The artist and science
Excerpt from the book 'Leonardo da Vinci - The Complete Paintings and Drawings' by Frank Zöllner
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The fierce dispute being conducted in polemical form between the writers and the artists attached to the Milan court, in which each sought to prove their métier to be superior to that of their opponents, reached an initial climax around 1492-precisely the period during which Leonardo composed the introduction to his Trattato di pittura, in which he takes issue with the poets and writers who had inveighed against the enduring value of fine art. Writing with extraordinary vehemence, Leonardo compares them with "beasts" (RLW ยง 11/MK 2) and argues against the classification of fine art as one of the lower "artes mecanicae" (RLW, Paragone, 9-12, and TPL 19). It is in the light of all these factors, therefore, that Leonardo's intensive efforts to establish a "scientific" grounding for the fine arts must be understood.
Alongside his investigations into the proportions of the human figure, Leonardo ventured even further into the realms of "science" with the anatomical and physiological studies on which he also embarked in grand style towards the end of the 1480s. These years, for example, saw him studying the dimensions of the human skull as well as the different "ventricles" of the brain, even if he thereby allowed himself to be guided in essence by the incorrect but nevertheless widespread theories propounded in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Thus Leonardo accepted the notion of the so-called senso comune-literally "common sense", but in those days thought of as the central switchboard of the brain (see below)-and in line with contemporary thinking assigned it a specific location within the brain. Explanatory notes accompanying one of his drawings (Cat. 260/ill. p. 109) make this location clear: "Where the line a-m is intersected by the line c-b, there will be the confluence of all the senses, and where the line r-n is intersected by the line h-f, there the fulcrum of the cranium is located at one third up from the base line of the head." Leonardo was thus attempting to apply the principles of anthropometry to the inside of the skull, something yet to be measured with any empirical accuracy. Just as it was possible to determine the measurements of the visible outer parts of the body, so, too, the location inside the body of such an important organ as the senso comune was calculated with mathematical precision.
As well as plotting the exact position of the "common sense", Leonardo also identified the location of the other functions of the brain. In a drawing showing vertical and horizontal sections of the human head (Cat. 353/ill. p. 107), he takes up traditional medieval notions of the different compartments of the human brain, which he envisages as three chambers the size of nutshells arranged one behind the other. The first of these three chambers contains the imprensiva, where sense impressions are received, the second the senso comune, and third the memoria or memory. An even more striking anatomical misapprehension that Leonardo took over from antiquity and the Middle Ages is evident in his so-called coitus drawings (Cat. 364, 366).
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
The fierce dispute being conducted in polemical form between the writers and the artists attached to the Milan court, in which each sought to prove their métier to be superior to that of their opponents, reached an initial climax around 1492-precisely the period during which Leonardo composed the introduction to his Trattato di pittura, in which he takes issue with the poets and writers who had inveighed against the enduring value of fine art. Writing with extraordinary vehemence, Leonardo compares them with "beasts" (RLW ยง 11/MK 2) and argues against the classification of fine art as one of the lower "artes mecanicae" (RLW, Paragone, 9-12, and TPL 19). It is in the light of all these factors, therefore, that Leonardo's intensive efforts to establish a "scientific" grounding for the fine arts must be understood.
Alongside his investigations into the proportions of the human figure, Leonardo ventured even further into the realms of "science" with the anatomical and physiological studies on which he also embarked in grand style towards the end of the 1480s. These years, for example, saw him studying the dimensions of the human skull as well as the different "ventricles" of the brain, even if he thereby allowed himself to be guided in essence by the incorrect but nevertheless widespread theories propounded in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Thus Leonardo accepted the notion of the so-called senso comune-literally "common sense", but in those days thought of as the central switchboard of the brain (see below)-and in line with contemporary thinking assigned it a specific location within the brain. Explanatory notes accompanying one of his drawings (Cat. 260/ill. p. 109) make this location clear: "Where the line a-m is intersected by the line c-b, there will be the confluence of all the senses, and where the line r-n is intersected by the line h-f, there the fulcrum of the cranium is located at one third up from the base line of the head." Leonardo was thus attempting to apply the principles of anthropometry to the inside of the skull, something yet to be measured with any empirical accuracy. Just as it was possible to determine the measurements of the visible outer parts of the body, so, too, the location inside the body of such an important organ as the senso comune was calculated with mathematical precision.
As well as plotting the exact position of the "common sense", Leonardo also identified the location of the other functions of the brain. In a drawing showing vertical and horizontal sections of the human head (Cat. 353/ill. p. 107), he takes up traditional medieval notions of the different compartments of the human brain, which he envisages as three chambers the size of nutshells arranged one behind the other. The first of these three chambers contains the imprensiva, where sense impressions are received, the second the senso comune, and third the memoria or memory. An even more striking anatomical misapprehension that Leonardo took over from antiquity and the Middle Ages is evident in his so-called coitus drawings (Cat. 364, 366).
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
Leonardo da Vinci - The Complete Paintings and Drawings
Hardcover, 29 x 44 cm (11.4 x 17.3 in.), 696 pages
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$ 200.00
Da Vinci in detail: Leonardo's life and work - the definitive edition. All pictures, all drawings!
Anatomical Analysis of the Movements of the Shoulder and Neck, c. 1509/10