Word: leonardo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Leonardo da Vinci during his lifetime was renowned as the very embodiment of the Renaissance ideal, the "universal man," at once a brilliant painter, muralist, draftsman, engineer and architect. But he was almost as well known for his inability to see his projects through. "Alas," cried Pope Leo X, "Leonardo will never finish anything. He thinks of the end even before he has begun." As a result, while some 6,000 pages of his notes and casual sketches survive, there are only 15 known Leonardo paintings-and some experts place the number as low as nine...
Last week that one was in the U.S. Washington's National Gallery of Art announced that it had acquired Leonardo's 15⅛-in. by 14½-in. oil portrait of Ginevra dei Benci, a 15th century nobleman's wife. The seller was Prince Franz Josef II, head of tiny (61 sq. mi.) Liechtenstein, tucked snugly between Austria and Switzerland. Price: an estimated $5,000,000, more than twice the previous record of $2,300,000, paid in 1961 for Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer by Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum. And while...
...Some 30 to 40 Rembrandts, Rubenses and other old masters have disappeared from the vaults of the royal castle at Vaduz only to reappear, with a minimum of publicity, on museum walls from Ottawa to London. Unquestionably the most valuable painting in the Prince's collection was the Leonardo Ginevra...
...Alltime record holder: Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, whose smile drew 1,077,521 visitors to Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum during 26 days...
...this age of specialization, the renaissance man is becoming hard to find. Yet, the curiosity of the most inventive thinkers in every field has always extended far beyond the limits of a single discipline. Leonardo Da Vinci is as famous for his inventions as for his paintings, and the story-teller Lewis Carroll was a pioneer in mathematics and photography. Meyer Schapiro, the 1967 Charles Eliot Norton lecturer, combines this same curiosity and inventiveness with a profound, human sensitivity. While he is an art historian by profession he is conversant with subjects as diverse as semiotics and Freudian psychology...