Leonardo da Vinci: Between Art and Science

FAIN: EH-50290-11

University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA 22903-4833)
Francesca Fiorani (Project Director: March 2011 to April 2016)

A three-week institute for twenty-five college and university faculty members to explore the relations between art and science in the Renaissance.

Leonardo da Vinci: Between Art and Science examines the relations between art and science in the Renaissance, when disciplinary boundaries were not as clearly distinct as they are today. Combining the history of art, science, literature, and technology, the proposed Institute for College and University Teachers focuses on the works of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), the versatile, canonical artist of western art who moved with equal ease among artistic, literary, and scientific circles. The Institute focuses on Leonardo’s research to transfer observations from one system of representation (geometrical and scientific diagrams) to another (painting and drawing). Ultimately, by concentrating on how Leonardo saw the relations between art and science, the Institute elucidates the processes at the root of modern science: how to record, visualize, and abstract first-hand observations, and, even more importantly, how to translate these observations from one system of representation to another.

Associated Products

Leonardo da Vinci Between Art and Science (Web Resource)
Title: Leonardo da Vinci Between Art and Science
Author: Francesca Fiorani
Author: Anna Kim
Abstract: This collection of essays emerged from the research projects that 24 NEH Scholars developed during the NEH Summer Institute “Leonardo da Vinci: Between Art and Science” (Florence, Italy, June-July 2012), hosted bythe Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (KHI). Over a period of three weeks, NEH Scholars explored the relations between art and science in the works of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), the versatile, canonical artist of western art who moved with equal ease among artistic, literary, intellectual and scientific circles. The Institute was organized around three major themes: ¦ Word and Image ¦ Painting and Drawing ¦ Craftsmen and Scholars Selected to address cogent issues in the study of Leonardo's works and writings, these three themes are more generally significant to understand the relations between art and science in the early modern period. Within these three themes, NEH Scholars developed their individual research projects and the essays gathered here are the first outcomes of those projects. The essays vary greatly in themes and approaches, reflecting the diverse background, training and interests of their authors. They all provide unique points of entry into the many aspects of Leonardo da Vinci’s works and writings and suggest possible use of new materials for undergraduate teaching and scholarly research. This website includes also additional bibliographical resources and the program of the NEH Institute.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://faculty.virginia.edu/Fiorani/NEH-Institute/essays/

Leonardo da Vinci Between Art and Science: Essays (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)
Title: Leonardo da Vinci Between Art and Science: Essays
Author: Francesca Fiorani
Author: Anna Kim
Abstract: This collection of essays emerged from the research projects that 24 NEH Scholars developed during the NEH Summer Institute “Leonardo da Vinci: Between Art and Science” (Florence, Italy, June-July 2012), hosted bythe Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (KHI). Over a period of three weeks, NEH Scholars explored the relations between art and science in the works of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), the versatile, canonical artist of western art who moved with equal ease among artistic, literary, intellectual and scientific circles. The Institute was organized around three major themes: ¦ Word and Image ¦ Painting and Drawing ¦ Craftsmen and Scholars Selected to address cogent issues in the study of Leonardo's works and writings, these three themes are more generally significant to understand the relations between art and science in the early modern period. Within these three themes, NEH Scholars developed their individual research projects and the essays gathered here are the first outcomes of those projects. The essays vary greatly in themes and approaches, reflecting the diverse background, training and interests of their authors. They all provide unique points of entry into the many aspects of Leonardo da Vinci’s works and writings and suggest possible use of new materials for undergraduate teaching and scholarly research. This website includes also additional bibliographical resources and the program of the NEH Institute.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://faculty.virginia.edu/Fiorani/NEH-Institute/essays/
Access Model: open access

