Tag: Leonardo da Vinci
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The Pitfalls of Genius: Leonardo and his frustrated patrons
I’m in the midst of giving several talks and papers – two in the last week, in Birmingham and Glasgow respectively, and one next week in Washington D.C. at the Renaissance Society of America conference. I thought I’d post my powerpoints here in a series of posts (as more manageable PDF files) for those who…
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The Da Vinci Debate
Often, people who don’t have an in-depth knowledge of renaissance art use the short hand “Da Vinci” instead of “Leonardo”. Sometimes you will come across some cognoscenti admitting to “squirming” when they come across people referring to Da Vinci instead of Leonardo – see here or here for example. Although they are certainly correct that…
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Another priapic Vitruvian man!
This is just a quick addition to my previous post. One response to Cesariano’s man was a 1536 Italian edition of Vitruvius by Giovanni Battista Caporali. As far as I understand it, the passage about human proportion here was based on Cesariano’s translation, but edited and with new images. You might assume that the potentially…
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Leonardo’s Measure – The Genitals of Vitruvian Men
There seems to have been something of a genital fixation amongst commentators on Vitruvius’ in the 1490s and early 1500s. Vitruvius’ book on architecture was a favourite for many renaissance theorists, and his small passage about human proportion was revisited several times, notably by Leon Battista Alberti in his On Sculpture, by Francesco di Giorgio…
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Humanities Research and New Knowledge: Leonardo, Michelangelo and the Battle Scenes in the Hall of the Great Council
A couple of years ago, I had a student who asked me if it was OK to base her general renaissance reading on a book she’d found in the local library – Heinrich Wölfflin’s Classic Art. Now, I have a lot of time for Classic Art. It was a very important book when it was…