Leonardo De Vinci & Michelangelo

Leonardo was born in the small town of Vinci, in Tuscany, near Florence. He was the son of a wealthy Florentine notary and a peasant woman. In the mid-1460s the family settled in Florence, where Leonardo was given the best education that Florence, a major intellectual and artistic center of Italy, could offer. He rapidly advanced socially and intellectually. He was handsome, persuasive in conversation, and a fine musician and improviser. About 1466 he was apprenticed as a garzone (studio boy) to Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his day. In Verrocchio's workshop Leonardo was introduced to many activities, from the painting of altarpieces and panel pictures to the creation of large sculptural projects in marble and bronze. Leonardo da Vinci is best remembered as the painter of the Mona Lisa (1503-1506) and The Last Supper (1495). But he's almost equally famous for his astonishing multiplicity of talents: he dabbled in architecture, sculpture, engineering, geology, hydraulics and the military arts, all with success, and in his spare time doodled parachutes and flying machines that resembled inventions of the 19th and 20th centuries. He made detailed drawings of human anatomy which are still highly regarded today. Leonardo also was quirky enough to write notebook entries in mirror (backwards) script, a trick which kept many of his observations from being widely known until decades after his death.

Michelangelo Buonarotti is definitely in competition for the top spot. Writer, sculptor, painter and architect, this Italian artist created some of the world’s most well-known artworks, from the sculptor of David to the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. If Michelangelo was a true “renaissance” man, it is in part, no doubt, to the various artistic influences and teachings of his time. He studied painting under the Florentine painter, Ghirlandaio. At the Medici academy, he would study sculptor under Bertoldo. He competed with Leonardo Da Vinci in the world of painting and he was commissioned by Pope Julius II, to erect his tomb and to paint the Sistine Chapel. In the Florence of his time, where his study of anatomy would later make his sculptures masterpieces of the human form, he was influenced by Dante, Giotto and Savonarola. His ideology was influenced by the Neoplatonic philosophy. He attempted to achieve in his own life a Platonic image of beauty of the human form and all material things as a mirror of the inner soul combined with Christian ideas of sin. He was a successful poet, having written hundreds of sonnets.