Leonardo’s Botanical Anatomies: Nature’s Perfection and the Cycle of Life, paper at Renaissance Society of America (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Leonardo’s Botanical Anatomies: Nature’s Perfection and the Cycle of Life, paper at Renaissance Society of America
Author: Catherine Lusheck
Abstract: Leonardo’s Botanical Anatomies: Nature’s Perfection and the Cycle of Life This paper addresses Leonardo’s graphic approach to the physiognomy of botanical liveliness and natural regeneration, especially around the time of his studies for The Battle of the Anghiari and Leda and the Swan, ca. 1500–10. Using Leonardo’s Study of Brambles (RL12419) as a point of departure, this paper explores how Leonardo’s botanical “parts” (“elementi”) reflect rhetorical concerns related to natural fecundity, its processes and threats. Through close, formal readings of idealizing natural “limbs” and their graphic antitheses, this paper suggests how Leonardo’s botanical and related studies reflect broader concerns with natural history and functions, even as they reveal the complexity of his empirical, rhetorical, artistic, and theoretical preoccupations. Ultimately, Leonardo constructed “telling,” rhetorically motivated botanical anatomies that slyly appear as if they are drawn from nature itself. For the draftsman, these graphic microcosms arguably acted as graphic proofs of both the perfection and inevitable mutability of nature writ large.
Date: 03/28/2014

Leonardo and the Whale, paper at the annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Leonardo and the Whale, paper at the annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America
Author: Kay Etheridge
Abstract: Around 1480 Leonardo da Vinci wrote of what may have been a seminal event in his young life — an encounter in a cave with the fossilized skeleton of a great “fish.” I will propose that Leonardo entered one of the many caves that punctuate the Tuscan landscape, and there saw something marvelous that would influence his art and his investigations of nature. Within a few years of this entry in Codex Arundel Leonardo drew and painted a number of images in which a grotto or sedimentary rock formations, home to a host of fossils, played a pronounced role. In the decades to follow Leonardo wrote frequently about the history of the earth, describing in detail the sedimentation processes that built up the layers of rock and led to deposits of fossils. My paper will link these visual and written works to paleontological studies of areas explored by Leonardo.
Date: 3/27/2014

“Dismembered and United Bodies” in Leonardo da Vinci’s Aesthetics, Art, and Anatomy, paper at Renaissance Society of America (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Dismembered and United Bodies” in Leonardo da Vinci’s Aesthetics, Art, and Anatomy, paper at Renaissance Society of America
Author: Anne Hudson Jones
Abstract: In his notebooks, Leonardo da Vinci argues for the superiority of painting over poetry by praising the painter’s ability to represent human figures as “united bodies” while the poet can represent them only as “dismembered bodies.” “The poet” he continues, “in describing . . . any figure can only show it to you consecutively, bit by bit, while the painter will display it all at once.” Yet in hundreds of sketches and anatomical drawings Leonardo focuses on dismembered bodies — faces, skulls, eyes, shoulders, arms, legs, feet, hearts — beautifully drawn and exactly detailed. Why do these images of dismembered body parts so outnumber images of the “united bodies” that Leonardo preferred? This presentation will suggest answers for both his artistic and anatomical studies and then argue that Leonardo’s few whole-body anatomical drawings have special value as representations of the emerging ideas and values of Renaissance humanism in his thought and work.
Date: 3/28/2014

On Bended Knee: Leonardo da Vinci and the Anatomy of Devotion, paper at Renaissance Society of America (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: On Bended Knee: Leonardo da Vinci and the Anatomy of Devotion, paper at Renaissance Society of America
Author: Julia A. DeLancey
Abstract: Leonardo da Vinci famously looked to the body as a site for ideals and sports of nature, musica humana, creative invention, and for expression of — among many other things — spiritual devotion. In at least three of his Windsor anatomical studies, Leonardo da Vinci explored the mechanics and anatomy of kneeling. In particular, some of the drawings and related text explore the way physical structures allow for particular types of movement. This paper seeks to place Leonardo’s anatomical studies of kneeling within the context of his own paintings, and of patronage and religious practice. That many of his early works may have been associated with ecclesiastical or monastic patrons and include kneeling figures suggest that an awareness of monastic beliefs about kneeling as a prayer gesture may have played a role in content and viewer response.
Date: 3/28/2014

