Domenico Laurenza
Author of Leonardo's Machines: Da Vinci's Inventions Revealed
About the Author
Image credit: Domenico Laurenza
Works by Domenico Laurenza
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Laurenza, Domenico
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- Italy
- Education
- University of Naples (Laurea, 1991)
Scuola superiore di studi Storici, San Galileo, Florence (Ph.D., 1996) - Occupations
- historian
scientific consultant
author
editor - Short biography
- Domenico Laurenza is a historian of science with an interest in the history of art and visual culture. He is an expert on Leonardo da Vinci's scientific works, on the history of anatomy and technology in the Renaissance, and on the history of geology. He is a scientific consultant for the University of RomaTre, Museo Galileo (Florence), and Schroeder Arts Consulting (New York), and has taught or been a fellow of several scientific institutions, including McGill University (Montreal), the Warburg Institute (London), the Italian Academy at Columbia University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), and Trinity College, Dublin.
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Reviews
See also: Leonardo's Machines: Da Vinci's Inventions Revealed.
This beautifully illustrated volume reconstructs the origin of one of the most fascinating and fundamental aspects of Leonardo's life and work: his dream of human flight. With masterfully reproduced drawings from his vast library of manuscripts and folios -- especially from the Codex "On the Flight of Birds" and the Codex "Atlanticus" -- this book traces the development of Leonardo's theories and experiments over time. Detailed descriptions and unique readings of these exquisite sketches, letters, and notes reveal the inner workings of the artist-scientist.
Leonardo on Flight begins with the drawings from his years in Florence making theatrical devices (ingegni) and then moves to the marvelous flying machine -- the ornithopter -- constructed in Milan during the same period he completed The Last Supper and the equestrian statue Francesco Sforza for Duke Ludovic il Moro. After 1500, Leonardo's work returned to nature and focused on the flight of birds, the dynamic potential of the human body, and the physics of wind. The final chapter of the book considers the last years of Leonardo's life and his escape into theory and whimsical experiments such as flying wax figurines, inflated bullocks' intestines, and automatons.… (more)
This beautifully illustrated volume reconstructs the origin of one of the most fascinating and fundamental aspects of Leonardo's life and work: his dream of human flight. With masterfully reproduced drawings from his vast library of manuscripts and folios -- especially from the Codex "On the Flight of Birds" and the Codex "Atlanticus" -- this book traces the development of Leonardo's theories and experiments over time. Detailed descriptions and unique readings of these exquisite sketches, letters, and notes reveal the inner workings of the artist-scientist.
Leonardo on Flight begins with the drawings from his years in Florence making theatrical devices (ingegni) and then moves to the marvelous flying machine -- the ornithopter -- constructed in Milan during the same period he completed The Last Supper and the equestrian statue Francesco Sforza for Duke Ludovic il Moro. After 1500, Leonardo's work returned to nature and focused on the flight of birds, the dynamic potential of the human body, and the physics of wind. The final chapter of the book considers the last years of Leonardo's life and his escape into theory and whimsical experiments such as flying wax figurines, inflated bullocks' intestines, and automatons.… (more)
Art and Anatomy in Renaissance Italy (Metropolitan Museum of Art / Yale University Press, 2012), a reprint of an issue of the Met's Bulletin, is a 46-page illustrated essay by Domenico Laurenza, a historian of science who spent several years as a fellow at the Met studying the museum's collections of anatomical drawings, manuscripts, and printed books.
Laurenza subtitles his essay "Images from a Scientific Revolution," and, using examples mostly drawn from the Met's collections, explores the ways in which the "rediscovery of anatomy" during the Renaissance came about, and how the rise of print culture brought artists, printers, and scientists together, leading to "the nexus between art and science that assumed such unique forms during this period."
From Leonardo da Vinci to Michelangelo to Raphael, Laurenza examines different anatomical-art styles as they developed, and made an interesting discovery: a Raphael drawing proved to be the basis for a printed woodcut in a 1522 work by Jacopo Berengario de Carpi (significant, Laureza writes, because "a leading anatomist composed his treatise using, nearly verbatim, an anatomical illustration created by an artist-anatomist"). The plate from Berengerio de Carpi's work, Laurenza suggests, may have been the inspiration for a well-known illustration in Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica.
By the middle of the sixteenth century, though, anatomist had "assumed a dominant role in the genesis of anatomical illustrations." Laurenza writes of this development "They were not artists and thus did not know how to reproduce reality, except in a most approximate way." The anatomists had to "transform themselves into entrepreneurs," to find artists who could depict the results of the anatomist's research in a format suitable for publication in print. Laurenza contrasts the illustrations deployed by Charles Estienne and Vesalius, declaring the former "flat and less aesthetically appealing but more complete from a strictly scientific point of view."
