Rise of Renaissance Architecture

In the early 15^th century, the beginnings of the Renaissance were taking shape. One of those areas was architecture. Filippo Brunelleschi, an Italian architect, visited Rome and analyzed buildings that were built centuries ago. The rise of classicism brought back aspects of Greek and Roman architecture like symmetry and geometry and were used in projects like the interior of the Church of San Lorenzo and the Florence Cathedral. Brunelleschi is credited as the founder of Renaissance architecture and influenced future architects like Leonardo da Vinci, who used a series of squares and rectangles in his drawings, much of them included a huge dome in the center after Brunelleschi's revolutionary design.

Sources:

Ackerman, James S. “Architectural Practice in the Italian Renaissance.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 13, no. 3, 1954, pp. 3–11. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/987700.

Burckhardt, Jacob, et al. The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance. University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Craven, Jackie. “The Significance of Renaissance Architecture.” ThoughtCo, ThoughtCo, 6 Nov. 2019, www.thoughtco.com/renaissance-architecture-and-its-influence-178200.

Image: https://www.florenceinferno.com/the-brunelleschi-dome/

Leonardo Works on Theatrical Productions During Apprenticeship

During his years as an apprentice in Florence, Leonardo spent much time working on creating pageants and theatrical performances for the Medici family. This work included creating costumes and scenery and devising new designs for stage machinery and special effects. Among the special effects used in these pageants were devises that allowed performers and props to be suspended through the air. Many scholars suggest that a number of Leonardo’s devices for human flight were actually created for or inspired by stage mechanisms for theatrical purposes. Many believe that the famous helicopter, or aerial screw, was actually a originally designed as a ingegni, or devise for changing scenery. During his early work in theater, Leonardo learned much about engineering, design principles, and creativity that he would continually apply to his other works.

Source

Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo Da Vinci: the Biography. Simon & Schuster, 2018.

"The Baptism of Christ"

The Baptism of Christ is a famous work of art by Leonardo Da Vinci with his instructor, Andrea del Verrocchio. This piece was originally intended for the monks of San Salvi, a Catholic monastery in eastern Florence. Verrocchio's brother was an abbot here, meaning he was the head of the monks at San Salvi. The Baptism of Christ painting was a commission and was used as an altarpiece. The painting was kept in this location from approximately the 1470's until 1530, after the monastery was destroyed. The painting was moved to Santa Verdiana, another monastery, and in 1919, was rediscovered and moved to the Uffizi gallery, where it has remained ever since.

Works Cited:

“The Baptism of Christ.” The Baptism of Christ by Verrocchio and Leonardo Da Vinci, www.leonardo-da-vinci.net/baptism-of-christ/.

“Verrocchio.” Cavallini to Veronese - Italian Renaissance Art, cavallinitoveronese.co.uk/general/view_artist/45.

Geological Sketches

This sketch is suspected to be created around 1483 and it's believed that this ravine wasn't an actual place, but instead from Leonardo da Vinci's imagination.  The only way for Leonardo to have been able to create a realistic looking ravine without copying one he would have been looking at would be to study them extensively.  This has also been proven by some of his ideas about the actual age of the Earth. Although exceedingly controverisal, Leonardo believed the earth was much older than thought at the time because he studied different seashells found on mountain tops and theorized that they couldn't have been placed there.  Instead, water was one there and as time passed, the water levels decreased and fossils of bones were left in areas of higher elevation.  Leonardo also understood that this process wouldn't happen quickly, but slowly over long periods of time. Although there doesn't appear to be any shells in this image, the decrease in water level is clearly visible in this sketch.

Works Cited:

Jones, Johnathan. Leonardo Da Vinci's Earth-Shattering Insights about Geology. 23 Nov. 2011, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/nov/23/leonardo-....

Leonardo da Vinci [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

“Leonardo Da Vinci (Vinci 1452-Amboise 1519) - A Ravine.” Royal Collection Trust, www.rct.uk/collection/912395/a-ravine.

Rosenberg, Gary D. The Revolution in Geology from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. 

The Virgin of the Rocks Paintings

In 1483, the painting The Virgin of the Rocks was comissioned by the San Francesco Grande in Milan by a roup of religious followers devted to the Immaculate Conception.  This group commissioned this painting to be on wooden panel so that it could eventually be placed inside of a larger piece of artwork on the altar of this church.  A few years after this painting was created, Leonardo created a second version which was restored around 2010 and is in the National Gallery in London whereas the original is unrestored in the Louvre.  The two paintings actually have several differences between the two of them inluding coloring differences, a halo over one of the Virgin Marys and not the other, and a couple of others. 

