Busacca Gallery

Antique Art Print, Study for the Kneeling Leda, c. 1505-7 Handmade oil painting reproduction of Leda and the Swan 1503-07, a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci. Date :1503-07 Technique :Pen and ink and wash over black chalk on paper, 160 x 139 mm Type :mythological art graphic. Location : Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. In this copy of the lost Da Vinci painting, Leonardo amalgamates his skill of painting, his knowledge of anatomy (and knowledge of how babies are formed within the anatomy of a woman) and his dream of flight. The myth of Leda and her swan mate probably would have touched Leonardo's comical side. MORE INFORMATION: Da Vinci’s notebook shows that he was also planning a picture where Leda was sitting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci pronunciation (help·info)) (April 15, 1452 May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci points out, however, that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time. Born the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by Francis I. Leonardo was and is renowned primarily as a painter. Among his works, the Mona Lisa is most famous and most parodied portrait and The Last Supper the most reproduced religious painting of all time, with their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon,[4] being reproduced on everything from the euro to text books to t-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo. Leonardo is revered. for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he made important discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics, but his failure to publish his findings meant that he influence on these fields is not well documented by historians.