Beginning of Essay
(1452-1519), Florentine artist, one of the great masters of high Renaissance, celebrated as a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist. His profound love of knowledge and research was the keynote of both his scientific and artistic endeavors. His inn ....

Middle of Essay
.... and bronze. In 1472 he was entered in the painters guild of Florence, and in 1476 he was still considered Verrocchios assistant. In 1478 Leonardo became an independent master. His first commission, to paint an altarpiece for the chapel of the plazzo vecchio, the Florentine town hall, was never executed. The period of Italian art in which lived is called high Renaissance. In the course of the fifteenth century a long chain of early Renaissance artists, mainly of Florentine decent, had concentrated on a visual as well as theoretical conquest of nature. Their work formed the basis for a great idealistic style, which began to emerge from about 1490 onwar ....