Leonardo da Vinci never got married or had children of his own. But at the end of his lifetime, he did have an apprentice. The young artist’s name was Francesco Melzi. When Mr. da Vinci died, he left all he had to Francesco. Imagine inheriting the Renaissance man’s notebooks! Imagine owning your great teacher’s tools, drawings, and machines! If you were Francesco, what would you experiment with first?
Da Vinci techniques to try at home
Can you test some da Vinci techniques? Sketch a copy of the Mona Lisa. Start your own messy Codex, a notebook full of your ideas or observations about how things work. Try writing backward and check your work in a mirror. Speaking of mirrors—try to become a “living mirror” like Mr. da Vinci did. Take your sharp pencil and your sharp eye into world. Capture what you see: plants, animals, and especially moving things. Mr. da Vinci gave this advice: When you are out and about, look closely for people moving. Sketch out the main shapes you see quickly. Put an O for the head and straight or bent lines for the arms and legs. When you get home, finish the drawings. Mr. da Vinci lived in a time without cameras. He had to be the camera! Can you?
Leonardo da Vinci had many important jobs. One was painting a wall with a picture of Jesus and His disciples eating the Passover meal. (You can read the account of this in Luke 22. This event is sometimes called The Last Supper, which is also the name of Mr. da Vinci’s painting.) To Mr. da Vinci, it mattered very much that the movements of each person he painted showed what was happening in that person’s mind. His painting does that. But Mr. da Vinci did not seem to believe in painting quickly. He worked slowly. He took long breaks.
Unlike other artists of the time, he did not paint frescoes—paintings on plaster walls finished before the plaster dried. Instead, he used egg tempera paint. The paint was a new and exciting experiment. But it didn’t stick to the wall very well. Steam and smoke from the monastery meant the egg mixture was soon peeling off! In years since, people have had to fix The Last Supper over and over. Not everyone agrees that it now looks the way it once did, and some think the restorations have done more harm than good. To make your own tempera paint: Drop an egg—yolk only—into a bowl. Mix in some food coloring. Paint—but not on the wall!