Musica humana: Harmonies of Musical Embodiment, paper at Renaissance Society of America (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Musica humana: Harmonies of Musical Embodiment, paper at Renaissance Society of America
Author: Michael Eisenberg
Abstract: Albeit neglected, Leonardo da Vinci’s graphic interrogation of the body subtly implicates music and its quadrivial prism reveals a semiotics of musical embodiment. Leonardo’s somatic exploration of form, symmetries, and biomechanics refers music in disegni ranging from the embryo drawings to the Vitruvian man. This paper probes these musico-theoretical resonances considering Leonardo’s annotations on music, some glossing the same folios bearing these images of the body. While Leonardo eschews metaphysical speculation in favor of a more empirical epistemology, such concordance suggests Leonardo’s self-positioning within the schematic orthodoxies of musica humana. If music is a weaker sister to art, her embodiment of the cosmos and inspiration of corporeal motion frames Leonardo’s project of body neatly within this Neoplatonist lens. Leonardo envisioned music as a negotiation between acoustics, philosophy, and the materiality of tangible performance practice. This study articulates this vision as embedded in Leonardo’s sketches of the body.
Date: 3/28/2014

Breathing under Water to See under Water in Leonardo da Vinci’s Drawings, paper at Renaissance Society of America (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Breathing under Water to See under Water in Leonardo da Vinci’s Drawings, paper at Renaissance Society of America
Author: Leslie A. Geddes
Abstract: This paper examines Leonardo’s drawings that depict how one might travel under and through water. He drew figures fitted with masks to breath under water and others fitted with floatation devices to walk across its surface. These proto-scuba divers and walkers on water offer the promise — or at least the potential — for gaining a new kind of access to water’s depths. These drawings reveal Leonardo’s serious inquiry into their invention. Not merely whimsical inventions, the devices invite comparison with Leonardo’s deepest concerns about the observable world. These mechanisms open up ways for thinking about Leonardo’s preoccupation with a phenomenological investigation of the water environment — after all, what is scuba gear but a means for experiencing fully one’s senses under water? — and by extension, its picturing. These drawings pinpoint where technological challenges abut the difficulty of accounting for and depicting water’s ever-changing form.
Date: 3/29/2014

Leonardo and Creative Ugliness, paper at Renaissance Society of America (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Leonardo and Creative Ugliness, paper at Renaissance Society of America
Author: John Garton
Abstract: Leonardo’s grotesque heads are rightly celebrated for their novelty and variety. This paper examines both the theoretical precepts concerning the grotesque written by the author and others, as well as the visual tradition of which they formed an innovative part. In particular, this research explores how Aristotelian thought allows for both an ideal beauty and an ideal ugliness. Leonardo’s drawings from Uffizi #446E to the later Chatsworth examples present a visual compendium of idealized, even hyperbolic, ugliness. The effect of such images, either singularly or collectively, is to subvert his audience’s basic assumptions about portraiture. The subversion extends even to Alberti’s more general notion of the commemorative purpose of painting. By refining and perfecting ugliness through purposeful distortion of certain facial features, Leonardo shaped the discernment of the grotesque as a creative marvel.
Date: 3/28/2014

Leonardo’s Early Experiments in Writing (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Leonardo’s Early Experiments in Writing
Author: Mary Sisler
Abstract: This paper discusses Leonardo’s writings from the early Florentine period (1478– 80), in particular the texts contained in Codex Arundel fol. 155r–156v. These early literary experiments reveal a Baroque ante litteram through a variety of affinities: the use of elaborate metaphors, the preoccupation with metamorphosis in nature, the concept of wonder or meraviglia, the grotesque, the infinite, the interest in water, dynamism, theatricality, and antithesis. In his youthful experimentation with complex metaphors, Leonardo anticipates by almost two-hundred years what Emanuele Tesauro would lay out under the heading “Conceits of Nature” in his seventeenth-century manual on metaphors called The Aristotelian Telescope (Il Cannocchiale Aristotelico). The analysis of these early writings will be combined with a consideration of pictorial experimentation in Leonardo’s Uffizi Drawing #446E and the Adoration of the Magi from approximately the same period.
Date: 3/28/2014

Leonardo’s Topgographic Studies (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Leonardo’s Topgographic Studies
Author: Constance Joan Moffatt
Abstract: Like Petrarch before him, Leonardo drew specific geographical features as well as more politically charged city plans to understand his surroundings. His practice began with locating himself on the maps he drew as a foundation for his theoretical studies. Area maps and several technical constructions of cities reveal his interest in creating accurate records, whereas topographical studies demonstrate where nature and experience converge. Leonardo proceeded from landscape, orography, chorography, and city plans, later advancing to drawings that incorporated ideas about politics and power. His agency was in the employment of natural science in the mapping of power. Maps were metaphors of power. They served his patrons well in determining how to literally gain ground; for Leonardo they provided the linkage between knowing and being. Hundreds of sketches for buildings, earthworks, temporary structures, and the management of land, water, and space began with locating his place in the landscape.
Date: 4/4/2013

