Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Self-portrait
The great Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci proved himself to be a universal creator. He was a sculptor, architect, inventor. In Italy they called him a sorcerer, a wizard, a man who can do anything. Infinitely talented, he created various mechanisms, designed unprecedented aircrafts like a modern helicopter, he came up with a tank. A brilliant master, he made a huge contribution to art, culture and science.
The portrait of the Florentine girl “Mona Lisa”, or “La Gioconda”, painted by him, supposedly the wife of the wealthy Florentine merchant delle Giocondo, is shown in the Louvre in Paris and is considered a masterpiece of world painting. For centuries, the smile of “La Gioconda” has attracted millions of people -
Leonardo was born near Florence in the town of Vinci, the illegitimate son of a notary Piero and a simple peasant woman Katerina. His father tried to introduce him to his profession.
But young Leonardo was not interested in social laws; the last thing he wanted was to rewrite papers. Noticing his son’s craving for painting, his father sent him to study with the Florentine artist and sculptor Verrocchio. For six years Leonardo studied the secrets of artistic craft and sculpture. The master quickly recognized the outstanding talent in his student and predicted a great future for him.
At the age of twenty, Leonardo began to work independently. He was a tall, slender, attractive young man, possessed considerable strength, he bent horseshoes with his hands, he had no equal in fencing, women admired him. But despite many advantages, he was unable to find a job in Florence, where artists were patronized by the head of Florence, Lorenzo Medici the Magnificent, who most liked the works of the famous Botticelli. Leonardo did not want to be in the second role and left Florence.
He went to Milan, where he lived for 17 years. It was in Milan that Leonardo showed many of his talents. The ruler of the city, Duke Lodovico Moro, initially tasked him with laying water supply and sewerage systems. Young Leonardo successfully dealt with these problems. Then he became interested in anatomy and made several drawings for the human anatomical atlas. At the same time, he began work in the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie on the fresco “The Last Supper,” where he reflected the final period of Christ’s life, when He sadly said to his disciples: “One of you will betray Me.” In this work, Leonardo, as contemporaries noted, showed himself to be a subtle psychologist, able to convey the tension of the situation and the different feelings that gripped Jesus’ disciples after this sacramental phrase of His.
In Milan, Leonardo made one of his interesting sculptures - an equestrian portrait of Lodovic Moreau's father, Duke Francesco. The statue has not reached our time; it was broken by the French, but a drawing by the artist remains, which gives an idea of the scale and grandeur of the sculpture. In 1513, at the invitation of the Pope, da Vinci came to Rome to participate in the painting of the Belvedere Palace. Soon he returned to his homeland and in Florence, in the great hall of the Palazzo Vecchio, he painted the fresco “The Battle of Angier.”
In 1516, he accepted the invitation of the French king Francis I and lived the rest of his days in the royal castle of Cloux near the city of Amboise. During this period of his life, he painted the painting “John the Baptist,” prepared a series of drawings on biblical themes, and invented a device for measuring wind force and the speed of a ship. Among his works, projects of earth-moving machines and a submarine were later discovered. After his death, several volumes of manuscripts remained, which contain sketches and drawings of various machines, the purpose of which is still unclear.
The Vitruvian Man is a famous drawing that depicts a naked man with arms and legs spread apart in a circle and square. For artists of that time it was considered canonical. Leonardo created it to study the proportions of the human body. It was based on a treatise by the Roman architect Vitruvius.
Leonardo da Vinci is an excellent example of a man with a multifaceted talent: he was not only a great representative of art - painter, sculptor, musician, writer, but also a scientist, architect, technician, engineer, inventor.
Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in the village of Anchiano near the small town of Vinci, not far from Florence.
The father of the future genius, Piero from Vinci, a wealthy notary and landowner, was famous person in Florence, and mother Katerina was a simple peasant girl.
From the age of 4-5, the boy was raised by his father and stepmother, while his own mother, as was customary, was hastened to marry off with a dowry to a peasant.
The handsome boy, distinguished by his extraordinary intelligence and friendly character, immediately became everyone’s favorite and favorite in his father’s house. This was partly facilitated by the fact that Leonardo's first two stepmothers were childless.
Stories from the life of Leonardo da Vinci
Once a peasant he knew asked Father Leonardo to find an artist to paint a round wooden shield. Ser Pierrot gave the shield to his son.
