In historical science there is a very conditionaldate of the end of the Middle Ages - 1456 year. They are succeeded by the Renaissance, which began especially in Italy, when there was a great interest in antiquity with its achievements in various fields of culture and social activity.
In Italy, torn apart by internal contradictionsand feudal wars, suddenly there is an ejection of spirituality - the Renaissance of Leonardo da Vinci. At the same time, the dark Michael Angelo and cheerful, surrounded by the company of friends, Rafael walks the streets. In Florence, simultaneously receive an order for the painting of the Cathedral of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, and supervise the progress of work entrusted to the young promising official Niccolo Machiavelli. Well, is not this an ejection of spirituality? The ideals of the beauty of antiquity with its precisely verified mathematical proportions of statues and buildings become a model for artists. But they approach it creatively, with great imagination, borrowing only what they consider possible and appropriate, creatively reprocessing the Greco-Roman heritage.
The genius of this man spread to almost allthe field of engineering and painting. He positioned himself mostly not as an artist, which was less in demand, but as an engineer who knows how to create weapons, for example, or as a culinary specialist who brought new inventions and dishes to the kitchen. In Milan, he was also the manager of the duke's table. He watched both the serving of feasting tables and the cooking. Leonardo da Vinci's engineering achievements include numerous blueprints for building an airplane.
For some internal reasons, art was of little interest to Leonardo da Vinci. Works that have survived to our times are relatively few.
He wore them all the time and wrote down the ideasecret letter, invented, of course, by him. No one has fully deciphered the record of Leonardo da Vinci. For all his life there were about one hundred and twenty such books, in which both fables and anecdotes were recorded. They have drawings, sketches. Leonardo considered Leonardo to be not book knowledge but knowledge of laws and things. His desire to move science forward was very great.
To this day, Leonardo's manuscripts, which hehe wrote not his right, but his left hand. He did not publish them, although in the last years of his life such thoughts occurred to him. He did not write in scientific Latin, but in the colloquial Italian of his time - concisely, briefly, accurately. His language is rich, bright and expressive.
Painting "John the Baptist" by Leonardo da Vinciwritten with walnut oil on wood in 1508-1513. Its size is 69 x 57 cm. I must say that at that time there was a completely different attitude to the materials for painting. The oil stood and bleached in the sun for fifty years. Sixty, or even more, years, the boards were dried. And the painter made the paints himself, using crystals, powdered into powder.
So, the description of the picture of Leonardo da Vinci "John the Baptist".
The first mention of the painting "John the Baptist"Leonardo da Vinci belong to the year 1517. After the death of Leonardo, this work became the property of his student Salai, who made a copy for herself, and the one that survived well. And after his death, relatives sold the original to Francis I in France. So this work was in the Louvre. But later it was resold to England in the collection of Charles I. After the execution of the king, she is already in Germany, but no later than 1666 it is purchased by agents of Louis XIV, and she reappears in France. And now is in the exposition of the Louvre.