Works Cited:

By Leonardo da Vinci - gallerix.ru, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32430178

“Leonardo Da Vinci's Virgin of the Rocks.” ItalianRenaissance.org, www.italianrenaissance.org/leonardo-da-vincis-virgin-of-the-rocks/.

“The Virgin of the Rocks.” Italian Renaissance Art.com, www.italian-renaissance-art.com/Virgin-of-the-Rocks.html.

“Leonardo Da Vinci: The Virgin of the Rocks: NG1093: National Gallery, London.” The National Gallery, www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/leonardo-da-vinci-the-virgin-of-the....

Leonardo da Vinci Draws the Vitruvian Man

The Vitruvian Man embodies the Renaissance ideals of geometry, architecture, humanism, etc and Leonardo da Vinci’s nature as a polymath. It has been observed that da Vinci detailed his drawing to an unnecessary extent for solely displaying scientific information. It can be assumed then, that da Vinci wishes to comment on the beauty of the human body as well as its perfection in geometric form. Some have also observed that there is an illusory effect that the figure in the drawing is in motion, as da Vinci portrays “one leg and then the other being pushed out and pulled back, the arms flapping as if in flight, (Isaacson 156). 

da Vinci’s choice to detail the human form and the human form only as well as incorporate illusions of movement in two-dimensional drawings shows the shifting paradigm from medieval ideals to Renaissance ideals.

The Vitruvian Man drawing has symbolized the Renaissance trait of contemplating the human role in the grand scheme of things. The drawing itself seeks to describe “the relationship between the microcosm of man and the macrocosm of the earth,” (Isaacson 149). Renaissance thought extends that idea to include that which is not the earth, whether in extraterrestrial observations through astronomy or contemplation of the divine.

Sources:

Murtinho, Vitor. “Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man Drawing: A New Interpretation Looking at Leonardo’s Geometric Constructions.” Nexus Network Journal, vol. 17, no. 2, Sept. 2015, pp. 507–524.
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00004-015-0247-7.pdf 

Isaacson, Walter. “Chapter 8 Vitruvian Man.” Leonardo Da Vinci: The Biography, Simon & Schuster, 2018.

Da Vinci and Sound Waves

As a scientist, da Vinci was interested in how sound moves through different materials. He is often credited with discovering that sound travels in waves, allowing Galileo to later on discover more properties of sound waves. Da Vinci was especially interested in underwater acoustics, and discovered this science in 1490 when he inserted a tube into water and was able to detect vessels by ear. 

Not only was da Vinci interested in the logistics of sound and how it travels, he was also a musician. Da Vinci played several instruments, including the lira da braccio which is a type of lyre often used by Italian poet-musicians to accompany their poetry recitations. It was his interest in acoustics that allowed Leonardo to invent new instruments, and improve upon existing ones.

In Leonardo’s Madrid Manuscript II, he depicts a bell being struck with two hammers at its base, and a lever with mechanically-operated heads meant to alter the pitch of the bell. Da Vinci knew that the bell can produce different sounds in different regions, and by dampening other regions with the lever heads, the bell can produce multiple different pitches. The bell appears a total of 40 times in Leonardo’s writings.

Many of da Vinci’s creative breakthroughs came from connecting the unconnected. Da Vinci connected the decay of sound through space to his findings of diminishing perspective optics, on which he based much of his artwork. Da Vinci wrote about volume and the fading of sounds, and observed that you cannot categorize sounds as “small” or “large”, because the distance from which you hear a sound impacts it’s dynamics. Leonardo’s interest in the fading of sounds bleeds into his interest in firearms, namely the acoustical aspects of firing cannons, rifles, and the like.

Eisenberg, Michael. “Sonic Mapping in Leonardo's Disegni.” Leonardo Da Vinci Between Art and Science | Themes And Essays - Music - Eisenberg, Columbia University, 28 Mar. 2014, faculty.virginia.edu/Fiorani/NEH-Institute/essays/themes-and-essays/music/eisenberg.

Fisk, Peter. “What Is Innovation? Connecting the Dots, the Ones Other People Miss.” GeniusWorks, 27 Feb. 2016, www.thegeniusworks.com/2016/02/what-is-innovation-connecting-the-dots-th....

Meurling, Thomas. “Sonar History & Training.” Strategic Sonar Solutions – Helping People with Sonar Solutions for Commercial and Military Applications, Thomas Meurling, thomasmeurling.com/sonar-traning/.

