In response to the letter from the His Majesty, the King of France you are tasked to complete the following: create a portfolio that represents Leonardo Da Vinci's best work plus a letter of recommendation in which you analyze da Vinci based on IB learner profile traits.
St. John the Baptist Saint John the Baptist is Leonardo Da Vinci last painting before he die. It's oil painting on wood. The size of the painting originally was 22.4 x 22.7 inches. You can find the painting at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The painting showed us an image of Saint John the Baptist wearing animal skins. On his left hand, he was holding a reed cross. Using some techniques, the historians believed that both the animal skins and the reed cross were added later on by another artist. There is another special thing about this painting. John's right hand was pointing up to heaven. And later on, many other artists uses this posture to draw religious paintings of their own. In this painting, Leonardo da Vinci was being really reflective with this work of art. Lord Kenneth Clark - British art historian - said: "The St John is a baffling work, but every inch of it smells of Leonardo". It's true because Leonardo da Vinci uses many techniques that he used before at his other older paintings. The cheekbones, size of John's eyes, and especially John's mysterious
smile are all very similar to one of Leonardo's older painting - the Mona Lisa. Another special thing about this painting is the dark background. The background made John the Baptist looked really lifelike. It's like the painting is a picture of a sculpture. The painting uses a lot more shading than color. He painted the colors cleverly so it looks like there were a ray of light is shining up John the Baptist's face, which in this case, makes the painting looks so real. It's actually a lack of color in this painting, but that's what actually making it unique and mysterious. The Last Supper The Last Supper is one of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous paintings. This painting was painted in 1495-98. It was painted on the wall in Convent of Santa Maria Delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. The painting is really big - 460 x 880 cm. It took Leonardo da Vinci about 3 years to finish this massive painting. This painting tells us the story about the evening before one of Jesus' disciples betrayed him. This showed us all the facial expressions of the disciples when Jesus told the disciples that one of them will betray him. There are 13 disciples in this painting, each one have
a different facial expression. All 12 of the disciples seems so surprised and confused, except for Judas - the only man with his arm on the table, with his hand holding a bag. This is probably the worst condition piece of art. Only some parts of the paintings are still recognizable. This is because Leonardo Da Vinci was being a risk-taker. He tried to use a different material to paint. Normally, artists would use tempera on wet plaster, but Leonardo da Vinci tried to mix tempera with oil paints instead. Later on the paints started to fly off the wall. Notice in this picture, Jesus doesn't have feet while everyone else does. At first Leonardo da Vinci painted Jesus' feet, but around 1650, someone broke that part of the wall to build up a door. Also, "The Last Supper" was affected at World War II because the Convent of Santa Maria Delle Grazie was bombed. This painting is special because everything in the painting seems to bring their focus to the middle of the room - where Jesus sits alone, deep in thoughts. Leonardo da Vinci uses an incredible effect on perspective. It makes the painting looks so lifelike. Unlike the other paintings in the Middle Ages - flat and unrealistic. The Virgin of The Rock
The Virgin of the Rocks is the oil on panel painting. This painting was painted at 1491-1508, with the size of 189.5 x 120 cm. You can find the original painting at the Louvre Museum in Paris. This painting is the first painting that Leonardo da Vinci executed in Milan. This painting showed us the scene of Madonna, Saint John the Baptist, the Christ child and the angle. Leonardo da Vinci was being really open-minded in this painting. Usually, Madonna will sit somewhere higher, become the queen. But in this painting, Da Vinci chooses to paint Madonna sitting on the ground, next to the river. Behind her is the amazing row of mountains - represented with different colors. Normally, there should be halos. But there aren't any halos in this painting. So this is the first time that an artist has left the halos. Leonardo da Vinci was being really open-minded when he thought of a way to get us recognize Madonna. The way is to present it with beauty and grace. In this painting, Madonna's facial expression was really protective of Saint John the Baptist and Christ child. Saint John the Baptist was putting his hand together and prays to Christ child. Madonna's arm was around John the Baptist's shoulder. Again, the perspective of the painting was amazing. The facial expression that we can recognize from Leonardo da Vinci s other paintings. Vitruvian man
