Leonardo da Vinci

She was one of the most educated, cultured, and politically astute women of her age.

corresponding with Leonardo da Vinci, collecting masterpieces by Mantegna, Raphael, Titian, and Perugino, and assembling one of Europe's greatest collections of art and antiques.

I have to admit that Isabella is one of my favorite figures in Renaissance history.

The more I read about her, the more remarkable she becomes.

Admission, of course, was by invitation only.

Princes, ambassadors, scholars, and visiting artists considered it a privilege to be shown inside because Isabella's collection quickly became one of the most admired in Europe.

As we walked through her apartments, I couldn't help imagining Isabella herself moving through these rooms, meeting diplomats, writing letters to Leonardo da Vinci, discussing new commissions with Andrea, Montaigne, or entertaining distinguished guests from the courts across Europe.

It's easy to forget that while kings and dukes often dominate the history books, Isabella was every bit as influential in shaping the artistic identity of Mantua.

Irvin has like this lovely diagram of like the dissected scarecrow and the vines running through it, drawn in a little notepad by this point.

Irvin's over here fucking Leonardo da Vinci.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Oh, and actually I did go.

There's a da Vinci museum in Milan, and, um, there's a, like a digital recreation of the Last Supper, and they've been able to do scans because it's all old and falling apart.

They've been able to do digital scans and, like, see, see things that you can't see with the naked eye, and they've, they, there's like, uh, there's, uh, like d- uh, test drawings that he did and stuff.

Um, so this picture, I don't think this is a, a factual.

The great majority of the illustrations are reproduced from photographs taken directly from the originals by Mr. W. Tams of Cambridge, to whom I am greatly indebted for the skill and care with which he has overcome the difficulties incidental to photographing from old books, the pages of which are so often wrinkled, discolored, or worm-eaten.

For the use of plate 18, which appeared in Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, I am under obligations to the author, Mr. Edward McCurdy, M.A., and to Messrs. Duckworth and Company.

Text figures 7, 18, 77, 78, and 112 are reproduced by the courtesy of the Council of the Bibliographical Society from papers by the late Dr. Payne, to which the references will be found in Appendix 2, while for the use of text figure 108, I am indebted to the Royal Numismatic Society.

For permission to utilize the modern facsimile of the famous Dioscorides manuscript of Juliana Anicia, from which plates 1, 2, and 15 are derived, I have to thank Professor Dr. Josef Ritter von Karabasek of the K.K. Hoff Bibliothek in Vienna.

The former is reproduced on a small scale in plate 17.

It is scarcely possible to imagine a more perfect habit drawing of a plant.

In Italy, Leonardo da Vinci's exquisite study of plants, of which plate 18 is an example, must also have pointed the way to a better era of herbal illustration.

In his work, the artistic interest predominates over the botanical to a greater extent than is the case with Dürer's drawing.

Pietro Perugino, who died in fifteen twenty-four, the master of Raphael; Mantegna, fourteen thirty to fifteen oh six, the inventor of engravings; the Bellini and Carpaccio, who died in fifteen nineteen.

But it is the very end of the fifteenth century and the first thirty years of the sixteenth that give us the greatest names in Renaissance paintings, the names of Leonardo da Vinci, fourteen fifty-two to fifteen nineteen, painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, scientist, and musician; Michelangelo; Raphael, fourteen eighty-five to fifteen twenty, whose work, particularly in the Vatican frescoes, was so perfect that when he died inspiration seemed to pass from his followers as color fades from clouds at sunset; Andrea del Sarto, who died in fifteen thirty-one; and the four great painters of the Venetian school, Giorgione, fourteen seventy-eight to fifteen eleven; Titian, fourteen seventy-seven to fifteen seventy-six; Tintoretto, who died in fifteen ninety-four; and Veronese, who died in fifteen eighty-eight.

It was natural that this most glorious of all periods in the history of art should be followed by one of mediocrity, when the artist, in striving after perfection of style, lost almost all spontaneity of inspiration, and that there could be no new period of artistic production until there were new spiritual impulses to give rise to it.

D.

Da Vinci.

The correct answer is Leonardo da Vinci.

Question number four.

Pope Leo XIV was born September

Another part of it is a change in who invention is for.

So when we look at Leonardo da Vinci's descriptions of what he can do at the moment that he's given as a gift by the Medici family to the Duke of Milan, which is the sort of thing that happens to you in the Renaissance.

And he describes, you know, I can make an obelisk elevator so you can have an obelisk in your garden that's on a secret elevator and it can go up and down and impress your guests.

And I can invent all sorts of cool war machines and I can invent how to make a giant thing.

Yeah, it's so interesting.

I mean, when you were just talking about it, all I could think about is I think about like in the Renaissance era or like a long time ago, because we're far more specialised now where like an artist is like just, not just an artist, but like they're an artist, you're a painter and we kind of are all like, don't know if you're a scientist you're a scientist whereas you go back to like the Renaissance or like Da Vinci or somebody like they would be painter they would be a scientist they would be a mathematician they would be an architect and where you had so many different skills that all kind of interconnect and you can kind of see that there is a connection between them but the way that I don't really know why we've done this to ourselves but we put ourselves in these different categories and I feel like in a way we're kind of limiting our brains because there's so much potential to broaden and apply creativity in different ways.

Yeah, I think some people as well would argue that commitment to specialization is making things, is taking things away from their essence.

And I think Hassan Fatih, who is this iconic Egyptian architect, he would say that architecture without architecture without spirituality is engineering, and architecture without philosophy is just engineering.