Leonardo’s Early Scientific Inquiries, paper at Renaissance Society of America (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Leonardo’s Early Scientific Inquiries, paper at Renaissance Society of America
Author: Francesca Fiorani
Abstract: The paper discusses Leonardo’s knowledge of ancient and medieval optical writings in the early Florentine years. The detailed analysis of the artist’s early paintings and drawings is combined with an examination of the practical uses of optics, the artist’s early optical notes, and a consideration of the optical writings that were available in the vernacular in late fifteenth century Florence. From this inferential investigation, the young Leonardo emerges as an attentive reader of Arab optics, especially Alhazen’s De aspectibus, and as a well-versed artist in practical and theoretical optics.
Date: 4/4/2013

Leonardo’s Modularity, paper at Renaissance Society of America (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Leonardo’s Modularity, paper at Renaissance Society of America
Author: Constance Joan Moffatt
Abstract: presentation
Date: 3/28/2015

Leonardo’s Legacy in Early Twentieth-Century American Design Theory, paper at Renaissance Society of America (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Leonardo’s Legacy in Early Twentieth-Century American Design Theory, paper at Renaissance Society of America
Author: Marie Frank
Abstract: presentation
Date: 3/26/2015

Leonardo’s Afterlife in Rubens’s Studies of Nature, paper at Renaissance Society of America (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Leonardo’s Afterlife in Rubens’s Studies of Nature, paper at Renaissance Society of America
Author: Catherine H. Lusheck
Abstract: preentation
Date: 3/26/2015

The Anatomy of Paintings: a Primer, Phaidon Press (Book Section)
Title: The Anatomy of Paintings: a Primer, Phaidon Press
Author: Benjamin Binstock
Abstract: the author included several Italian paintings and one Leonardo in the book as a consequence of the exposure to Leonardo in the NEH Institute.
Year: 2016

Enchantée (Book)
Title: Enchantée
Title: Enchantée, Oberlin College Press
Author: Angie Estes
Abstract: Enchantée was just awarded the 2015 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. In addition, Leonardo's works and theories have become an integral part of Estes' readings and talks both to her own classes and at universities around the country.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://www.angieestes.com/enchantee.php
Type: Single author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Prizes

Kingsely Tufts Poetry Award
Date: 2/15/2015
Organization: Kingsely Tufts Poetry Award

junior, interdisciplinary seminar on Leonardo (JINS 394 Biography: Leonardo) at Truman State University (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: junior, interdisciplinary seminar on Leonardo (JINS 394 Biography: Leonardo) at Truman State University
Author: Julia De Lancey
Abstract: course developed at Truman State University
Year: 2015
Audience: Undergraduate

Drawing Bridges: Leonardo da Vinci on Mastering Nature.” (Article)
Title: Drawing Bridges: Leonardo da Vinci on Mastering Nature.”
Author: Leslie Geddes
Abstract: article In "Leonardo Studies in Honor of Carlo Pedretti On the Occasion of his 70 Years of Leonardo Scholarship", edited by Constance Moffatt and Sara Taglialagamba. Leiden: Brill. (Forthcoming, 2015)
Year: 2015
Publisher: Brill

Infinite Slowness and Infinite Velocity:’ The Representation of Time and Motion in Leonardo’s Studies of Geology and Water. (Article)
Title: Infinite Slowness and Infinite Velocity:’ The Representation of Time and Motion in Leonardo’s Studies of Geology and Water.
Author: Leslie Geddes
Abstract: article in the volume "Leonardo on Nature", edited by Alessandro Nova and Fabio Frosini. Florence: Marsilio.
Year: 2015
Publisher: Marsilio, Venice

To Make Beautiful Spectacles”: Leonardo da Vinci on Thinking Visually (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: To Make Beautiful Spectacles”: Leonardo da Vinci on Thinking Visually
Author: Leslie Geddes
Abstract: paper presented at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria University, Toronto, conference: Rethinking Early Modernity: Methodological and Critical Innovation Since the Ritual Turn. June 26-27, 2014
Date: 6/26/2014

