Leonardo da Vinci on Nature. Art and Invention in the Renaissance

Undergraduate

Few historical figures have captured the public imagination as powerfully as Leonardo da Vinci, mythologized as the unparalleled universal genius whose art, thoughts and inventions would prefigured the modern world. This course deconstructs Leonardo’s myth by situating his life, works, and writings into historical context and using them as a springboard to explore natural knowledge and technical invention in the Renaissance. With emphasis on textual, visual, and material primary sources, this lecture reconstructs the culture and formation of artists/craft people as social actors who played a central role in the investigation of the natural world and the rise of technical invention in the early modern world. Topics include the emergence of modern anatomy and the shift from book-based learning to dissection as the primary means to understand the human body; medieval and Renaissance elaborations on the nature of the Earth, fossils, and geological time; and cosmological conceptions including how Leonardo used direct observation and his artistic training to speculate on the nature of the celestial bodies. The class includes numerous field trips to the Beinecke Library, the Medical Historical Library, the Yale Art Gallery and the Peabody Museum. HU MW 10:30am-11:20am