Laurenza goes on to discuss the shift from woodcuts to engravings as the preferred method of anatomical illustration, provides an overview of the treatises published during the late sixteenth century on animal anatomy, briefly mentions the schism between Catholic and "reformed" anatomists, and then returns to his main theme to explore further the "divergence of scientists' and artists' interest in anatomy" over the course of the sixteenth century. A final short section covers anatomical écorché sculptures.
Gradually, Laurenza argues, "the anatomical interests of artists and scientists ... separated," as the epicenter of anatomical research shifted northward and anatomists grew more interested in what Laurenza calls "fine structure," "what lies below the forms immediately visible to the naked eye." Macroscopic anatomy became more an educational tool, and with the coming of photography the fields separated still further.
As one would expect (and hope), this is beautifully and lavishly illustrated, and the design is carried out very tastefully.
http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2012/06/book-review-art-and-anatomy-in.html… (more)
Laurenza subtitles his essay "Images from a Scientific Revolution," and, using examples mostly drawn from the Met's collections, explores the ways in which the "rediscovery of anatomy" during the Renaissance came about, and how the rise of print culture brought artists, printers, and scientists together, leading to "the nexus between art and science that assumed such unique forms during this period."
From Leonardo da Vinci to Michelangelo to Raphael, Laurenza examines different anatomical-art styles as they developed, and made an interesting discovery: a Raphael drawing proved to be the basis for a printed woodcut in a 1522 work by Jacopo Berengario de Carpi (significant, Laureza writes, because "a leading anatomist composed his treatise using, nearly verbatim, an anatomical illustration created by an artist-anatomist"). The plate from Berengerio de Carpi's work, Laurenza suggests, may have been the inspiration for a well-known illustration in Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica.
By the middle of the sixteenth century, though, anatomist had "assumed a dominant role in the genesis of anatomical illustrations." Laurenza writes of this development "They were not artists and thus did not know how to reproduce reality, except in a most approximate way." The anatomists had to "transform themselves into entrepreneurs," to find artists who could depict the results of the anatomist's research in a format suitable for publication in print. Laurenza contrasts the illustrations deployed by Charles Estienne and Vesalius, declaring the former "flat and less aesthetically appealing but more complete from a strictly scientific point of view."
Laurenza goes on to discuss the shift from woodcuts to engravings as the preferred method of anatomical illustration, provides an overview of the treatises published during the late sixteenth century on animal anatomy, briefly mentions the schism between Catholic and "reformed" anatomists, and then returns to his main theme to explore further the "divergence of scientists' and artists' interest in anatomy" over the course of the sixteenth century. A final short section covers anatomical écorché sculptures.
Gradually, Laurenza argues, "the anatomical interests of artists and scientists ... separated," as the epicenter of anatomical research shifted northward and anatomists grew more interested in what Laurenza calls "fine structure," "what lies below the forms immediately visible to the naked eye." Macroscopic anatomy became more an educational tool, and with the coming of photography the fields separated still further.
As one would expect (and hope), this is beautifully and lavishly illustrated, and the design is carried out very tastefully.
http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2012/06/book-review-art-and-anatomy-in.html… (more)
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Statistics
- Works
- 16
- Members
- 224
- Popularity
- #100,172
- Rating
- 4.6
- Reviews
- 5
- ISBNs
- 31
- Languages
- 8
A few things struck me. One was the incredible imagination and incredible drawing ability of Leonardo. (I was already aware of the fact that Leonardo drew very heavily on the work of engineers designers who were contemporary with him or lived slightly before him. (See "The innovators behind Leonardo " by Plinio Innocenzi...another great book). So not all his designs are totally original. Maybe most of them are adaptations of others. But Leonardo certainly excelled in his drafting abilities. he seemed incapable of doing a crude drawing...even where he clearly copied other works he couldn't help turning the copy (of a crude set of water wings for example) into a modest work of art.
The other thing that struck me was that virtually none of these inventions were actually made into real world objects....Leonardo was a designer not a producer. (I think some of his critics suggested that he never finshed anything. Well not quite true...he did complete a number of paintings and murals..."the last supper" for example). And many of his inventions lacked a decent power supply. he had to rely on men working treadmills or working hand cranks etc., or horses or oxen walking around in circles to provide the motive force for many of his inventions. He would have been in heaven with a gasoline engine or electric motor!
Fair to say, I really enjoyed the book. Happy to give it 5 stars...the diagrams/pictures, alone, are worth that.… (more)