Winternitz, Emanuel. Leonardo Da Vinci as a Musician. Yale University Press, 1982.

Photo obtained from: Eisenberg, Michael. “Sonic Mapping in Leonardo's Disegni.” Leonardo Da Vinci Between Art and Science | Themes And Essays - Music - Eisenberg, Columbia University, 28 Mar. 2014, faculty.virginia.edu/Fiorani/NEH-Institute/essays/themes-and-essays/music/eisenberg.

Da Vinci's Codex on the Flight of Birds

This image is a sketch of a proposed machine for human flight depicted in the Codex on the Flight of Birds. The Helicopter was not da Vinci’s only attempt at exploring flight. Da Vinci’s fascination with flight included both human flight and the flight of birds. Between 1505 and 1506, da Vinci produced the Codex on the Flight of Birds. This work included observations about the physics behind the flight of individual species of birds. The human flight device pictured here uses the physical concept of pressure differentials seen on the wings of birds and attempts to apply this principle to a machine allow for human flight. Like the helicopter, this device would work in theory, however the machine was much too heavy to work with human power alone. After his death, da Vinci’s Codex was traded around through Europe before being restored to its completed form and stored in the Royal Library in Torino.

Source:

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. “Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex on the Flight of Birds.” Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex on the Flight of Birds | National Air and Space Museum, 22 Oct. 2013, airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/codex/.

Copernicus publishes On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres

Copernicus' Illustration of his theory

While not accepted for over a hundred years, Copernicus officially published On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres, his theory that the sun revolved around the Earth, titled heliocentrism, in 1543. In his publication, he outlines the issues with the current Ptolemaic theory, where the Earth is the center of the universe, surrounded by different spheres which held the workings of the solar system. When Galileo published his famous work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, there was still enough controversy regarding the heretical viewpoints of heliocentrism that Galileo was put under house arrest and his Dialogue was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. However, before these two great minds publicly announced their findings, Leonardo da Vinci was already beginning to piece together the same conclusion. In his notebooks, he wrote “the sun does not move,” in large print, implying that he was one of the first discoverers that the sun does not revolve around the Earth. 

 The image retrieved is one of Copernicus' drawings depicting his theory from On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres

Copernicus, N. (1995). "On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres. Prometheus Books.

Richter, J. (1977). The literary works of Leonardo da Vinci (National Gallery of Art Kress Foundation studies in the history of European art ; no. 5). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Galilei, G., & Finocchiaro, M. (1997). Galileo on the world systems : A new abridged translation and guide. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Invention of the Telescope

The first iteration of the modern telescope experienced its first patent attempt by Hans Lippershey in the Netherlands in 1608. While not granted the patent due to its lack of difficulty to produce, this attempt is widely regarded as its conception. However, over a hundred years before, da Vinci had already been performing experiments with lenses which increased his sight, allowing him to observe surface features of the moon that were barely visible to the human eye. As optics was one of his great interests and drove his fascination with astronomy, Leonardo’s main focus was defining the physical features of the moon. Using concave and convex lenses, a similar theory to telescopes, he made a generalized map of the moon, noting the lighter and darker areas, as seen in the attached image. Based on its reflectivity, he proposed that it contained moving seas in the lighter areas, and land masses in the darker regions, similar to the structure of the Earth. While this theory was later proved wrong, and the darker areas were found to be made of basalt and the lighter mountainous highlands, Leonardo’s hypotheses involving the physical features of the moon were the first real steps towards truly identifying a key feature in our night sky.

Works Cited:

Leonardo, & Richter, Jean Paul. (1883). The literary works of Leonardo da Vinci. S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington.

StarChild: The Moon. (n.d.). Retrieved February 8, 2020, from https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/solar_system_level2/moon....

Welther, B. L. (1999, October). Leonardo da Vinci and the Moon : The famous Renaissance artist and scientist made an insightful interpretation about our nearest neighbor in space. Sky & Telescope, 98(4), 40. Retrieved from https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A55874615/AONE?u=purdue_main&sid=AONE&xid...

Wilson, T. (2017, October 11). This Month in Astronomical History: The Invention of the Telescope. Retrieved February 8, 2020, from https://aas.org/posts/story/2017/10/month-astronomical-history-invention...

Trattato Della Pittura is first published

Trattato Della Pittura  (A Treastie on Painting) is a collection of papers written by Leonardo da Vinci that was assembled by Francisco Melzi, one of da Vinci's former students ("Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana"). Historians estimate that the manuscripts in Trattato Della Pittura  were written from 1469 up until da Vinci's death in 1519. Notably, the treastie was formally published even after Melzi's death (who passed away in 1570) under the title On Painting. The title was changed to Trattato Della Pittura in 1817 when it was re-published in its modern form. 

