Leonardo da Vinci Society Newsletter editor: Matthew Landrus Issue 40, May 2014 Recent and forthcoming events A symposium at the 24th International Con- gress of History of Science, Technology and The Annual General Meeting and Annual Medicine Lecture 2014 The Society arranged a symposium on “Leonardo On Friday, 9 May 2013, Dr Ashok Roy, Director da Vinci and the History of Science” for the of Scientific Research at the National Gallery, International Congress of History of Science, will offer the Annual Lecture: Analysing Leonar- Technology and Medicine, which was held at the do: New Research on his Practice of Painting. University of Manchester in July 2013 The lecture will start at 6 pm at the Kenneth Clark (ichstm2013. com). The meeting was well attend- Lecture Theatre of the Courtauld Institute of Art ed and featured four speakers: J.V. Field, Martin (Somerset House, The Strand). Before the lecture, Kemp, Eduardo Kickhöfel, and Matthew Landrus. at 5:30 pm, the annual general meeting (open only Drs Field and Landrus organised and chaired the to members) will address matters arising with the discussions. Here below are abstracts for the Society. The Annual Lecture will be free and open event and essays. For iCHSTM’s call for papers, to the public. Dr Field provided the following abstract: Dr Roy provides the following initial notes Leonardo has often had an ambiguous treat- about his talk: in comparison with other great ment from historians. Historians of art have painters of the European tradition, our understand- never dealt with anything that looks to them ing of Leonardo da Vinci’s technical practices for so ‘scientific’ and historians of science have his easel paintings has advanced quite slowly in never had to deal with diagrams that are so the 20th and 21st centuries. This is partly because beguilingly beautiful. The difficulties are part- of the rarity of his autograph works, their often ly caused by the narrow specialisms of our unfinished nature, and the relative infrequency of day. In Leonardo’s time the pattern of division conservation treatments of Leonardo’s paintings into recognised areas of specialised intellectu- and, therefore, a lack of opportunity for accompa- al and practical work was very different. The nying scientific study under favourable condi- obvious division is largely social: between tions. The full-scale conservation treatments of university education, in Latin, and practical the Virgin of the Rocks in London (at the National instruction, in the vernacular, but the borders Gallery between 2009–11) and the Virgin and seem to have been fairly porous (at least in Child with St Anne (at the Musée du Louvre, Italy). Unlike university graduates, trained in carried out at Centre de Recherche et de Restaura- the arts of the trivium and the quadrivium (the tion des Musées de France [C2RMF] between four mathematical ones often called ‘scienc- 2010–2012), both of which involved comprehen- es’), craftsmen were expected to make direct sive technical study in support of conservation, use of practical knowledge in their workplac- have changed the state of this knowledge deci- es. In the practical world, ‘art’ also had a spe- sively. At the same time further recent studies of cialised meaning for the trades associated with Leonardo’s painted work by technical experts guilds; for instance the wool guild was called around the world have intensified and the results the Arte della Lana. These changes in the of these investigations, many of which have now meaning of the terms ‘art’ and ‘science’ can appeared in print, have contributed significantly to make it difficult to use “actors’ categories” a more integrated and scientifically-grounded properly, but whatever terms one uses it is view of Leonardo as a practitioner. This talk will clear that the intellectual map was very differ- deal with recent developments and newer assess- ent from what it is today and that craftsmen ments of Leonardo’s technical procedures. (among them painters and sculptors) regularly brought considerable ‘scientific’ knowledge to nardo da Vinci’s systematic approaches to the art their work. of engineering and the means by which he re- In recent years some bridges have been built sponded to similar approaches in medieval and across today’s disciplinary divide, and the classical antiquity. Recognized in his plans for emergence of a healthier body of literature on treatises on military and mechanical engineering, Leonardo offers some opportunities to histori- this work involved research on Greek and Roman ans of science to integrate him into a viable systems of proportional geometry. To address a image of the natural philosophy, mathematics, general question with regard to his engineering medicine and technology of his time - and, of drawings: for what purposes were they devel- course, to assess his possible contributions to oped? Evidence of their development with sys- what happened next. tematic proportional methods provides part of the J.V. Field (Birkbeck) discussed ‘What the answer. craftsmen taught the scholars about natural phi- Eduardo Kickhöfel (Universidade Federal de losophy’. In the fifteenth century, technology (the São Paulo) addressed ‘The place of Leonardo da crafts) was doing better than either natural philos- Vinci in the history of natural philosophy’. He ophy or the sciences in producing works that still discussed the way in which the Renaissance was a have something to say to the twenty-first century. period dominated by Aristotelian philosophy. We may contrast Brunelleschi’s dome for Flor- Varchi, in the preface of the second of his “Two ence cathedral (still standing) with contemporary lessons on painting and sculpture”, says that theories of the motion of the Sun (which could not science is “nothing more than the knowledge of correctly predict dates of equinoxes). Craftsmen, the universal things, necessary and consequently whose activities were attracting increasing atten- eternal, obtained by demonstration”, and art is tion from the learned, had much to teach scholars “the disposition to make involving a true course about the power of approximate, non-rigorous of reasoning”, following the definitions of Ni- methods and the usefulness of focussed observa- comachean Ethics. Toletus, in his Commentary on tion. Aristotle’s Physics, divides philosophy into specu- Martin Kemp (University of Oxford) dis- lative, practical and productive, following the cussed ‘Science and the Codex Leicester’, ad- beginning of the sixth book of Metaphysics. dressing the state of Leonardo’s research on However, instead of the higher value given to the natural science around 1508-12, with particular vita contemplativa in Antiquity still present in the interest in the Codex Leicester and his studies of Middle Ages, Renaissance men like Salutati and water, hydrology, astronomy, cosmology, fossils, Manetti gave new values to the vita activa, and geology, and more generally, the “body” of the craftsmen-writers like Alberti, Ghiberti and Mar- earth. tini aimed to elevate the value of their knowledge Matthew Landrus (University of Oxford) and their own social status. Different from the spoke on ‘Leonardo and the art of engineering’. unlettered craftsmen, the craftsman imagined by Traditional academic assessments of preliminary them was a sort of lettered man who could work or unconstructed mechanical engineering projects from the knowledge of principles and was able to often address the authors’ intuitive approaches to speak about them. However, the definitions and this ‘paper engineering’. Estimates for machine the organizations of knowledge of the ancient studies, compared with detailed calculations for texts were well established and clear. Leonardo da practical engineering projects, were often rooted Vinci tried to surpass them and tried to identify art in similar systematic approaches. In both cases, and science. After his education in Verrocchio’s structural intuitions and measured calculations atelier, in Milan Leonardo began to study matters often extended from standard assessments of like optics, physics and anatomy. In the case of proportional geometry. Standard systematic meth- anatomy, Leonardo took a very distinctive path, ods helped with updates to projects, from their separating himself progressively from the crafts- initial stages to advanced stages. As reflections of men and the physicians. Without the prejudices of antique engineering methods, Renaissance engi- the university professors, he did dissections, and neers valued these geometric standards for their for him the painter-anatomist had to know “the supposed structural and stylistic reliability and good draughtsmanship”, “the knowledge of per- permanence. Landrus’ discussion addressed Leo- spective”, “the methods of geometrical demon- The Leonardo da Vinci Society Page 2 Registered Charity 1012878 stration and the method of calculation of the Countries before 1800’ forces and power of the muscles”. Using his art of Matthew Craske, ‘“A Wonderful Force of Na- drawing, his experience of dissection and his ture”: an Account of how Leonardo da Vinci knowledge of mechanics, he could recreate the Sustained the Eighteenth-Century English Idea of human figure “without seeing the living [and] a “Universal” Genius’ without error”. However, the definitions and the Rodney Palmer, ‘Leonardo’s Nonconformist organizations of knowledge did not permit the Choices and his Legendary Death, from Vasari to synthesis Leonardo da Vinci was proposing. He 1869’ did not have disciples as an