HONR 208R: LEONARDO AND THE SCIENCE OF ART
FALL 2014
Dr. Meredith J. Gill
Office: 1211B Art/Sociology Building
Telephone: 405-1481; e-mail: mgill@umd.edu
Office Hours: By appointment
Michelle Smith Collaboratory for Visual Culture (fourth floor, Art/Sociology):
Dr. Quint Gregory, Associate Director: quint@umd.edu; by appointment
Introduction: We will explore the career and works of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
with a view to examining how he pursued art and science as ways to understand the
world and the human place in it. We will follow his life story and the chronology of his
paintings, drawings, models, and unrealized projects as a framework by which to trace
specific and unfolding themes. A major aim of this class will be to consider the question:
can we separate art from science as a form of knowledge? Why was it possible for
Leonardo to create the works that he did? What are the connections between art and
science? We will think about the degree to which making art enabled Leonardo to
understand natural phenomena such as the action of water and of birds in flight. Among
other topics, we will look at his investigations of anatomy, his mechanical inventions and
his theory of the arts.
Goals: In this class, you will be assessed on your understanding of themes raised in
discussion, and on your thoughtfulness with respect to historically and culturally
conditioned definitions of genius, nature, art and science, and into our own times. You
will engage in team-oriented and individual research, focus on writing skills, skills of oral
presentation and innovative, creative use of digital sources and other media. By the end
of the course, my goal is that you will have attained not only a rich and detailed
understanding of the place of art and science in a dynamic and influential period in
European history but also that you will have produced your own creative responses to
problems inspired by Leonardo. My aim is that you will be able to communicate and
apply your knowledge as well as these skills to contemporary issues and into the future.
CLASS MEETINGS: Thursdays 2.00-4.30 pm, Michelle Smith Collaboratory for
Visual Culture (fourth floor, Art/Sociology Building)
READINGS: Required for this course:
Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, ed. Irma A. Richter, paperback
(Oxford World’s Classics) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), ISBN-10:
2
HONR 208R: LEONARDO AND THE SCIENCE OF ART
9780199299027 (available in the bookstore and on reserve in McKeldin in a different
edition)
Kenneth Clark, Leonardo da Vinci (revised edition), intro. by Martin Kemp, paperback
(Penguin Books, 1989), ISBN-10: 0140169822 (available in the bookstore and on reserve
[Art N6923.L33 C53 1993]).
In addition to the readings on reserve, other required readings may be assigned through
the semester. The readings assigned for class are required for the course and should be
read for the class date under which they appear in the syllabus.
GRADING: Class participation and short exercises: 40%
Short papers on drawings (oral and written together): 20%
Group work (grade shared by all): 15%
Final assignment: 25%
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: The University of Maryland, College Park has a nationally
recognized Code of Academic Integrity, administered by the Student Honor Council.
This Code sets standards for academic integrity at Maryland for all undergraduate and
graduate students. As a student you are responsible for upholding these standards for this
course. It is very important for you to be aware of the consequences of cheating,
fabrication, facilitation, and plagiarism. For more information on the Code of Academic
Integrity visit the Student Honor Council web site: http://www.shc.umd.edu. For further
information on what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it, see the very useful
plagiarism web site of the University of Toronto:
http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/using-sources/how-not-to-plagiarize.
Remember to sign the Honor Pledge on all examinations and assignments: "I pledge on
my honor that I have not given or received any unauthorized assistance on this
examination (assignment)."
ATTENDANCE: Regular attendance in class is expected and your presence will be
noted (allowances are made for religious holidays, inclement weather that forces class
cancellation, and excused absences). If you need to miss a deadline, you should let me
know in advance, if you can, or provide written documentation so that extensions can be
set.
University Policy: Absences for Medical Reasons
Students who must miss a single class meeting for medical reasons shall make a
reasonable effort to inform the instructor in advance and shall, upon returning to class,
present a self-signed note attesting to the date of the illness and including an
acknowledgment that the information is true and correct. Students who, for medical
reasons, miss more than one meeting during the semester or miss a major scheduled
grading event must provide written documentation from a health-care provider including
3
HONR 208R: LEONARDO AND THE SCIENCE OF ART
the dates of treatment and the dates on which the student was unable to meet academic
responsibilities. (Private diagnostic information shall be omitted.)
If you need special arrangements for any reasons, such as disability, please get in touch
with me at the beginning of the semester.
