Question 4 (People in History)

A person living in an ancient civilisation outside of Ireland

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A name painter during the Renaissance

Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452 and was considered a genius during the Renaissance because he was a painter, inventor and a sculptor. He was the first artist to use sfumato. This technique is shown in his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa. Da Vinci also painted The Last Supper on the wall of a convent church. Leonardo da Vinci moved to Milan and worked for the Duke of Sforza where he invented weapons of war such as a tank and a cannon. His design ideas for helicopters, submarines and parachutes were all in his notebooks but Sforza refused to fund any of them. Leonardo da Vinci always carried a notebook and often drew people with interesting faces. Sometimes, he would follow a person home to finish the drawing. He also dissected more than thirty bodies of men and women to study the human anatomy. His notebooks were written in mirror writing and because of that, his notes weren't read by anyone until many years later. Leonardo had notes on botany, geology and engineering. He was also interested in nature and animals. He even discovered how rocks were formed and how to find the age of trees through ring counting. He died in 1519.

A named painter outside of Italy during the Renaissance

Pieter Bruegel was born in 1525 in the Netherlands. He was an apprentice to the painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst and he later married his master's daughter. In 1551, he was accepted into a painter's guild in Antwerp as a master painter. Bruegel was famous for painting scenery and nature. He was the first European artist to paint landscapes on their own instead of being a background to something else. Most of his paintings of the countryside tell a story of holds a moral message. He also painted ordinary people instead of working and getting paid by wealthy people to paint portraits. His paintings were interesting due to the fact that it showed a lot about the everyday life and manner of poorer people during the Renaissance. Another painting of his called the Children's Games showed what the children played at that time.