2023-07-04 15:45:08
Leonardo da Vinci, A Skull Sectioned, Windsor, The Royal Collection, facsimile.
All at once a painter, military engineer and an ingenious inventor, Leonardo da Vinci is presented in the exhibition currently at the Château du Clos-Lucé in Amboise (in France’s central Loire Valley region) as a man just as captivated by the anatomy of the human body. Having opened on June 9, this temporary exhibition plunges visitors into the Italian artist’s avant-garde representations of the human machine. Da Vinci died at Clos-Lucé in 1519.
For thirty years, the painter drew bones, muscles, the body and female reproductive organs by dissecting bodies using innovative methods. Layered dissection, for example, enabled him to draw impressive anatomical spreads. Compared with modern medical imaging throughout the exhibition, their precision is all the more striking.
Leonardo da Vinci, The Lungs, Windsor, The Royal Collection, facsimile. CHÂTEAU DU CLOS LUCÉ
Nearly 230 drawings (mostly facsimiles) show da Vinci’s respectful view of anatomy, with organs depicted having been rinsed of bodily fluids and bones appearing as if they were detachable, to better explain their function.
“If he were alive today, Leonardo would be quite annoyed by Parcoursup,” joked exhibition curator Dominique Le Nen, a recently retired teacher and surgeon at the university hospital in Brest. He was referring to France’s centralized university application portal, which encourages early specialization. This contrasts with da Vinci’s activities as an artist, engineer and anatomist, which constantly informed each other throughout his career.
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Three-dimensional limbs
While, on the one hand, his meticulous study of anatomy helped him to paint the limbs and movements of his figures with precision, as in the iconic paintings The Last Supper and Vitruvian Manhis anatomical spreads benefited from his skill as a draftsman, where he applied the methods of perspective to represent limbs in three dimensions.
Beware, however, of oversimplifications: According to Dominique Le Nen, Leonardo did not dissect in order to paint better, but rather to attempt to unravel the mystery of life, like a true “experimental researcher.” The reconstruction of a dissection room from the period gives an idea of the atmosphere of these sessions, which took place in winter to preserve the corpses, and during which the painter was probably accompanied by students.
But da Vinci also drew on the scientific heritage that preceded him. From Hippocrates and Galen to Avicenna and Johannes de Ketham, “he drew heavily on the knowledge of dissection acquired by scientists of the Middle Ages and Antiquity,” explained the exhibition’s assistant curator, Pascal Brioist, professor of modern history at the University of Tours, while standing in front of books from that period at the entrance to the exhibition.
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