Vitruvian Man is probably one of Leonardo da Vinci most famous illustration. This piece of work showed that Da Vinci was being inquired. He loved the idea of putting human anatomy, architecture, art and symmetry together. Vitruvian was an ancient Roman architecture. He wrote ten books series about architecture. In one of his books, he said that the human body is the "model of perfection". He explained this by drawing a man with his arms and legs fit into a circle and a square. Many other artists tried to illustrate this. But all leads to failure because the arms were all too long, and the legs were all too short. Leonardo da Vinci illustrates it in a different way, a better way. He drew a perfect figure of the man first, and then he tried to fit the square and circle in. The square and the circle tangent only at the base. The man has probably a bit wavy, curly hair, strong facial expression. The man appears to have 2 different body positions. One with his arms create a straight line, his legs were together. The other one with his legs and arms a bit up to the side. Leonardo da Vinci drew the figure with ink pen. Around the figure are words to make it clear since the illustration cannot be with only picture or word. Human Fetus Leonardo started to study the phenomenon of reproduction because he was investigating with human body. The original drawing can be found at Windors Castle near London. I choose this work because Leonardo da Vinci was being quite curious with the human body. Not just with male but also with female. The figure showed the shape of the embryonic membranes and the
uterus opened up so we can see what's inside. Surrounding the figures are paragraphs written in mirror letter (letter writing backward). People think that it's because he was trying to prevent people from reading his notes and stealing his ideas. Some people also think that he was hiding his ideas from the Catholic Church since sometimes they disagree with what Leonardo was trying to find out. Or Leonardo da Vinci was just trying to prevent the ink from smudging. The foot and lower leg This work showed Leonardo da Vinci studying of the lower leg and foot. The original drawing can be found at Windors Castle near London. I choose this piece of work because Leonardo da Vinci was being really creative in drawing it. He already drew many copies when he dissected the human body in the hospital, but he made a different version. This version is on an unusual larger sheet of paper. This allowed him to draw and show all the bones, how they're arranged,
the muscles and the tendons in the lower leg and foot. Again, surrounding the figure are words, explaining the figure. Looking at it, there is a paragraph which was written on top of the figure. But I'm not sure about the reason why. Maybe he was trying to explain a part near by or he just simply put of space to write his ideas. Screw-cutting machine Leonardo da Vinci invented a screw-cutting machine. In inventions like this, the drawing took the most amount of space. Unlike science, Leonardo da Vinci barely wrote anything in his invention sheet of paper. He designed this at about 1500. He included continuous rotation of the lathe. Instead of having it rotate back and forth, Leonardo da Vinci designed it so it can only rotate in one direction. There are also flywheel between the bearings ensures to create more power. This machine has a set of gears for cutting out the threads of different sizes. He also added lead-screws on the sides. Nobody knows if Leonardo ever built this machine, but the machine design itself is amazingly real. I choose this piece of work because it shows that Leonardo da Vinci was being balanced between art and science. He drew an incredibly realistic machine, with perspective, shading and the right proportion.
Submarine The first sketches of a submarine were created by Leonardo da Vinci. The drawings of the submarine were in cone shape. It's basically an empty shell. By reading the notes and sketches of Leonardo's submarine, scientists discovered that there would not be enough mechanics for this submarine to submerge under water successfully. This ship's name wasn't a submarine, it was called "a ship to sink another ship". But later on, Leonardo da Vinci destroyed his invention. This is because he was being a thinker. He thought of the effect of his invention. Even though he wanted badly the prestige, the money that he will get for bringing this machine to the word, but it can destroy his own country. People would use this machine to fight against the other cities of Italy and the world. That's the reason why he destroy the machine, keep it a secret so the war wouldn t be more violent than it was.
The Revolving Bridge Leonardo da Vinci designed this Revolving Bridge for Duke Sforza. I choose this piece of work because Leonardo da Vinci was knowledgeable about this invention. He has designed several other bridges for Duke. He came up with many ideas for developing bridges to use for both military and economical. The revolving bridge is one of his famous innovative drawings. The bridge can swing across and set down ready at the other side so that the soldiers could pass without much trouble. The bridge also have counterweight tank so it can balance well. He described the bridge as a "light yet rugged".