scholarly journals The Digital Renaissance from da Vinci to Turing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tula Giannini ◽  
Jonathan P. Bowen

The Italian Renaissance started a rebirth of culture and knowledge not experienced since Roman times. Leonardo da Vinci was arguably the leading polymath of the era. We are now in the throes of a Digital Renaissance, arguably started by Alan Turing in England. This paper draws some parallels between these two periods and speculates on the future of digital developments, especially in the context of the EVA Florence conference in Italy and the EVA London conference in the UK.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tula Giannini ◽  
Jonathan P. Bowen

Computing the future, as life and research moves to the Internet, we are engaged increasingly in digital encounters from present to past and into the future with real people, events and documents. This paper focuses on the newly born-digital relationship between Alan Turing, father of computer science, and Leonardo da Vinci, master of Renaissance art and science – both revered as visionary geniuses, prophets of the future. Given the continued growth of digitised materials that are daily entering global consciousness, it is only relatively recently that both da Vinci’s notebooks and paintings, and Turing’s archive, are online and searchable. Thus we are able for the first time to relatively easily juxtapose and compare their work, and see that they have much in common in terms of what it means to human in science, art and the natural world, from da Vinci’s in-depth studies of the mechanisms of the human body, mind, and soul, foundational to his art, and to Turing’s discoveries in Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, and morphogenesis. Considering their points of concurrence in the digital world brings into focus our global network of digital places and spaces, where science, art, and nature, including real and artificial life, become unbounded.


BMJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. m4556
Author(s):  
François Sellal ◽  
Laurent Tatu

Abstract Objective To investigate systematically the presence of the Babinski sign in paintings of the Christ Child by the greatest painters of the Renaissance. Design Observational analysis. Setting Large collection of paintings depicting the Christ Child from Flemish, Rhenish, and Italian schools between 1400 and 1550 CE, searched using published catalogues and Google. Study sample 302 Renaissance paintings (by 19 painters) depicting the Christ Child. Main outcome measure Babinski sign, defined as a hallux extension with an amplitude greater than 30°. The presence of foot sole stimulation was also noted. Results An unquestionable upgoing toe was apparent in 90 (30%) of the 302 paintings. The Babinski sign was present in more than 60% of Christ Child paintings by Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling, Martin Schongauer, and Matthias Grünewald. A bilateral Babinski sign was observed in three paintings. Stimulation of the sole was noted in 48/90 (53%) paintings and was always present in paintings by Andrea del Verrocchio, Leonardo da Vinci, and Giorgione. No association existed between the presence of the Babinski sign and the period during which the painter was active. Conclusions Four main factors were noted in relation to the representation of the Babinski sign in paintings of the Christ Child: the physiological toe phenomenon in infants, the representation of the nudity of the Christ by painters during the 15th century to demonstrate the incarnation, Renaissance painters’ need for precise observation of anatomy, and the desire of some Rhenish and Flemish painters to depict very realistic details. Italian Renaissance painters, whether Mannerist or not, tended to idealise the beauty of human body, and they often did not reproduce the Babinski sign.


2018 ◽  
pp. 251-258
Author(s):  
Giulia Baselica

The lyric poem Fra Andželiko (1912) was inspired by the vivid impressions Nikolaj Gumilëv gained during his Italian tour in the very same year. The work should be seen in its context that acts as a background for the gumilevian perception of the artistic civilization of the Italian Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci, Raffaello, Benvenuto Cellini, Michelangelo are here awakened, described and matched to the eponymous character. This article aims to reconstruct the image of Italy, of Poetry and to depict the poet through the verses of the poem.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-64
Author(s):  
Marco Masseti

The artists of the Italian Renaissance were keen observers of nature. Their works are often enriched with realistic details that inform us about the high degree of their scientific knowledge. In the particular case of the Baptism of Christ (1470-1475 c.) by Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci, the careful depiction of certain bird species, including a red-backed shrike and a redstart, reveals precise meanings closely related to Christological symbolism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ina Reiche ◽  
Lucile Beck ◽  
Ingrid Caffy