Leonardo decided to depict the head of the gorgon Medusa, and in order for the image of the monster to make the right impression on the audience, he used lizards, snakes, grasshoppers, caterpillars, bats and “other creatures” as subjects, “from a variety of which, combining them in different ways, he created the monster very disgusting and terrible, which poisoned with its breath and ignited the air.”
The result exceeded his expectations: when Leonardo showed the finished work to his father, he was scared.
The son told him: “This work serves the purpose for which it was made. So take it and give it away, for this is the effect that is expected from works of art.”
Ser Piero did not give Leonardo's work to the peasant: he received another shield, bought from a junk dealer. Father Leonardo sold the shield of Medusa in Florence, receiving one hundred ducats for it.
Leonardo had many friends and students. As for love relationship, there is no reliable information on this matter, since Leonardo carefully hid this side of his life. He was not married; there is no reliable information about his affairs with women. According to some versions, Leonardo had a relationship with Cecilia Gallerani.
One day Verrocchio received an order for the painting “The Baptism of Christ” and instructed his student Leonardo to paint one of the two angels. This was a common practice in art workshops of that time: the teacher created a picture together with student assistants. The most talented and diligent were entrusted with the execution of an entire fragment. Two Angels, painted by Leonardo and Verrocchio, clearly demonstrated the superiority of the student over the teacher. As Vasari writes, “... the amazed Verrocchio abandoned his brush and never returned to painting...”
Leonardo took on many subjects, but once he started studying them, he soon abandoned them.
He also paid attention to music, having mastered playing the lyre to perfection. Contemporaries recall that he “divinely sang his improvisations.” Once he even made a specially shaped lute himself, giving it the appearance of a horse’s head and richly decorating it with silver. Playing it, he so surpassed all the musicians gathered at the court of Duke Louis Sforza that he “charmed” him for life.
Leonardo da Vinci was an excellent magician.
Leonardo could create a multicolored flame from a boiling liquid by pouring wine into it; easily turned white wine into red; with one blow he broke a cane, the ends of which were placed on two glasses, without breaking either of them; he applied a little of his saliva to the end of the pen - and the inscription on the paper turned black.
The miracles that Leonardo showed impressed his contemporaries so much that he was seriously suspected of serving “black magic.” In addition, near the genius there were always strange, dubious personalities, like Tomaso Giovanni Masini, known under the pseudonym Zoroaster de Peretola, a mechanic, jeweler and at the same time an adept of the secret sciences.
Until his death, da Vinci was extremely active and traveled a lot. According to legend, Leonardo da Vinci died on May 2, 1519 in the arms of King Francis I, asking forgiveness from God and people for “not doing everything for art that he could have done.”
Contemporaries were amazed by Leonardo's appearance.
He was tall, slender and so beautiful in face that he was called an “angel”, and at the same time superhumanly strong. Right hand - being left-handed! - could crush a horseshoe.
At the same time, his mentality seems infinitely far from not only the level of consciousness of his contemporaries, but also from humanity in general. Leonardo, for example, was in complete control of his feelings, showing virtually no emotions characteristic of ordinary people, always maintained a surprisingly even mood. Moreover, he was distinguished by some strange coldness of insensibility.
He neither loved nor hated, but understood, therefore he not only seemed, but was also indifferent to good and evil in the human sense, to the ugly and the beautiful, which he studied with equal interest as something given, external.
Leonardo practiced special psychotechnical exercises, dating back to the esoteric practices of the Pythagoreans and modern neurolinguistics, in order to sharpen his perception of the world, improve memory and develop imagination.
He seemed to know the evolutionary keys to the secrets of the human psyche, which are still far from being realized in modern man. Thus, one of Leonardo da Vinci’s secrets was a special sleep formula: he slept for 15 minutes every 4 hours, thus reducing his daily sleep from 8 to 1.5 hours. Thanks to this, the genius immediately saved 75% of his sleep time, which actually extended his life from 70 to 100 years! In the esoteric tradition, similar techniques have been known since time immemorial, but they have always been considered so secret that, like other psycho- and mnemonic techniques, they have never been made public.
In addition, da Vinci had the ability to foresee the future, which may even have surpassed the prophetic gift of Nostradamus.
His famous "Prophecies" (originally a series of notes made in Milan in 1494) paint terrifying pictures of the future, many of which were either already our past or are now our present.
“People will talk to each other from the most distant countries and answer each other” - we are undoubtedly talking about the phone.