CLASS TOPICS WITH REQUIRED READINGS FOR CLASS:
4 September: Introduction: Leonardo of Florence, or Will the Real Leonardo Please
Stand Up?
Read (for 18 September): Clark, Chapter One; Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists,
Preface to Part Three and Life of Leonardo (on-line and on reserve); E. H. Gombrich,
“Leonardo’s Method for Working Out Compositions” (on-line)
11 September: No class
Assignment distributed on 5 September
18 September: The Big Three: Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo
Read: As above
Sign up for drawings’ presentations (which begin on 2 October)
Final assignment distributed
25 September: Milan (1482-1499): Madonna of the Rocks and the Last Supper
Read: Clark, Chapter Five
2 October: Milan: Architecture and the Bronze Equestrian Monument for Ludovico
Sforza
Read: Bülent Atalay, Math and the Mona Lisa: The Art and Science of Leonardo
(Washington DC: Smithsonian Books, 2004)
Notebooks (assigned portions)
9 October: Birds and Flying Machines
Read: Notebooks (assigned portions)
16 October: Digital Dreaming: Collaboratory Workshop with Dr. Quint Gregory on
Leonardo Resources
Read (for 23 October): Clark, Leonardo da Vinci, Chapters Six, Seven, and Eight
Jane Roberts, “An Introduction to Leonardo’s Anatomical Drawings,” in Claire Farago,
ed., Leonardo’s Science and Technology: Essential Readings for the Non-Scientist (New
York/London: Garland, 1999) (on-line)
Notebooks (assigned portions)
4
HONR 208R: LEONARDO AND THE SCIENCE OF ART
23 October: Anatomy
Read: As above
30 October: Leonardo, Mona Lisa (c. 1503), and Freud
Read: Sigmund Freud, Leonardo da Vinci: A Study in Psychosexuality (on reserve)
Meyer Schapiro, “Leonardo and Freud: An Art-Historical Study” (on-line)
Rough outlines of group projects due
6 November: Second Milanese Period (1506-1513): Water
Read: E. H. Gombrich, “The Form of Movement in Water and Air” (on-line)
Martin Kemp, “Analogy and Observation in the Codex Hammer,” in Farago, ed.
(on-line)
Notebooks (portions assigned)
13 November: War, Weapons and Machines and Last Years in France (1516-1519)
Read: A. Richard Turner, “A Blessed Rage for Order,” and “The Body as Nature and
Culture,” in Inventing Leonardo (New York: Knopf, 1993) (on-line)
Samuel Edgerton, “Leonardo da Vinci on Creativity, Mechanics and the Imitation
of Nature” (on-line)
Notebooks (portions assigned)
20 November: No class: Visit (either Saturday, 22 or Sunday, 23 November) to The
National Gallery of Art, Washington, to examine paintings, furnishings, and other objects
that comprise the Renaissance interior.
[Thanksgiving]
4 December: Review: Art and Science Then and Now: GROUP PROJECTS
11 December: Review: Art and Science Then and Now: GROUP PROJECTS
FINAL ASSIGNMENTS DUE
5
HONR 208R: LEONARDO AND THE SCIENCE OF ART
GUIDELINES FOR ASSIGNMENTS:
SHORT REPORT ON A DRAWING BY LEONARDO
DUE: In class on the day of presentation (two or so a day beginning 2 October; sign-up
beginning 18 September)
LENGTH: Three pages (double-spaced) minimum
You are welcome to give me any number of rough drafts, and to discuss your choices
with me at any time.
The main aim of this paper is for you to write about a drawing that you have chosen, and
to present it to us based on your research and our discussions and readings. You will
need to document any information and/or ideas of others (including Leonardo’s writings,
such as the Notebooks) in footnotes or endnotes (guidelines available).
GUIDELINES: Choose a drawing by Leonardo or one sheet of drawings by him. This
should not be a drawing that we have discussed at any length in class or that Clark
analyzes extensively. It can be taken from Kenneth Clark’s The Drawings of Leonardo
da Vinci (three volumes; on reserve) or from ARTstor. You can use any other source to
find your drawing, as long as you cite it. It would be appropriate if your drawing related
to our class topic that day, but it need not. If you are interested in that subject, however,
you might choose a drawing from this body of Leonardo’s work
Write about this drawing as if you were writing a catalogue entry for a museum
exhibition catalogue on Leonardo. You should attach a good copy of your drawing to
your paper, and be prepared to display your drawing in class, as well as contribute a file
to post on our class site on Canvas.
