tion of Art History.

In 1501, he made the sketch of the Vir-gin sitting on the lap of his mother, St. Anne, heading for the baby Jesus.

In 1503, Nicolás Maquiavelo hired him in order to decorate the consis-torial rooms (the highest order of Da Vinci)

In 1505, he received the commission of a rich Florentine merchant who wanted a portrait of his young wife, Mona Lisa.

In 1516, the king of France invited him to join the court and he seized the opportunity. Shortly afterwards, he died.

Oil paint offers a great variety of colors and we also mix them with other kinds of paints, such as acrylic or water-color.

Oil paints don’t usually change color when they are dried so the painter can predict how the painting will be.

Oil paint is a resistant material and a quality product.

As we have seen...It is one of the best pictorial techniques since the fif-teenth century. The oil paint is made with di-luted colors in blotting oil.

ADVANTAGES

It takes a long time to dry. This provides the artist with more time to create or edit his/her work of art.

DISADVANTAGES

The linseed oil paint tends to yellow in the course of time.

This technique should be worked in a ventilated place because some types of oil need to be mixed with turpen-tine.

Sometimes, the slow drying will be a prob-lem if the artist wants to work on dry.

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The oil painting technique

Leonardo Da Vinci told to children

ONCE UPON A TIME A MAN CALLED LEONARDO DA VINCI…

HIS TECHNIQUE Regarding his style and technique, he is characterized by the

use of perfect human figures, the use of math in his paintings, the perfection of landscape backgrounds, the transmission of feelings and emotions and the artistic attention to details. As regards the subject matters, he used to depict landscapes, portraits, mythological, daily or religious scenes. We’ll focus on his two most important techniques: the Oil Painting and the Sfumato techniques.

Leonardo Da Vinci’s work scarce and controversial. He was an influen-tial and innovative artist, although he left the majority of his painting un-finished.

In the beginning, his works were characterized by Verrocchio’s stiff-ness and hardness of the lines but in the course of time, he evolved into a freer and softer style.

His mastery of color and atmos-phere made him the first person who “painted the air”. Da vinci’s paintings were marked by the Chiaroscuro tech-nique and the Sfumato technique.

Now, we are going to see the most important paintings of Leonardo and

after, we will learn a lot of information about two of this works of art.

Lady with an Ermine, 1485

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HIS WORKS

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Annunciation, 1472-1475

Adoration of the Magi, 1481 Virgin of the Rocks, 1483-1486

The Virgin and Child with St Anne, 1510

The Mona Lisa is one of the most impor-tant Da Vinci’s paintings. It is also known as The Giaconda and it was painted by Leo-nardo between 1503 and 1506. It is an oil painting in poplar wood and we can find it at the Musée du Louvre, in Paris.

Its most distin-guished aspects are the mysterious look and the serene face as well as the use of magnificent tech-nical and artistic re-

sources.

There have three main hypotheses on the identity of the woman. The first one says that this painting is the represen-tation of the Da Vinci’s ideal woman. The second one says that

it could be a self-portrait of Leonardo and the last one says that the woman who is painted is the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, Lisa Gherardini.

As we can see, Leo-

nardo used a pictorial technique created by him, the Sfumato technique, which consists of an ex-cellent variety of shadows and lights. The Mona Lisa’s eyes and her veil are great examples that illustrate this method.

The main colors of this work of art are ochre, yellow and dark tones. The composition of this painting consists of two planes: the woman and the landscape. Have you notice the harmony be-tween the Mona Lisa and the landscape? This is due to the the Sfumato and Aerial Perspective techniques!

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THE MONA LISA, 1503-1506

The Last Supper is one of the most important and famous paintings of Leo-nardo di ser Piero Da Vinci. It is located in the Dominican monastery Santa Maria delle Grazie, in Milan (Italy). It is an oil painting on dry plaster, an ex-perimental technique that caused a quick deterioration of it.

This art of work was created be-tween 1495 and 1497 and it represented an important moment: Jesus is ex-plaining to his disciples that one of them is a traitor.

As we can see, it is a symmetrical composition where the point of reference is Jesus Christ. The table with a white ta-blecloth marks the horizon and the di-agonal lines produce the effect of depth and movement. The colorful clothes con-trast with the white tablecloth.

THE LAST SUPPER, 1495-1497

You can use the technique that you prefer.

Can you put in order the following pieces? They form the Last Supper painting!

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TO BE OR NOT TO BE AN ARTIST...

WHAT A MESS! (PUZZLE)

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LET’S ENJOY!

Irene Cabeza Fernández

2º Grado Educación Primaria, T3

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Although we have focused on Leo-nardo’s paintings, it is also very important to mention the importance of the rest of his work.

Da Vinci designed a lot of sketches that have been the predecessor of great inven-tions. The scope of the painter’s inventive-ness was astonishing. He drew all sorts of de-vices such as flying machines, armaments or methods to improve the navigation.

On the other hand, drawings of hu-man body have helped to medical students.

His ideas were usually considered very imaginative and surrealistic but they are used nowadays.