Published August 23, 2008
The Personal and Professional Life of Leonardo Da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero Da Vinci was born to a Florentine notary and a peasant woman in Vinci, Tuscany on April 15th, 1452. Later, in the mid-1460's, when his family located to Florence, he received the finest education the city could offer. In 1478, after being apprenticed as a garzone, or studio boy, to Andrea del Verrocchio in 1466, he became an independent master and was on his way toward becoming one of the finest artists of the Renaissance.
However, for the first four years after his apprenticeship ended, very few of Da Vinci’s works were ever completed. His first commissioned work, the chapel of the Palazzo Vecchio, was never executed while others were never begun.
It wasn’t until 1482, when he was commissioned by the Duke of Milan as his principle engineer in a numerous amount of the Duke’s military enterprises. While in Milan, Da Vinci also produced some of his greatest works including The Last Supper, the Vitruvian Man, and The Virgin of the Rocks. In this time, also accomplished many other artistic pieces that have been lost through time including paintings, theater designs, and architectural drawings.
Throughout his career, Da Vinci worked in many integral cities in Italy, including Rome, a second stint in Milan where he continued his work as an engineer, and Florence where he completed several portraits, of which only one, the Mona Lisa, survived. The Mona Lisa was renowned for sfumato, a hazy, atmospheric effect and chiaroscuro, the blending of shadows to create shape.
Although Da Vinci was best known for his paintings, he was also an accomplished scientist, mathematician, and engineer, all of which have been seen throughout his many sketches and journal entries, probably the most important assets in recounting Da Vinci’s life. These entries not only related Da Vinci’s artistic life, but contained many of his sketches for machines ranging in purpose from flight to underwater travel.
And finally, Da Vinci’s journal entries were instrumental in retelling his travel’s across the whole of Italy to France, from his six years traveling between Milan and Florence to his final years near Amboise at the Château de Cloux, where he died on May 2, 1519.
Ha, this was supposed to be one page, double spaced and ended up like one and a half after trimming it down from three. Can you believe it, essay on the third day of school. Yuck.
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This is really just about da Vinci's professional life. You could mention that he was probably gay, about his students, like Salai and Zoro.
If you need to trim it down, then there's stuff in there that you could take out. All those dates - I know they're important but they're not desperately interesting.
I always find that the personal life of someone is more interesting than the professional life, and this essay was primarily about his paintings and what he did for who. While there's nothing wrong with this at all, it makes it a little dry.
Don't get put off, you have some good facts in here!
Still, if you can make it interesting for the teacher or whoever to read, so they enjoy it, it might count for something. If you were given the title as a prompt, then you really should add more in about his personal life, because that's part of the prompt. Mention about how he would buy caged birds in the market and then release them. About how he took in Salai as a penniless beggar/thief/limb of Satan and didn't kick him out even when Salai stole his money and brought like, twenty four pairs of shoes. Little things like that make it interesting.
What precisely was the prompt for this?
I guess my main complaint is that it's just a list of facts, but then, I don't know what your teacher's looking for, especially in a paper that's supposed to be so short. Is it just supposed to be a research assignment where you compile a list of biographical facts?
Even if that was the assignment, this still strikes me as a boring way to start an essay:
Think about it as a real-life introduction...when you meet somebody, usually you tell him a bit about yourself. I might say, "I like to write," not "I was born in February in rural western New York..."
Most teachers like to call it a "hook" when you start an essay with something a little more interesting. Once you have your reader's attention, then you can delve into the biographical details.