Everyone knows the Mona Lisa painting and the Italian artist behind it, Leonardo da Vinci. World Art Day is marked on April 15, his birthday, and was created in his honour to celebrate his legacy and to recognise art in all its forms.
Born in 1452 and later dying in 1519, da Vinci’s most recognised works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, still capture viewers’ attention.
His Mona Lisa painting is the most famous
Mona Lisa, possibly the world’s most famous painting, is on display behind a bulletproof barrier at the world’s largest museum, the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. Painted in oil on a wood panel, it was created between 1503 and 1519 when da Vinci was living in Florence, Italy.
The identity of the Mona Lisa, meaning My Lady Lisa, and her famous mysterious smile have attracted conversations and investigation, such as from psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
Several films have been made about the painting, such as Mona Lisa Smile (2003) starring Julia Roberts and The Theft of the Mona Lisa (1913), which references when the painting was stolen from the Louvre in 1911.
He has unfinished masterpieces
Only a few painters, like da Vinci, had unfinished works that are highly regarded as masterpieces.
Even though he was famous for inventive works of art that represent his ingenuity, da Vinci was slow at creating, and he did not always finish what he started.
Many of his paintings, writings, and ideas were left incomplete, and some were used decades after his passing. His first major commission, titled The Adoration of the Magi, wasn’t completed since he left Florence for Milan.
Depicting the three wise men who visited Jesus during his birth, the painting was one of the earlier works that incorporated anatomy and is housed at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
He had a close rivalry with Michelangelo
The artistic rivalry between these two leading Italian artists is one of the most famous in art history. Michelangelo was an impeccable artist in his own right: a sculptor, painter, and architect famous for sculpting the statue of David and painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
The artists competed for patrons and had opposing artistic views. Michelangelo viewed sculpting as superior to painting, while Da Vinci took painting as a higher form than sculpting.
The rivalry intensified when they were commissioned to paint large battle scenes on a wall at the Palazzo Vecchio. Da Vinci, in his early fifties, painted The Battle of Anghiari, while Michelangelo, then twenty-nine, did The Battle of Cascina.
He is the artist-anatomist of all time
Regarded as the most significant artist-anatomist of all time, the self-taught artist earned the name ‘Renaissance man’ because he could easily explore painting, sculpting, science, engineering, and architecture.
He believed painting was a science as much as an art. His curiosity in human anatomy by dissecting bodies made him create The Vitruvian Man, a drawing that depicts a nude male figure with arms and legs stretched out.
He wrote from right to left
He wrote many of his notes from right to left, a style that can only be easily read when placed in front of a mirror. He could also write and draw with both hands and filled thousands of pages with notes and sketches, now known as his codices.