“People will walk and not move; they will speak to those who are not there, they will hear those who do not speak.” - television, tape recording, sound playback.
“People... will instantly scatter around different parts peace without moving" — TV image transmission.
“You will see yourself falling from great heights without any harm to you.” - obviously skydiving.
“Countless lives will be destroyed, and countless holes will be made in the ground.” —here, most likely, the seer is talking about craters from aerial bombs and shells that really destroyed countless lives.
Leonardo even foresaw travel into space: “And many land and water animals will rise between the stars...”
The inventions and discoveries of Leonardo da Vinci cover all areas of knowledge, completely anticipating the main directions of development of modern civilization.
In 1499, Leonardo, for a meeting in Milan with the French king Louis XII, designed a wooden mechanical lion, which, after taking a few steps, opened its chest and showed its insides “filled with lilies.”
The scientist is the inventor of a spacesuit, a submarine, a steamship, and flippers.
He has a manuscript that shows the possibility of diving to great depths without a spacesuit thanks to the use of a special gas mixture (the secret of which he deliberately destroyed). To invent it, it was necessary to have a good understanding of the biochemical processes of the human body, which were completely unknown at that time!
It was he who first proposed installing batteries of firearms on armored ships, invented a helicopter, a bicycle, a glider, a parachute, a tank, a machine gun, poisonous gases, a smoke screen for troops, a magnifying glass (100 years before Galileo!).
Da Vinci invented textile machines, weaving machines, machines for making needles, powerful cranes, systems for draining swamps through pipes, and arched bridges.
He created drawings of levers and screws designed to lift enormous weights - mechanisms that did not exist in his time.
It is amazing that Leonardo describes these machines and mechanisms in detail, although they were impossible even to make at that time.
1. Leonardo encrypted a lot so that his ideas would be revealed gradually, as humanity “matured” to them. The inventor wrote with his left hand and in incredibly small letters, and even from right to left. But this was not enough - he turned all the letters over in a mirror image. He spoke in riddles, made metaphorical prophecies, and loved to make puzzles. Leonardo did not sign his works, but they have identification marks. For example, if you look closely at the paintings, you can find a symbolic bird taking off. There are apparently many such signs, which is why one or another of his brainchildren is suddenly discovered centuries later. As was the case with Madonna Benois, who for a long time traveling actors carried them with them as home icons.
2. Leonardo invented the principle of scattering (or sfumato). The objects on his canvases have no clear boundaries: everything, like in life, is blurry, penetrates one into another, which means it breathes, lives, awakens imagination. The Italian advised practicing such distraction by looking at stains on the walls, ashes, clouds or dirt caused by dampness. He specially fumigate the room where he worked with smoke in order to look for images in clubs. Thanks to the sfumato effect, the flickering smile of Gioconda appeared, when, depending on the focus of the view, it seems to the viewer that the heroine of the picture is either smiling tenderly or grinning predatorily. The second miracle of the Mona Lisa is that it is “alive.” Over the centuries, her smile changes, the corners of her lips rise higher. In the same way, the Master mixed the knowledge of different sciences, so his inventions find more and more applications over time. From the treatise on light and shadow come the beginnings of the sciences of penetrating force, oscillatory movement, wave propagation. All of his 120 books have been scattered (sfumato) throughout the world and are gradually being revealed to humanity.
3. Leonardo preferred the method of analogy to all others. The approximate nature of an analogy is an advantage over the precision of a syllogism, when a third inevitably follows from two conclusions. But one thing. But the more bizarre the analogy, the further the conclusions from it extend. Take for example the famous illustration of the Master, proving the proportionality of the human body. With arms outstretched and legs spread, the human figure fits into a circle. And with closed legs and raised arms - in a square, while forming a cross. This “mill” gave impetus to a number of diverse thoughts. The Florentine was the only one who came up with designs for churches where the altar is placed in the middle (the human navel), and the worshipers are evenly distributed around. This church plan in the form of an octahedron served as another invention of the genius - the ball bearing.
4. Leonardo liked to use the rule of contrapposto - opposition of opposites. Contrapposto creates movement. When making a sculpture of a giant horse in Corte Vecchio, the artist placed the horse’s legs in contrapposto, which created the illusion of a special free movement. Everyone who saw the statue involuntarily changed their gait to a more relaxed one.