The work discusses human emotion, structures, and objects from a scientific perspective as to educate painters how to capture realsim in their art. A section of the book titled "VII. Botany for Painters and Elements of Landscape Painting" outlines da Vinci's observations on the anatomy of trees and how lighting and shade interact with leaves. Da Vinci included diagrams of leaves in different conformations and labeled which parts would be in shade, reflected light, or transmitted light relative to the sun's location. 

Throughout the section, da Vinvi proposes mathematical formulas to model the thickness of branches and the angle they form from their parent branch. A majority of the entries are dedicated to elucidating branch geometery throughout its development. Da Vinci suggests that new shoots grow closer together and outwards and will sink down with age, especially if they bear fruit. There are four "modes" of tree growth that outline differences in branch formation and size across tree specifies. Da Vinci exemplified these differences through the examples of an elm and walnut tree (da Vinci 456). 

The book also illustrates da Vinci's proposed hypotheses on plant development which account for observations he recorded. For example, da Vinci suggests that the lower shoots on trees grow more quickly than ones higher up the trunk because "the sap, which nourishes them, is heavy and tends more downwards than upwards" (da Vinci 405). He also reasons that leaves formed on the youngest branch will grow in an opposite direction of the previous branch so that the leaves layer eachother to "serve as a nourishing breast for the shoot or fruit that grows the following year" (416). Da Vinci states that this method of leaf development is favorable for collecting rain water and allowing new branches to receive sunlight. 

Themes of the importance of sap are consistent throughout the work. Da Vinci believed that tree sap was responsible for providing branches and leaves with nourishment. Da Vinci suggested that tree branches tend to grow more densely in the south direction because the sun will draw sap to the sourthern surface. While modern knowledge of photosynthesis refutes some of da Vinci's claims, many of his obersvations on plant structure and peices of advice on illustrating shading and lighting have influenced generations of artists. 

Sources

Da Vinci, Leonardo. Trattato Della Pittura. Vol. I: VIII, 393-481. www.secretofthevine.com/library/volume_one/aor/dv/0431.htm.

“Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana.” Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana UCLA Library, www.library.ucla.edu/special-collections/discover-collections/collecting....

Image is a re-modeled sketch from da Vinci's notebook on how light accesses leaves (da Vinci 470).

Launch of the SS Great Eastern

The SS Great Eastern waiting to be launched.

The SS Great eastern was the first double hulled ship ever built and the largest ship in the world during its entire life span. During its construction, the ship could be seen across the entire peninsula of the Isle of Dog. Such a noticeable object drew a crowd of over 3000 people on the day of its first floating attempt, despite the efforts of it's chief engineer to downplay the event. A ship of its size had never been launched before, so merely getting it into the water presented an engineering challenge in and of itself. It took many attempts and nearly three months to finally get the ship into the water.

Sources:

“Site of the Launch Ways of the SS Great Eastern, Non Civil Parish - 1423608: Historic England.” Site of the Launch Ways of the SS Great Eastern, Historic England, historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1423608.

The Deterioration and Restoration of The Last Supper

The deterioration of da Vinci's The Last Supper was noted as early as 1517, only ~10 years after its completion.  The abrupt corrosion is thought to have been caused by the tempera paint used on the drywall surface of the church and the altitude of the Santa Maria delle Grazie also makes the area prone to humidity and flooding (King).  Since the damage began, there have been multiple restoration efforts, with the most recent being that of Pinin Brambilla Barcilon (Barcilon).  After an intense quality examination of The Last Supper, Pinin Brambilla Barcilon was commissioned in 1978 to clean the surface of the painting and then remove the lasting effects of previous conservation efforts (Barcilon).  Further examination of the extremely damaged areas forced Panin to fill in the spaces with watercolor paint (Barcilon).  When the renovation effort ended in 1999, the church refectory room went through an extreme renovation, including climate-control and anti-humidity chambers, in order to minimize the effects of potential environmental pollution on the painting (King).

Sources:

Barcilon, Pinin Brambilla, et al. Leonardo: The Last Supper. University of Chicago Press, 2001.

King, Ross. Leonardo and The Last Supper. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014.

