Famous in the art

FAMOUS IN THE ART
Leonardo da Vinci, probably the most important Renaissance artist, is widely recognized as the most famous artist of all time. He’s the genius behind the iconic Mona Lisa painting masterpiece, after all. It was painted sometime between 1503 and 1519 when Leonardo was living in Florence, and it now hangs in the Louvre Museum, in Paris, where it remained an object of pilgrimage in the 21st century. The sitter’s mysterious smile and her unproven identity have made the painting a source of ongoing investigation and fascination. Da Vinci also created a background with aerial views and a beautiful landscape but muted from the vibrant lightness of the subject’s face and hands. The technique Da Vinci used in executing the painting left behind no visible brush marks, something that was said to make any master painter lose heart. It is truly a masterpiece.
The Mona Lisa is an oil painting, with a cottonwood panel as the surface. It is unusual in that most paintings are commissioned as oil on canvas, but the cottonwood panel is part of what has attributed to the fame of the painting. Because of the medium used for the image, the Mona Lisa has survived for six centuries without ever having been restored–a trait very unusual when considering the time period of the piece.
Among his famous masterpieces, there are also the Last Supper and The Lady with an Ermine. The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time and his Vitruvian Man drawing is regarded as a cultural icon as well.
Even nowadays, his works are not fully understood and he still serves as inspiration for many, many aspiring artists.
Beyond painting, although he had no formal academic training, da Vinci was also a scientist and inventor and he created plenty of drawings of the human body and many modern technologies found in the world today. Leonardo’s paintings and preparatory drawings together with his notebooks, which contain sketches, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting compose a contribution to later generations of artists.