5. Leonardo was never in a hurry to finish a work, because incompleteness is an essential quality of life. Finishing means killing! The slowness of the creator was the talk of the town; he could make two or three strokes and leave the city for many days, for example, to improve the valleys of Lombardy or create an apparatus for walking on water. Almost every one of his significant works is “unfinished.” Many were damaged by water, fire, barbaric treatment, but the artist did not correct them. The Master had a special composition, with the help of which he seemed to specially create “windows of incompleteness” in the finished painting. Apparently, in this way he left a place where life itself could intervene and correct something.
Capturing the scale of Leonardo da Vinci's personality is impossible. A person who became a legend during his lifetime remains a legend and an unattainable ideal in the modern world.
The genius or, as he is often called, the titan of the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, is a truly unique personality. His life is an amazing kaleidoscope - in all areas that he took on, from painting to complex engineering inventions he reached incredible heights. Meanwhile, we know almost nothing about Leonardo himself - he was a very secretive and lonely person, and the first biography was written 30 years after his death by Giorgio Vasari.
Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452 in the small town of Vinci in northwestern Italy. The history of his family holds several mysteries, since it is unknown who his mother was. All sources indicate that her name was Katerina, but this is what she did - open question. Traditionally it is believed that she was a simple, young peasant woman. Leonardo's father was the notary Piero da Vinci, who was 25 years old at that time. The father was present at the child's baptism and recognized him, but for unknown reasons, Leonardo spent the first 4 years of his life in the village of Anhiano. In the year of his son's birth, Piero marries Albier Amador and only 4 years later takes his son to live with him. The position of a notary in those days was considered quite noble, so Leonardo spent his childhood and youth in prosperity and prosperity. The father was married 3 times, had 12 children and lived to be 77 years old. But he, as Vasari noted, was an ordinary person, which makes Leonardo’s extraordinariness even more interesting. One way or another, the father still gave his son a good home education, albeit unsystematic, which Leonardo later mentioned in his notes.
The young man's talent manifested itself at an early age. An interesting episode is in which Pierre da Vinci asked his son to paint a large wooden shield as a gift to one of his neighbors. Leonardo approached the matter with joy and great responsibility, choosing the image of the Gorgon Medusa for the design on the shield. The drawing was made so realistically that when my father saw it, he literally reeled in horror. Of course, he could not give such a masterpiece as a gift and kept it for himself. Now a copy of this shield by Caravaggio is kept in one of the museums in France. It was probably after this incident that Piero decided to send his son to study in Florence, where Leonardo, under the edification of the famous artist Verrocchio, studied painting. Thus began a period in the life of Leonardo da Vinci, called the Florentine period.
Florence in those days was one of the main centers of the intellectual elite of the entire Western Europe. Leonardo, having found himself among such famous artists as Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Bellini and many others, stands out for his detachment and loneliness. It is clearly evident in his notes that his loneliness is conscious. He believed that “if you are lonely, then you are completely your own,” and did not seek to make close acquaintances with anyone. This is partly why he was not part of the circle of intellectuals of the Florentine ruler Lorenzo de' Medici. But not only because of this he could not get into the intellectual environment of that time. One of the reasons was something that Leonardo himself was annoyed about - his poor knowledge of Latin, which until modern times was considered the main language of science. But another reason was more important - Leonardo was an artist, and during the Renaissance, artists were considered more likely to be artisans or even professional painters carrying out orders; artists were treated like servants. Not appreciated by the circle of humanist intellectuals, da Vinci's talent amazed Verrocchio. While working in the workshop, the teacher instructed Leonardo to paint an angel on one of his canvases. The figure of an angel painted by da Vinci impressed the teacher so much that, according to Vasari, he never picked up a brush again. The student surpassed the teacher. Soon Leonardo opens his own workshop.
At this time, Pope Sixtus IV invited the best Tuscan craftsmen to work in the Vatican. Among them were Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Perugino, Philip Lippi, Signorelli and many others, but not Leonardo. It is possible that the underrated genius felt some annoyance at what happened and decided to move to Milan. In addition, his engineering and scientific inclinations were already increasingly mastering him, and Milan at that time was almost the opposite of sophisticated Florence - it was an industrial city, where many craftsmen, gunsmiths and artisans established strong production. Leonardo asks for patronage from local businessman Lodovico Sforza, and positions himself primarily not as an artist, but as an engineer, talking in a letter about his own engineering ideas, such as cannons, closed chariots, catapults and ballistas, and only mentions in one line about his artistic activities. Sforza takes Leonardo to court and gives him various tasks, both engineering and related to art. One of the tasks was the construction of a monument to the founder of the Sforza dynasty - Francesco Sforza. The statue in the form of a horse with a rider was supposed to become a symbol of the legitimacy and majesty of the family’s power, and Leonardo set to work. Work on the monument continued for 16 years. After several unsuccessful castings, a clay statue of the horse was made, but due to the French invasion of Milan in 1499, it was irretrievably lost. Fortunately, the drawings have been preserved, from which one can judge the extraordinary nature of Leonardo’s idea.