Drawing Bridges: Leonardo da Vinci on Mastering Nature.” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Drawing Bridges: Leonardo da Vinci on Mastering Nature.”
Author: leslie Geddes
Abstract: paper at Annual IFA-Frick Symposium in the History of Art. April 19-20, 2013
Date: 4/19/2013

Leonardo’s Mobile Bridges, paper at Renaissance Society of America (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Leonardo’s Mobile Bridges, paper at Renaissance Society of America
Author: Leslie Geddes
Abstract: Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA. Three Sessions in Honor of Carlo Pedretti. Paper: Leonardo’s Mobile Bridges. April 4-6, 2013
Date: 4/4/2013

Infinite Slowness and Infinite Velocity in Leonardo’s Water Studies. (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Infinite Slowness and Infinite Velocity in Leonardo’s Water Studies.
Author: Leslie Geddes
Abstract: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut, Florence, Italy. Leonardo on Nature, Organized by Alessandro Nova and Fabio Frosini. Invited Paper: Infinite Slowness and Infinite Velocity in Leonardo’s Water Studies. March 1-2, 2013
Date: 3/1/2013

Infinite Slowness and Infinite Velocity in Leonardo’s Water Studies. (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Infinite Slowness and Infinite Velocity in Leonardo’s Water Studies.
Author: Leslie Geddes
Abstract: School of Architecture, University of Virginia. After the Deluge: Reimagining Leonardo’s Legacy. Invited Keynote: Infinite Slowness and Infinite Velocity in Leonardo’s Water Studies. January 30, 2013
Date: 3/1/2013

"Art, Science, and Technology" at University of Massachusets, Lowain (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: "Art, Science, and Technology" at University of Massachusets, Lowain
Author: Marie Frank
Abstract: a new course which focuses upon the relationship of art and science from the Renaissance into the Twentieth Century. This course is part of a much larger project to establish a new major "Visual Critical Studies" that will have four tracks; one of the tracks is specifically designed to draw from the strong science/engineering pool of students.
Year: 2015
Audience: Undergraduate

The Impetus of Battle. Visualizing Antagonism in Leonardo (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Impetus of Battle. Visualizing Antagonism in Leonardo
Author: Francesca Borgo
Abstract: presentation at the conference Leonardo on Nature, Organized by Alessandro Nova and Fabio Frosini. Kusthistorisches Institute, Flroence, March 1-2, 2013
Date: 3/1/2013

Leonardo, Lucretius, and the Distant View, paper at Southeastern College Art Conference (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Leonardo, Lucretius, and the Distant View, paper at Southeastern College Art Conference
Author: Beth Stewart
Abstract: presentation, Oct 29-Nov 2, 2013 Greensboro, NC.
Date: 10/29/2013

Seminar on Leonardo da Vinci: Art and Science, Clark University (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Seminar on Leonardo da Vinci: Art and Science, Clark University
Author: John Garton
Abstract: Seminar was taught to 15 students in Spring 2014 at Clark University, Worcester, MA and many lesson plans were a direct outcome of the NEH Institute and keeping in touch with its members. The seminar will be repeated in 2016. 2-day learning units have been offered in another course in 2014 to 28 students that reflected the art/science merger of the NEH Leonardo institute
Year: 2014
Audience: Undergraduate

Renaissance Italy in the Time of Leonardo da Vinci, Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Renaissance Italy in the Time of Leonardo da Vinci, Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Abstract: April 7, and April 9, 2015 – “,” Boston Museum of Fine Art, the author spoke on his NEH research in front of 400+ paying listeners in a series of museum lectures in conjunction with the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci and the Idea of Beauty.
Author: john Garton
Date: 4/7/2015
Location: Boston Museum of Fine Arts

March 20, 2014 - “Ross King’s Leonardo and the Last Supper and the legacy of Leonardo, at the Worcester Art Museum. (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: March 20, 2014 - “Ross King’s Leonardo and the Last Supper and the legacy of Leonardo, at the Worcester Art Museum.
Abstract: March 20, 2014 - “Ross King’s Leonardo and the Last Supper and the legacy of Leonardo in the Worcester Art Museum.” Worcester Art Museum – this combined the author's NEH research and opinions about a new Leonardo book
Author: john Garton
Date: 3/20/2014
Location: Worcester Art Museum

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