San Miguel Art magazine/ San+Miguel+Art+magazine%2FOctober+ | Page 43

The Adoration
of the Magi
(1481-1482)
He seems to have a great predilection for
this work, since he carried with him on
his travels.
• He assisted the Italian mathematician
Luca Pacioli in his celebrated work Divine
Proportion (1509). The most important
work of the period in Milan is the two
versions of the Virgin of the Rocks (-1483
1485, Louvre, Paris, decade of -1506-1490
1508, National Gallery, London), where
he applies the triangular compositional
scheme that the Virgin, the Child, St. John
and the Angel, and where he applies the
technique of sfumato for the first time.
• He was raised as an only child. Later
his father married four times more, and
he fathered ten more sons, in his last two
marriages.
• In 1476 he was accused of having
homosexual relations.
• He was left-handed.
• He wrote from right to left, with the
so-called mirror technique, because by
writing in this way the mirror reverses the
meaning.
His most famous works
The vitruvian man
It is called Man of Vitruvius because
Leonardo is based on the proportions
described by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio,
Roman architect of century I a.c. He
would modify some ideas of Vitruvius,
until obtaining this result.
La Gioconda
The picture has not only been stolen,
but has also been sprayed with acid and
struck with a stone thrown by a man in
the Louvre museum.
Photos: De Leonardo da Vinci - RQFL5tibYCPGOg at
Google Cultural Institute, zoom level maximum, Dominio
público, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.
php?curid=13514343
The Last Supper
In this work, Leonardo used a new
technique instead of the one commonly
used to make the frescoes. Instead of
using wet gypsum he used a technique of
his own invention based on dry gypsum.
It obtained a wider range of colors than
usual, but it began to detach. Since then, a
solution is being sought.