However among others of da Vinci notable works included a design of a fortress:
BUILDING AND ARCHITECTURE
Cesare Borgian hired da Vinci to design a fortress. As this design, along with his work on the Lombard canal system, both clearly demonstrate, his approach was highlighted by a phenomenal emphasis on careful scientific observation and a thorough understanding of the strength of materials.
Back then strength of materials was not a subject having a lot of information
Applying for service in a letter to Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo described himself as an experienced architect, military engineer, and hydraulic engineer; indeed, he was concerned with architectural matters all his life. But his effectiveness was essentially limited to the role of an adviser. Only once—in the competition for the cupola of the Milan cathedral (1487–90)—did he actually consider personal participation, but he gave up this idea when the model he had submitted was returned to him. In other instances, his claim to being a practicing architect was based on sketches for representative secular buildings: for the palace of a Milanese nobleman (about 1490), for the villa of the French governor in Milan (1507–08), and for the Medici residence in Florence (1515). Finally, there was his big project for the palace and garden of Romorantin in France (1517–19). Especially in this last project, Leonardo’s pencil sketches clearly reveal his mastery of technical as well as artistic architectural problems; the view in perspective gives an idea of the magnificence of the site.
In the fullness and richness of their ideas, Leonardo’s architectural studies offer an unusually wide-ranging insight into the architectural achievements of his epoch. Like a seismograph, his observations sensitively register all themes and problems. For almost 20 years he was associated with Bramante at the court of Milan and again met him in Rome in 1513–14; he was closely associated with other distinguished architects, such as Francesco di Giorgio, Giuliano da Sangallo, Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, and Luca Fancelli. Thus, he was brought in closest touch with all of the most-significant building undertakings of the time. Since Leonardo’s architectural drawings extend over his whole life, they span precisely that developmentally crucial period—from the 1480s to the second decade of the 16th century—in which the principles of the High Renaissance style were formulated and came to maturity. That this genetic process can be followed in the ideas of one of the greatest men of the period lends Leonardo’s studies their distinctive artistic value and their outstanding historical significance.
Hydraulics
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| Leonardo worked continuously and with originality on
his study of water, and many drawings and observations are to be found
scattered throughout the various notebooks. The idea of drawing all this
long experience together in a treatise occurred to him several times,
but the attempt came to an end almost as soon as it was begun. His
interest in water probably began when he was a boy, and in Verocchio's
studio in Florence he had some experience with fountains, but it was
during his time in Lombardy that he discovered possible applications
that were unknown in Tuscany. Advanced canal building had long existed
in Lombardy, for hydrographical reasons, and as the Duke's engineer,
Leonardo had to apply himself to the fundamental problem of water since
not only agriculture but also the working of machines and mills depended
on its being properly regulated. By carefully observing the flowing of rivers, he drew a number of conclusions about movement, erosion, and currents on the surface and below, often with the assistance of little wooden or glass models through which he made water flow. The results of these experiments were then applied to the practical problems of canal building, and many drawings of bulkheads, portholes and locks with movable gates are preserved in his notebooks. Leonardo's mind then turned to the much greater project of intervening in nature by deviating the River Arno and building a large, navigable canal which would connect Florence to the sea, through the area of Prato, Pistoia and Serravalle, and provide the longed-for access to the Tyrrhenian Sea. He devised further ambitious hydraulic schemes for the Veneto, where he saw the possibility of flooding the Isonzo valley in the event of a Turkish invasion, and for Lazio, where Pope Leo X consulted him about draining the Pontine Marshes. Fascinated by the idea of enabling men to move on and under the water, he designed buoys and breathing equipment, as well as considering the possibility of making boats move faster, with an improved hull in the shape of a fish or by machines operating paddles from within the vessel. The requirements of war persuaded him of the usefulness of a vessel with a double hull to protect it from the kind of damage he proposed to inflict on enemy ships, with men in diving suits equipped with screw devices breaking the keel and stealthily anchoring the ship to the bottom of the sea. Supplying city centres as well as the need to drain basins and marshland involved Leonardo in improving machines and pumps which had been known since ancient times. The Archimedean screw and water wheels fill the notebooks of Francesco di Giorgio Martini and other engineers of the time but, with Leonardo, they attained a graphic and functional perfection unknown elsewhere. |
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