AbstractMany works of art have been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), the great artist-scientist-engineer of the Italian Renaissance; however, art historians have struggled to find definitive proof to connect Leonardo to these art pieces. The Flora wax bust in the Bode Museum, Berlin, was attributed to Leonardo because her face resembles several Leonardo portraits, but this attribution has the subject of intense debate since the bust’s acquisition in 1909. Using new chemical analyses and absolute 14C dating, we are able to resolve the question of authenticity. We show that the Flora wax bust is made primarily of spermaceti which was extracted from sperm whales. Therefore, 14C dating must consider the Marine Reservoir Effect. We have generated a new calibration method and dated the bust to the 19th c. This proves that the bust was not produced during the Renaissance, and thus cannot be attributed to da Vinci, and illustrates that 14C dating can be applied to unusual materials.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4-2) ◽  
pp. 412-428
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Mayorova ◽  

The article is devoted to Leonardo da Vinci’s “eye is less deceived than any other sense” maxima. Leonardo’s belief about painting being the most perfect instrument for one’s ontology and epistemology is shown. Based on Leonardo da Vinci’s “Treatise on Painting”, a compilation of Leonardo’s works, the author explores how visual arts (and painting in particular) had come up to the forefront of the Italian Renaissance. Moreover, it is shown how painting takes a leading cultural role in Europe even to this day following the Renaissance. The article reveals why Leonardo da Vinci viewed painting to be better than science, mechanical arts and other liberal arts. The article considers the possibility of transforming personal experience into the universal experience of mankind. It also considers the focus on experience, direct comprehension of reality and varietà concept. The article is dedicated to the peculiarity of Leonardo’s art style, including its unique sfumato technique and chiaroscuro. The article also deals with the idea of Leonardo being the personification of the Renaissance’s creativity. As a result, he was the one who encapsulated the Renaissance period and simultaneously laid the foundation for further development of the arts for several centuries.


Author(s):  
Tina Sherwell

Laila Shawa was born in Gaza in 1940. Between 1957 and 1958, she travelled to Cairo to study art at the Leonardo da Vinci Art Institute. She then pursued her studies in Fine Arts in Rome at the Accademia San Giacomo, University of Rome, receiving her BA in 1960. In her summers, she would travel to participate in the School of Seeing, studying under the famous expressionist artist Oscar Kokoschka in Salzburg, Austria. After the 1967 war, she moved to Beirut, which was a cultural hub for many Palestinians, where she lived and worked until 1975. Thereafter she lived between Gaza and the UK until 1988 and then permanently in the UK. Shawa’s work spans different media: painting, photography, printing, sculpture, and video works, offering sociopolitical critiques of her subject matter that predominantly relates to the Palestinian and Middle East contexts over the decades. Her series "Women and the Veil" of the late 1980s explored the contractions inherent in practices of Arab society, particularly, critiquing consumerism and blind faith in doctrines. She critiques these contexts through playfulness and satire, such as in The Impossible Dream (1988), while in her series of paintings The Hands of Fatima she explored the practices of magic in Arab societies. The paintings dissolve perspectival space into a kaleidoscope of colors, patterns, and rituals.


Author(s):  
J. A. Nowell ◽  
J. Pangborn ◽  
W. S. Tyler

Leonardo da Vinci in the 16th century, used injection replica techniques to study internal surfaces of the cerebral ventricles. Developments in replicating media have made it possible for modern morphologists to examine injection replicas of lung and kidney with the scanning electron microscope (SEM). Deeply concave surfaces and interrelationships to tubular structures are difficult to examine with the SEM. Injection replicas convert concavities to convexities and tubes to rods, overcoming these difficulties.Batson's plastic was injected into the renal artery of a horse kidney. Latex was injected into the pulmonary artery and cementex in the trachea of a cat. Following polymerization the tissues were removed by digestion in concentrated HCl. Slices of dog kidney were aldehyde fixed by immersion. Rat lung was aldehyde fixed by perfusion via the trachea at 30 cm H2O. Pieces of tissue 10 x 10 x 2 mm were critical point dried using CO2. Selected areas of replicas and tissues were coated with silver and gold and examined with the SEM.


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