The Milanese period increasingly confirmed the engineering and artistic talent of Leonardo da Vinci. It was then that his paintings “Lady with an Ermine”, “Madonna Litta”, “Madonna in the Grotto”, “The Last Supper”, and many anatomical and simple pencil drawings appeared. One of the most famous drawings by Leonardo da Vinci is the Vitruvian Man - the figure of a man in two superimposed positions, inscribed in a circle and a square. The drawing measures 34.3×24.5 cm and is made in ink and watercolor. The figure of a man shows the mathematical proportions of the human body in accordance with data from the treatises of the Roman architect Vitruvius. The Vitruvian man is a kind of symbol of the natural ideality of man, his internal symmetry and mathematical proportionality. The drawing is thus both a work of art and a scientific work.
Da Vinci's engineering developments and ideas, which have come down to us in his notes, cannot but surprise. It’s amazing how a person at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries could be so far ahead of his time! The drawings preserved designs for a rotating chain for a bicycle, machines for mass production, various aircraft, machine tools and much more. He developed projects for urban improvement, designed locks, dams, canals, mills, and even calculated the cost of these projects, but, unfortunately, no one took on them. Da Vinci’s irrepressible and intense inventive and engineering activity seemed to be a protest against those circles of intellectuals where he did not get into. He proved to himself that he was still part of this circle, and was doing it head and shoulders above others.
After the invasion of French troops, Leonardo returns to Florence. Here he receives an assignment from the Senoria to participate in the painting of the Great Council Hall of the Palace of the Senoria, where Michelangelo was already working at that time. So the two giants of the era began to work together, although without any particular affection for each other. As Vasari notes, from time to time the then young Raphael came to see the work of the masters. A truly incredible situation! Around the same time, Leonardo painted his main masterpiece - the world-famous “La Gioconda” or “Mona Lisa”. The history of this painting attracts art historians from all countries, and the mysterious Mrs. Lisa del Giocondo does not leave viewers indifferent. The most famous work painting in the world had an incredible impact on global artistic culture, and Leonardo da Vinci himself did not part with his masterpiece, even after leaving for France. He had three such favorite paintings: “Mona Lisa”, “John the Baptist” and “St. Anne with the Madonna and Child Christ”.
Leonardo again spent some time in Milan in the service of the French king Louis XII, and then in Rome with Pope Leo X. In 1516, da Vinci was invited to the court by the new king of France, Francis I. He received the title of the first royal artist, engineer and architect, but in essence it was just a “decoration” of the court - it was prestigious for the king to have “that same Leonardo”, who had already become a legend. Unfortunately, the artist’s health was deteriorating, his right arm was paralyzed, it was increasingly difficult for him to move without assistance, so he could carry out his job responsibilities he could. Then Francis I purchased the Mona Lisa from Leonardo, thereby ensuring its safety for centuries.
Shortly before his death, the artist moved to the small town of Amboise, on the Loire River. At the age of 67, Leonardo da Vinci was already bedridden. In full consciousness, he writes a will: all his manuscripts and books went to one of his students, Francesco Melzi. On May 2, 1519, Leonardo da Vinci quietly passed away.
The phenomenon of a brilliant artist, scientist, and writer still excites the minds of researchers. The personality of Leonardo da Vinci does not fit into any human size, the scope of his activities is enormous, and the influence he had on the entire world culture is incredibly amazing. Leonardo is truly inexhaustible; modernity is considering more and more new aspects of his life and work, trying to comprehend the secrets of the “universal man”. An asteroid is named after him, many authors use the prototype of Leonardo da Vinci in their works, films and TV series are being made in one way or another related to the legacy of the great da Vinci, and much more. He became more than just a historically significant figure - he became an image, a titan and an unattainable ideal.
