Alpha Book

Modern painting was born in Italy. In Italy it found its four great
masters--Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian. The
first two acquired as great a fame in architecture and in sculpture as
in painting; the last two were primarily painters.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), a Florentine by birth and training, was
patronized in turn by the Sforza family of Milan, by the Medici of
Florence, and by the French royal line. His great paintings--the Holy
Supper and Madonna Lisa, usually called La Gioconda--carried to a high
degree the art of composition and the science of light and shade and
color. In fact, Leonardo was a scientific painter--he carefully studied
the laws of perspective and painstakingly carried them into practice.
He was also a remarkable sculptor, as is testified by his admirable
horses in relief. As an engineer, too, he built a canal in northern
Italy and constructed fortifications about Milan. He was a musician and
a natural philosopher as well. This many-sided man liked to toy with
mechanical devices.


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