Leonardo Da Vinci: The Last Supper And Sfumato

Leonardo Da Vinci was born on April 14, 1452 to Ser Piero and Caterina. At the age of five, he moved and lived with his uncle and grandparents. Leonardo had received only a little education, but he has shown many artistic abilities. Around the age of 14, Leonardo da vinci began an apprenticeship with a famous artist named Andrea del Verrocchio.
Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, sculptor, inventor, military engineer and draftsman. He studied the laws of science and nature. His ideas and works have influenced many other artists from the Italian Renaissance. Although, Leonardo da Vinci was known as an artist, he had many other interests. He has only a couple famous paintings under his name. Some of his well known paintings are, “Vitruvian Man,” “The Last Supper” and the “Mona Lisa.”

The two different techniques are Chiaroscuro and Sfumato. Chiaroscuro is the technique where there is “a stark contrast between darkness and light that gave a three-dimensionality to da Vinci’s figures”(Leonardo da Vinci, 2017). Sfumato is “a technique in which subtle gradations, rather than strict borders, infuse paintings with a softer, smokey aura” (Leonardo da Vinci, 2017). His painting “Virgin of the Rocks,” uses both of these techniques.
Leonardo made sketches of futuristic machines resembling a bicycle and a helicopter. His most well-known sketch of a futuristic machine was the flying machine. Leonardo da Vinci thought sight was humankind’s most important sense and eyes the most important organ, and he stressed the importance of saper vedere, or “knowing how to see.” He believed in the accumulation of direct knowledge and facts through observation.
“A good painter has two chief objects to paint — man and the intention of his soul,” da Vinci wrote. “The former is easy, the latter hard, for it must be expressed by gestures and the movement of the