Rotating mechanisms, secret drawings, unsolved mysteries of paintings - this is a list of what the coolest engineer and artist of the Renaissance left behind. I present to you a collection of the most significant creations and mysteries of a genius who was ahead of his time.
Machine gun prototype
Leonardo actively advertised his military-technical ideas. One of them revealed the essence of the machine gun. He could not quickly fire bullets from one barrel. But it could fire volleys at short intervals, and if built, it would effectively mow down the advancing infantry.
Automobile
It is assumed that this idea of creating a car was born to Leonardo back in 1478. But only in 1752, a self-taught Russian mechanic and peasant Leonty Shamshurenkov was able to assemble a “self-running stroller” driven by the power of two people.
The first bicycle in history
The first technical drawings of a bicycle belong to Leonardo da Vinci. The Meiningen Chronicle of 1447 tells of a moving device driven by a driver.
Bearing
For the first time, the idea, as many believe, was born during the Roman Empire, but historians claim that it was in da Vinci’s notebooks that the first sketches of the bearing appeared.
Parachute
In his manuscripts, Leonardo described the exact dimensions of the device for safe descent from great heights. Swiss Olivier Tepp decided to test it in reality and jumped from a height of 650 meters with a parachute. According to the tester, the jump was safe, but such a parachute was practically uncontrollable.
Scuba and skis
Leonardo loved water: he developed diving instructions, invented and described a breathing apparatus for scuba diving.
Tank
This kind of basin on wheels with cannons and a turret is the progenitor of modern tanks. It was equipped with a system of gears that formed a sequence. Eight people were protected from the battle by the outer shell, so they could deliver such a “hedgehog” on foot right into the thick of the battle without being wounded.
Ratchet Lift
Leonardo came up with a lot of little things that were very useful. Then he used them in his mechanisms. A ratchet is a locking device that prevents the shaft from rotating in the opposite direction.
Device for winding thread onto a spool
At one time, Leonardo simplified the lives of many tailors.
Robot Knight
It is believed that in 1495 Leonardo da Vinci first formulated the idea of a “mechanical man,” in other words, a robot. According to the master's plan, this device was supposed to be a mannequin dressed in knight's armor and capable of reproducing several human movements.
Mona Lisa and its author
Researchers have been struggling to solve the mystery of Mona Lisa's smile for many years. Almost every year there is a scientist reporting: “The secret has been revealed!” Some believe that the difference in perception of Mona Lisa's facial expression depends on the personal mental qualities of each person. To some it seems sad, to others thoughtful, to others crafty, to others even evil. And some believe that Gioconda doesn’t even smile at all!
Manuscripts
Leonardo da Vinci could write with both hands, and “mirror” - that is, from right to left, although sometimes, for example, for correspondence with officials, he used the usual writing style. The most interesting thing is that the inventor deliberately made mistakes in the drawings in order to prevent, in today's language, industrial espionage. That is why many secrets of genius remain unsolved for humanity.
human anatomy
An interesting fact is that da Vinci is considered the inventor of caricature drawing - due to the fact that he often depicted mutilated human bodies. In January 2005, researchers discovered Leonardo's secret laboratory. There, intact frescoes by the master were found, as well as a room for dissecting corpses (Leonardo and his students dissected hundreds of dead people, studying anatomy).
"The Last Supper"
When creating the fresco “The Last Supper,” Leonardo da Vinci searched for ideal models for a very long time. Jesus must embody Good, and Judas, who decided to betray him at this meal, is Evil.
Leonardo interrupted his work many times, going in search of sitters. One day, while listening to a church choir, he saw a perfect image of Christ in one of the young singers and, inviting him to his workshop, made several sketches of him. Three years have passed. The Last Supper was almost completed, but Leonardo never found a suitable model for Judas. The cardinal, who was responsible for the painting of the cathedral, hurried the artist. And after a long search, the artist saw a man lying in a gutter - young, but prematurely decrepit and drunk. The artist ordered his assistants to deliver him directly to the cathedral. The man did not really understand what was happening and where he was, but Leonardo captured on canvas the face of a man mired in sins. When he finished his work, the beggar, who by this time had already come to his senses a little, approached the canvas and cried out:
- I've already seen this picture before!
- When? - Da Vinci was surprised.
- Three years ago, before I lost everything. At that time, when I sang in the choir, and my life was full of dreams, some artist painted Christ from me.
