Theodore Gericault: The Armored Car

Theodore Gericault, also known as Jean-Louis-Andre-Theodore Gericault was born on September 26, 1791. He was a painter who exerted a seminal influence on the development of romantic art in France. As a student Gericault learned the traditions of English sorting art from the French painter Carle Vernet, and he developed a remarkable facility for capturing animal movement. (“Theodore Gericault”, The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica) He also mastered classicist figure construction and composition under the academician Pierre Guerin. The Raft of the Medusa was one of Gericault’s biggest masterpieces created in 1819. (“Theodore Gericault”, The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica) This painting represented the aftermath of the shipwreck of the

That answer would be a definite yes, Da Vinci created the design for the armored car in the year 1487. The first prototype armored vehicle was not made until August 1915 and officially commissioned in 1916. That is exactly 429 years later. The armored tank that was made was called the Mark I used in World War I. What was fascinating about his plans was that the design for the tank, although it was drawn with intricate detail, there was a flaw in his drawings. “The powering cranks when turned went in the opposite direction.” (Leonardo Da Vinci - inventions) This meant that the gearing was made in a way that the front wheels of the tank would move backwards instead of forward. The theory behind this was that he purposely made a mistake in the designs because of the fear that his work might be put in the wrong hands. Another intriguing aspect of his plans was that his work was written backwards. The term given to such type of writing style was mirror writing. The reasoning for his unusual form of writing was that “he was trying to make it harder for people to read his notes and steal his ideas. Another was that he was trying to hide his scientific ideas from the church or he was trying to prevent smudging because, he was a lefty and writing left handed from left to right was messy”(DaVinci- The