Art Works by Leonardo Da Vinci Quiz

Answer:

Let's stroll through this museum and take a look at the works of art that were by Leonardo Da Vinci:

"The Annunciation", is one of Da Vinci's earliest surviving works, and resides at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Some scholars think it's possible that his teacher, Andrea del Verrocchio, made minor contributions on this oil and tempera on poplar wood panel. The painting depicts the scene from the Bible's Gospel of Luke (1:26-38), in which the angel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary that she will have the immaculate conception in giving birth to Jesus, the Son of God.

"Benois Madonna" is an oil on canvas by Da Vinci, painted c. 1478-1480, depicting the Virgin Mary and The infant Jesus. Mary is seated on a bench in a dark room, holding Jesus on her lap. Mary holds a flower that Jesus reaches for. It is believed to be the first work Leonardo painted independently, at age 26, following his apprenticeship with Andrea del Verrocchio, in the Florence workshop. It is located at the Hermitage Museum, in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

"The Lady with an Ermine" was painted by Leonardo da Vinci around 1489-1490, and is one of only four female portraits ever painted by him. The oil on walnut panel, displayed at the Czartoryski Museum, National Museum in Kraków, Poland, depicts Cecilia Gallerani, a young woman who became the mistress of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan. He had been Da Vinci's patron for nearly almost a decade. Cecilia was a noble woman, though not wealthy, and was 16-years-old at the time of the portrait, having recently given birth to Ludovico's son.

"The Madonna of the Carnation" was painted when Leonardo was still an apprentice Andrea del Verrocchio's workshop. It's an oil on poplar wood panel with Mary seated with the infant Jesus on her lap, a common motif in Christian art. Mary holds a red carnation in her left hand, a common Christian symbol signifying the blood of Christ. The painting had been owned by Giulio de' Medici, who later became Pope Clement VII from 1523 to 1534. Three centuries later it entered the collection of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich in 1889, where it remains today.

The next painting is the "Mona Lisa", an oil on poplar wood panel, created by Da Vinci c. 1503-1519, which he likely worked on until his death. This painting that is a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a silk merchant from Florence. Among the painting's revolutionary characteristics are her direct eye contact with the viewer, a bodily posture turned diagonally toward the viewer as opposed to a stiff profile, and the imaginative landscape behind her of vast, winding paths, distant mountains, and a bridge, all in a hazy atmospheric perspective. You can see this portrait in person, at the Louvre Museum in Paris, but if you plan on taking a photograph, bear in mind, there is no flash photography allowed, and no tripod or selfie stick.

The sketch called "Portrait of Isabella d'Este" in the Louvre is universally accepted as art work by Leonardo Da Vinci, but there is an oil painting of it as well that was discovered in a Swiss bank vault; most experts agree that the oil painting is not the work of Da Vinci. With regard to the black and red chalk, yellow pastel on paper sketch, Da Vinci created it c. 1499-1500 during a brief stay in Mantua, after fleeing Milan following the French invasion. Isabella d'Este was the Marchioness of Mantua and a famous patron of the arts. For a long time, she wanted Da Vinci to do a portrait of her, and finally did commission one from him.

"Saint Jerome in the Wilderness" was painted c. 1480-1482, but was an unfinished masterpiece; ironically because of the very fact it was unfinished, it revealed keen insight for scholars in understanding Leonardo's creative process. One example is the observation of Da Vinci's fingerprints, indicating that he blended pigments and created soft-focus effects in the sky and landscape by using his fingers. That soft-focus landscape is in stark contrast to his style of sharp abstract rock formations and the arm. We know he dissected corpses to study anatomy and here with the unfinished anatomical sections we can see his detailed attention to sinew and muscle. It is housed in the Vatican Museum in Rome.

"The Sforza Horse" was a statue sculpted by Da Vinci sometime between 1482 and 1499. It was a clay sculpture that he intended would become the largest equestrian statue in the world. It was unfortunately destroyed by French soldiers who used it for target practice. It was much larger than the equestrian statues of Donatello and Verrochio that had preceded it. Da Vinci initially intended it to depict the horse in a dramatic rearing pose, but eventually sculpted it in a more stable, powerful walking gait.

"The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist" is a large-scale drawing, not a painting, drawn in charcoal, black and white chalk on paper, sometime between 1499 to 1508. It was put together from eight sheets of paper glued together, and is the only surviving large-scale drawing by Da Vinci. The cast of characters, as you might assume from the title of the work, are Saint Anne (Jesus's grandmother) seated with her daughter, Mary, on her thigh. Mary looks down on her son Jesus, who leans forward while held by his mother. He holds his hand up in a gesture signifying a blessing toward his young cousin, John the Baptist, who stands close. You can see it at the National Gallery in London.

"Vitruvian Man" is also a drawing (c. 1490) created with pen, brown ink, and watercolor over metalpoint on paper, and its home is in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, Italy. Its title refers to the 1st century BCE Roman architect Vitruvius. Vitruvius described the ideal proportions of the human body in his treatise titled "De architectura". He wrote that a well-proportioned man could fit perfectly within both a circle and a square, with his navel as the center of the circle. This concept was at the heart of classical and Renaissance thought: The association of human proportions to architecture and, to the universe.

These art works were not by Leonardo Da Vinci:

"Adoration of the Child with St. Bernard" is the 1459 work of the Early Renaissance master Fra Filippo Lippi. "The Arnolfini Portrait" was painted by the Early Netherlandish master Jan van Eyck, in 1434. "The Birth of Venus" was painted by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli around 1485.
"Coronation of the Virgin" was the subject of many artists' paintings over several centuries. The most famous version is by the early Renaissance master Fra Angelico, c. 1432. "Death of the Virgin" was also painted by several significant artists across different centuries, the most famous being by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, c. 1604-1606.