Tag Archives: Leonardo da Vinci

Science versus religion: the medieval disenchantment

April 14, 2020

JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig 1. An engraving showing a monopod or sclapod, a female Cyclops, conjoined twins, a blemmye, and a cynocephali. By Sebastian Münster 1544. Source History is a novel whose author is the people. -Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863)   In medieval times, knowledge, beliefs, and faith were largely centered upon a […]

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December 2, 2019

DA VINCI AT 500 Published in December, 2019 H E K T O R A M A     .   The year 2019 celebrates the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest painters and polymaths of all time. Born near Florence in 1452, he moved to Milan at […]

Signs of diseases in art

May 2, 2019

Chris Clark Exeter, United Kingdom   Lucrezia Vertova Agliardi by Giovanni Battista Moroni (1557) The Metropolitan Museum of Art “Every human being tells a story even if he never speaks.”1 Two paintings hang next to each other in the sumptuous Palazzo Doria Pamphilj in Rome: The Rest on the flight to Egypt and Penitent Magdalen. […]

Nature telling her secrets: the Kepler–Descartes connection

January 24, 2019

Ronald Fishman Chicago, Illinois, United States   Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) Nature tells us one secret in terms of another, and she may refuse to disclose one secret until another has been laid bare. – T.S. Kuhn1 In 1604, Johannes Kepler solved the problem of how light is refracted within the eye to produce an image on the […]

The curious tale of Leonardo Da Vinci and the spherical uterus

July 27, 2017

John Massie Parkville, Victoria, Australia   Drawing of Pregnant Uterus by Leonardo da Vinci (c 1512) Leonardo Da Vinci had one of the greatest minds in history. Accomplished in so many fields of both the arts and science, he challenged contemporary thinking, and was one of the early Renaissance artists to use dissection of corpses […]

Matters of the heart

January 27, 2017

Chris Arthur Dundee, Scotland   Leonardo da Vinci, drawing of the human heart [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Among the most impressive of Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical studies are his drawings of the human heart. Beside one of them he has written: “How could you describe this heart in words without filling a whole book?” […]

In pursuit of a new anatomy

January 22, 2017

Roseanne F. Zhao Chicago, Illinois, United States   (Left) Standing figure–muscle plate from De humani corporis fabrica, libri septum, Basile: 1543 by Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) (Right) The bones, muscles and tendons of the hand, c.1510-11–pen and ink with wash, over black chalk, 28.8 x 20.2cm, from Anatomical Manuscript A by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). The […]

Leonardo’s heart

January 22, 2017

Larry Zaroff Palo Alto, California, United States   Drawing of the heart and its blood vessels Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 – 1519) The surgeon comes to the operating room at seven a.m. for her eight o’clock mitral valve repair. A warm-up. Before any heart operation she always checks the elephants in the room. At that […]

Leonardo’s anatomical studies: from ancient imaginations to meticulous observations

January 22, 2017

Julia King New York, United States   Views of a Skull. c. 1489. Figure 1. Leonardo da Vinci Royal Collection © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Source: http://www.drawingsofleonardo.org/ Leonardo da Vinci was a “Renaissance man” in the truest sense, contributing his inexhaustible talent to many fields, including anatomy. In a time when medicine was still […]

Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist

January 22, 2017

Applying himself to the study of anatomy, “Leonardo composed a book annotated in pen and ink in which he did meticulous drawings in red chalk of bodies he had dissected himself. He showed all the bone structure, adding in order all the nerves and covering them with muscles: the first attached to the skeleton, the […]