V. Check yourself (your translation) against the pattern translation version.

VI. Listen to the recorded text and practise consecutive interpreting. Leonardo da Vinci

(1452–1519)

He strived to perceive and describe harmony, and he wanted to find the truth. He was called a great scientist and a genius artist. He made a tremendous contribution into the theory of cognition. He was a pioneer in everything but very often he left his projects unfinished.

The great Italian, Leonardo da Vinci, was born on April 15, 1452. At an early age he received a decent education but in a small village the opportunities to learn were scarce. His father realized that Leonardo had an artist’s gift and in the year of 1469 he sent him to Florence as an apprentice in the studio of an artist and sculptor Andrea Verrocchio. Leonardo was left-handed; he behaved in an eccentric way but remembered carefully the teacher’s instructions.

Leonardo was admitted to the Florence Guild of Painters when he was only twenty. At that time he made a considerable contribution into his teacher’s work «The Baptism of Christ».

Leonardo painted an angel on the left side of the picture and a part of the landscape. In this picture he used oil paints which were an innovation in Italy and with their help he surpassed his teacher in using light and colours. Leonardo continued staying at Veroccio’s place but he started working on his own pictures. At the Renaissance time most artistic canvases were devoted to religion or they were portraits. One could see landscapes only as the background of such canvases as «The Baptism of Christ». But painting a landscape only as a background was not sufficient for Leonardo. His first dated drawing «The Valley of Arno» is completely a rural landscape. From the very beginning Leonardo deviated from the generally accepted tradition and created a new style representing his own view of the world of nature.

Leonardo conceived a brilliant idea of creating a statue which had never existed before. He was occupied with the working out of statue models for some years and it took him eleven years more to make a clay model of a 22-feet high horse – the height of a two-storey building. But not all of Leonardo’s imposing plans were put into life.

Leonardo devoted his attention only partly to the horse statue. Besides working on the statue, he was also engaged in painting the monastery walls. The picture depicted the last meal of Christ and received the name of «The Last Supper». When Leonardo painted the picture the scene was animated with action and new meaning which had never been given to it and nobody had been able to do it. «The Last Supper» is considered to be the most famous creation of Leonardo five centuries after it was painted.

While living in Milan, Leonardo was involved in the development of many projects. He continued painting pictures, sometimes completing his works of art but not often finishing them. He also entertained the rulers’ court of Milan, he had to play the lute, sing songs and recite verses. When festivals were planned he created costumes and fulfilled decorative work.

He was often busy with the development of military inventions: tanks, flying apparatus, mortar bombs and the construction of fortresses.

He lacked the opportunity to carry out these projects as they were ahead of his time. For instance, tank was used during World War I, almost four hundred years after Leonardo had made a sketch of an armoured car without a horse.

Leonardo developed the sewage system of Milan and advised on the town rebuilding to avoid the threat of plague.

In the year of 1500 Leonardo returned to Florence and three years later he finished his famous work, probably the most widely known picture of times the «Mona Lisa».The longer we look at the picture the more amazed we are. Twenty years before the creation of the «Mona Lisa» there was a similar enigmatic smile on the faces of «Madonna», her mother, and angels on the canvas the «Madonna in the Rocks». For five hundred years artists have been trying to imitate this smile but the secret remains concealed.

By the time he was sixty, Leonardo discovered that he had no money. Artists usually had a rich sponsor or patron but Leonardo had none of them. People did not compete to hire him. The situation took an unfavourable turn for Leonardo because he started a lot of projects but finished only some of them. So, rich citizens were afraid of hiring him for a project that he might leave unfinished. Though his fame of an artist passed through the centuries, Leonardo painted only a dozen of pictures throughout his life. At the age of sixty he painted his self-portrait. Was he disappointed not to have realized many projects? Was he despondent about the questions which remained unsolved in his pursuit of learning science? Was he lonely? There is no answer to these questions. But we can see from the sketch that he grew older quickly. Leonardo died at the age of 67, on May 2, 1519. He left more than 7000 pages of notes and sketches. He wrote his diaries using a «secret» mirror method he learned himself. Maybe he protected himself and his works from the church in such a way.