Image Source: Steigerwalt, Guilia Louise. “Pinin Brambilla Barcilon: Leonardo Da Vinci's Restorer.” Italian American Bilingual News Source, 24 Mar. 2017, italoamericano.org/story/2015-4-8/Pinin-Brambilla-Barcilon.

Vebjørn Sand Engineers da Vinci Bridge in Ås, Norway

Vebjørn Sand, a contemporary Norwegian artist, became interested in da Vinci’s designs for a self-supporting arched bridge in 1996. Through a partnership with the Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA), Sand was able to build a da Vinci bridge for pedestrians and bikers crossing Highway E18  in the municipality of Ås, Norway. This was possible only because of the NPRA’s historic receptiveness to projects that combine art with functionality in public space. The design is slightly modified; while da Vinci’s original design only had one parabola, the bridge in Ås is supported by three parabolic arches. The parabolic structures are suited to this design by distributing weight to the wide metal pillar abutments at the base. The bridge is made of laminated wood reinforced with steel, rather than the stone that da Vinci had originally proposed. Construction of the 330 foot long bridge by the Moelven Group lasted approximately 5 years, from 1996 to 2001. The bridge was opened to the public in November of 2001 by Queen Sonja of Norway.

Sources:

Atalay, B. (2013, February 3). LEONARDO’S BRIDGE: Part 3. “Vebjørn Sand and Variations on a Theme by Leonardo”. Retrieved May 13, 2019, from https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2013/02/03/leonardos-bridge-part-3-vebjrn-sand-and-variations-on-a-theme-by-leonardo/

Nash, E. P. (2001, December 9). TRAVEL ADVISORY; After 500 Years, Leonardo Gets His Bridge. The New York Times. Retrieved May 13, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/09/travel/travel-advisory-after-500-year...

Skari, Bent, ed. (2010). Statens vegvesen: Akershus 1990–2000 (PDF). Oslo, Norway: Statens vegvesen. p. 214. ISBN 82-994614-2-1. Retrieved 22 November 2016.

[Vebjørn Sand Da Vinci Project Bottom View]. (2015, December 4). Retrieved May 12, 2019, from https://www.dezeen.com/2015/12/04/a-z-advent-calendar-leonardo-da-vinci-bridge-vebjorn-sand-nygardskrysset-norway/

Photo is taken from the Dezeen article, cited above. The photo was obtained using the image search website Broer, which searches for open source photos.

Da Vinci's Viola Organista

Leonardo da Vinci was a talented musician who dreamt of complex ideas for instruments. Da Vinci did not write down music compositions in his notebooks because he was more of an improvisational musician, skilled especially at the lyre. Da Vinci designed his own silver lyre that had five strings, with three to be played with a bow like a fiddle, and two to be plucked. 

Da Vinci had sketched in his twelve volume set of drawings and writings, called Codex Atlanticus, an idea for an instrument named the viola organista. It wasn’t until centuries later, however, that his idea came to life. In 2013, a Polish instrument maker by the name of Sławomir Zubrzycki built this instrument based on da Vinci’s drawing. 

Zubrzycki logged nearly 5,000 hours and $100,00 over the course of 4 years to produce this modern version of what Leonardo had thought of 500 years earlier. The instrument looks like a harpsichord, but instead of the strings being plucked, they are pressed against rotating wheels covered in horse hair, producing the sound a stringed instrument makes when played with a bow. 

The viola organista is similar to a stringed instrument because sound is created from the friction of hair on a string, yet different because the rotating wheels allow the instrument to make continuous, polyphonic sounds just by using one’s fingers. The creation is similar to a piano because the keyboard contains black and white keys, yet the sound produced is very different; rather than small hammers hitting the strings when a key is pressed, the mechanical wheels wrapped in horse-hair, spurred by the pumping of a peddle, rub against the strings. 

Zubrzycki’s viola organista looks as beautiful as it sounds. The one-of-a-kind sound produced by this one-of-a-kind instrument can be heard on Icelandic singer and songwriter Bjork’s Vulnicura Strings album, in which a sound da Vinci could only imagine in his head is produced, capturing the full beauty of both the instrument, and Leonardo’s creative mind.

Spencer, Mel. 2019. “Leonardo Da Vinci Invented This Musical Instrument – and It Sounds Remarkable.” Classic FM. https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/leonardo-da-vinci-viola-organista/ (February 3, 2020).

Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo Da Vinci: the Biography. Simon & Schuster, 2018.

Photo ofSławomir Zubrzycki and the viola organista was obtained using Wikimedia Commons.

Winternitz, Emanuel. Leonardo Da Vinci as a Musician. Yale University Press, 1982.