Class+901+-+Group+Four

Our topic is Anatomy. As self-proclaimed leader, I encourage research and anyone of our group is welcome to edit. Welcome all! Members of team 4. I require you to put down all info collected here. The info will be re-written in an essay format. I urge all members to sign their additions.


 * Images:**

http://www.gfmer.ch/International_activities_En/Images/Leonardo/Vitruvian_man.jpg http://www.gfmer.ch/International_activities_En/Images/Leonardo/Neck.jpg http://www.gfmer.ch/International_activities_En/Images/Leonardo/Muscles4.jpg http://www.gfmer.ch/International_activities_En/Images/Leonardo/Hands2.jpg http://www.gfmer.ch/International_activities_En/Images/Leonardo/Hands.jpg http://www.gfmer.ch/International_activities_En/Images/Leonardo/Legs2.jpg

Leonardo’s interest with anatomical studies reveals a prevailing artistic interest of the time. In his own treatise //Della pittura// (1435; “On Painting”), theorist Leon Battista Alberti urged painters to build the human figure as it exists in nature, supported by the skeleton and muscular structure, and only then clothed in skin. Although the date of Leonardo’s first involvement with anatomical study is unsure, it is sound to speculate that his anatomical interest was started during his apprenticeship in Verrocchio’s workshop, either in response to his master’s interest or to that of Verrocchio’s neighbor Pollaiuolo, who was known for his fascination with the workings of the human body. It cannot be determined exactly when Leonardo began to perform dissections, but it might have been several years after he first moved to Milan, at the time a center of medical investigation. His study of anatomy, originally pursued for his training as an artist, had grown by the 1490s into an independent area of research. As his sharp eye uncovered the structure of the human body, Leonardo became fascinated by the //figura istrumentale dell’ omo// (“man’s instrumental figure”), and he sought to comprehend its physical working as a creation of nature. Over the following two decades, he did practical work in anatomy on the dissection table in Milan, then at hospitals in Florence and Rome, and in Pavia, where he worked with the physician-anatomist Marcantonio della Torre. By his own count Leonardo dissected 30 corpses in his lifetime.
 * Research:**

Leonardo’s early anatomical studies dealt mostly with the skeleton and muscles; yet even at the beginning, Leonardo combined anatomical with physiological research. From observing the static structure of the body, Leonardo started to study the role of individual parts of the body in mechanical activity. This led him finally to the study of the internal organs; among them he probed deeply into the brain, heart, and lungs as the “motors” of the senses and of life. His findings from these studies were drewn in the famous anatomical drawings, which are among the most important achievements of Renaissance science. The drawings are based on a connection between natural and abstract representation; he presented parts of the body in transparent layers that afford an “insight” into the organ by using sections in point of view, reproducing muscles as “strings,” indicating hidden parts by dotted lines, and devising a hatching system. The genuine value of these //demonstrations// lay in their ability to make a number of individual experiences at the dissecting table and make the data immediately and accurately visible; as Leonardo proudly emphasized, these drawings were better than descriptive words. The wealth of Leonardo’s anatomical studies that have survived made the basic principles of modern scientific illustration. It is worth noticing, though, that during his lifetime, Leonardo’s medical investigations remained private. He did not look at himself as a professional in the field of anatomy, and he neither taught nor published his findings.

Although he kept his anatomical studies to himself, Leonardo did publish some of his observations on human proportion. Working with the mathematician Luca Pacioli, Leonardo considered the proportional theories of Vitruvius, the 1st-century BC Roman architect, as presented in his treatise //De architectura// (“On Architecture”). Imposing the principles of geometry on the makings of the human body, Leonardo demonstrated that the ideal proportion of the human figure corresponds with the forms of the circle and the square. In his illustration of this theory, the so-called Vitruvian Man, Leonardo demonstrated that when a man places his feet firmly on the ground and stretches out his arms, he can be contained within the four lines of a square, but when in a spread-eagle position, he can be drawn in a circle.



Leonardo envisaged the great picture chart of the human body he had produced through his [|anatomical] drawings and Vitruvian Man as a //cosmografia del minor mondo// (“cosmography of the microcosm”). He believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy, in microcosm, for the workings of the universe. Leonardo wrote: “Man has been called by the ancients a lesser world, and indeed the name is well applied; because, as man is composed of earth, water, air, and fire … this body of the earth is similar.” He compared the human skeleton to rocks (“supports of the earth”) and the expansion of the lungs in breathing to the ebb and flow of the oceans.

Leonardo means "Strongs as the lion".

"**Leonardo da Vinci**." __Encyclopædia Britannica__. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 21 May. 2009 <[]>.

(To be later re-written to avoid plagerism)

-Kriptic.

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