da Vinci and the Renaissance 2019 (Italy) Dashboard

Description

Leonardo da Vinci drawingsLed by Prof. Dino Franco Felluga (felluga@purdue.edu), da Vinci and the Renaissance is a fully cross-disciplinary study-abroad program that explores the transition from the medieval period to the Renaissance across multiple subjects (art, architecture, engineering, science), thus laying out how much of what we take for granted today about technology or about the human subject were implemented in this rich period, especially in Italy.  The focus for the course will be that most famous “Renaissance man,” Leonardo da Vinci.  The course’s interdisciplinary approach asks students to think about the constructed nature of the things we take for granted as “natural” (e.g., time, space, human subjectivity, meaning, sight, knowledge, and law), thus opening our eyes to the significance of cultural differences.

We finish in the last days of the course by flash-forwarding to our present century so we can consider not only how Renaissance thinking made possible a number of present-day developments (robotics and computing, for example), but also the myriad ways that we are now seeing a cultural, ontological, and epistemological shift that is as far-reaching as the one between the medieval period and the Renaissance. The Peggy Guggenheim Museum and the Venice Biennale will provide us with our artistic examples of so-called “postmodernism.”

Galleries, Timelines, and Maps

There is no content in this group.

Individual Entries

Place
Posted by Garrett Mulcahy on Friday, May 17, 2019 - 09:35

Pacioli and da Vinci met each other and fostered a close connection through mathematical collaboration in this city. da Vinci was in the Court of Milan in 1494 when Pacioli’s Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita was published. Since da Vinci bought a copy of this text as soon as it was published, it is reasonable to assume that da Vinci pushed for the invitation of Pacioli to the Court of Milan. During his stay in Milan, Pacioli shared living quarters with da Vinci at the Corte Vecchia. In later letters, Pacioli would look back on this time shared with da Vinci in Milan very fondly.

 

Sources

Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo Da Vinci. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2018.

“Luca Pacioli.” Luca Pacioli (1445-1517), School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St. Andrews, Scotland, www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Pacioli.html.

Place
Posted by Garrett Mulcahy on Friday, May 17, 2019 - 09:33

This is where Charles Perry’s Eclipse was installed in 1973. Eclipse is the most widely known of Perry’s works, which are known for the way in which they capture abstract geometric shapes in states of transformation and movement. Perry likes to understand his sculptures as capturing the most fundamental movements in science, such as the vibrations of atoms in a molecule.

 

Perry, Charles O. “On the Edge of Science: The Role of the Artists Intuition in Science.” Leonardo, vol. 25, no. 3/4, 1992, pp. 249–252., doi:10.2307/1575845.

Place
Posted by Garrett Mulcahy on Friday, May 17, 2019 - 09:32

This is the university at which George Hart was a professor (he just recently retired). Here he did interdisciplinary research inspired by da Vinci’s work with polyhedra. Hart also collaborated with Craig Kaplan and Douglas Zongker, both from the University of Washington in Seattle. Along with creating hybrid polyhedra for research, Hart also created sculptures of polyhedra, one of such sculptures was on display in the computer science building at University of California, Berkeley.

 

Peterson, Ivars. “Polyhedron Man.” Science News, vol. 160, no. 25/26, 2001, pp. 396–398., doi:10.2307/4012851.

Place
Posted by Garrett Mulcahy on Friday, May 17, 2019 - 09:31

After the French attempted to gain control of Milan in 1498, da Vinci and Pacioli fled the city together in December of 1499.  After making stops in Mantua and then Venice, the two settled in Florence, where they shared a house. While in Florence, Pacioli involved himself with both math and Church endeavors; he also taught geometry at the University of Pisa in Florence. In 1506, Pacioli entered the monastery at Santa Croche. da Vinci remained in Florence until 1506, although during those six years he left for ten months to work for Cesare Borgia.

 

“Luca Pacioli.” Luca Pacioli (1445-1517), School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St. Andrews, Scotland, www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Pacioli.html.

Posted by Katherine Li on Thursday, May 16, 2019 - 11:54
Chronology Entry
Posted by Katherine Li on Thursday, May 16, 2019 - 11:25
Chronology Entry
Posted by Katherine Li on Thursday, May 16, 2019 - 06:41
Chronology Entry
Posted by Katherine Li on Wednesday, May 15, 2019 - 18:27
Place
Posted by Katherine Li on Wednesday, May 15, 2019 - 18:25

Shanghai is one of the largest cities in China, serving as a financial and commercial hub. A prominant bridge and tourist attraction located in Shanghai is the Lupu Bridge, currently the second longest steel arch bridge in the world. The bridge design of the Lupu Bridge uses concepts depicted in Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks from the early 16th century, showing the far-reaching impact of da Vinci's work even in modern day.

Sources:

The Lupu Bridge, Shanghai, China. (n.d.). Retrieved May 15, 2019, from https://www.iabse.org/IABSE/association/Award_files/Outstanding_Structure_Award/The_Lupu_Bridge__Shanghai__China.aspx

Chronology Entry
Posted by Allison Skadberg on Wednesday, May 15, 2019 - 17:37

Pages