scholarly journals Le mura di Leonardo. I rilievi del 1502

X ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Carpiceci ◽  
Fabio Colonnese

Leonardo’s Walls. Surveys in 1502In the summer of 1502, Cesare Borgia appointed Leonardo da Vinci for his engineering expertise. His assignment was specific and concerning with military architecture: he was expected to “see, measure and do good estimation”. The Codex L, a small notebook conserved in the Library of the Institute of France, show the results of the survey of the city walls of Cesena and Urbino. The technique Leonardo adopted consists in traversing rectilinear stretches, measuring their length by means of an instrument able to count his steps and establishing their orientation by means of a compass. At the end of the path, the data relative to the sides of a closed polygon are obtained, resulting the geometric plan of the walls. This practice is testified by some residual eidotypes provided with quotas and orientations. In some cases, only the lists of distances in numbers are present, but the analysis of the figures makes it possible to reconstruct the surveyed plans, as Nando De Toni pioneered many years ago. This study focuses on the tools and the urban survey technique used by Leonardo. The analysis of some sheets from the Codex L, contextualized with respect to the actual topography of the sites, allows to understand the correct sequence of the operations carried out first in the site and then at the drawing board. By means of specific digital reconstructions, it is therefore possible to study the instrumental and operational limits of this practice and, by comparing it with the current state, to reconstruct the entire defensive structure.

2009 ◽  

The 5th European-African Conference of Wind Engineering is hosted in Florence, Tuscany, the city and the region where, in the early 15th century, pioneers moved the first steps, laying down the foundation stones of Mechanics and Applied Sciences (including fluid mechanics). These origins are well reflected by the astonishing visionary and revolutionary studies of Leonardo Da Vinci, whose kaleidoscopic genius intended the human being to become able to fly even 500 years ago… This is why the Organising Committee has decided to pay tribute to such a Genius by choosing Leonardo's "flying sphere" as the brand of 5th EACWE.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Howard Louthan

Reading these articles in our AHY Forum brought back a flood of memories to my last days as a university undergraduate at Emory University when I first encountered Emperor Rudolf II and Renaissance Prague in a course taught by the late James Allen Vann. What captivates us about the past? What prompts naive undergraduates to take that fateful step and pursue a PhD in history? For me, it was simply Rudolf. I was not alone. The quizzical emperor ensconced in his castle high above the city has intrigued the imaginations of many. There is certainly irony in this, for Rudolf as an emperor was no success. He ended his reign an ineffective ruler browbeaten by his own brother to abdicate as king of Bohemia. But if he failed politically, there were lasting triumphs elsewhere. Rudolf's contemporary, the Flemish painter and theoretician Karel van Mander, famously pointed to Prague and the emperor as the “greatest art patron in the world.” And what emperor can boast that his most acclaimed “likeness” was a collage of fruits and vegetables, a portrait executed by a student of Leonardo da Vinci?


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.


1910 ◽  
Vol 69 (1782supp) ◽  
pp. 138-140
Author(s):  
Edward P. Buffet
Keyword(s):  
Da Vinci ◽  

2019 ◽  
Vol 137 (11) ◽  
pp. 1332
Author(s):  
Christopher W. Tyler
Keyword(s):  
Da Vinci ◽  

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