At the top of the paper, include the following:
1. Title of the subject (eg. Cross-Section of a Skull)
2. Date
3. Artist’s medium (eg. ink [color]; charcoal [color] etc.)
4. Full citation of the source of your drawing (eg. Clark as above; catalogue number;
page number, etc.)
A. Description: Begin with a clearly structured description of the drawing, expanding
the categories 1-4 above. Describe the sheet as a whole: the organization of the page,
composition and/or multiple views of the same subject or different subjects.
6
HONR 208R: LEONARDO AND THE SCIENCE OF ART
Mention where the sheet comes in Leonardo’s career (eg. as a young man in Milan when
he was interested in flight; old age, etc). Describe how he approached this subject in your
chosen example (eg. how he handled the medium; what he chose to represent most
clearly; what the writing on the sheet indicates about the purpose of the drawing).
Describe the style of the drawing (eg. a finished presentation drawing; a sketch; a doodle;
a careful study of an object or organism).
B. Analysis: How do you think your drawing relates to his artistic and/or scientific
interests in this subject, in general? Why did he choose to represent his subject in this
way? What do you imagine he was thinking? Was there a problem that he was trying to
solve while he was drawing? Do you think that he succeeded?
What is interesting to you about this drawing?
You might feel inspired to investigate some aspects of this question further eg. the
physics of motion before Isaac Newton; anatomy as we understand it in medical science
today; whether the object represented was ever built; whether it could be built; whether a
modern version of this object now exists.
Concise description and analysis in your own words is the aim. Use secondary sources
only so that they help you answer your own questions (cite them as footnotes/endnotes).
GROUP PROJECTS: Final presentations on 4 and 11 December.
Through the semester, you will be a member of one of several groups (3-4 persons) who
share a common responsibility for one of the following themes (or a theme chosen by
your group):
Anatomy
Machines
Water/Air (eg. aerodynamics; hydraulics, etc)
Painting and the Arts
Nature (biology; plants; animals, etc)
Mathematics and the Arts (including architecture)
Through the semester, you will have been thinking about your subject when it comes up
in class. You will be drawing on our readings and discussion, and should feel free to take
the material in any direction and focus (eg. the modern circulatory system; biological
science).
Come to class on 30 October with a rough outline or statement of the ideas, strategies,
and materials that you have come up with so far (to hand in).
7
HONR 208R: LEONARDO AND THE SCIENCE OF ART
On 4 and 11 December, your group will share with us your reflections about the relation
of Leonardo’s work in your area to modern-day experience.
FINAL ASSIGNMENT: DUE: 11 December (distributed 18 September).
We will discuss the details of these and other projects in class.
RESERVES IN MCKELDIN LIBRARY (readings may be added over the course of
the semester):
Bülent Atalay, Math and the Mona Lisa: The Art and Science of Leonardo da Vinci
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2004) [N6923.L33 A4 2004]..
Kenneth Clark and Carlo Pedretti, The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci in the Collection
of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, 3 vols. (drawings and text) (London:
Phaidon, 1968) [Folio NC257.L4 C55 1968].
Sigmund Freud, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, trans. Alan Tyson
(New York: Norton, 1964) [ND623. L5 F813].
Sigmund Freud, Leonardo da Vinci: A Study in Psychosexuality (New York: Vintage
Books, 1916/1947) [ND623.L5F8 1947a].
A. Richard Turner, Inventing Leonardo (New York: Knopf, 1993).
See the primary source, Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, and other resources on-line:
http://members.efn.org/~acd/vite/VasariLives.html.
Several of these books are also available in multiple copies and in different editions in
campus libraries. An important research collection is housed in the Art Library
(second floor, Art/Sociology Building), open from 11.00 am – 4.00 pm, Monday –
Friday.
Additional research sources and references
*See also the link under “Course Related Guides” through the University Libraries’ home
pages to resources for ARTH 323: Fifteenth-Century Italian Renaissance Art (Fall, 2012):
http://lib.guides.umd.edu/ARTH323. Many of these resources also apply to the sixteenth
century. On that page, you will find contact information for our Art Librarian, Patti
Cossard: pcossard@umd.edu. You are very much encouraged to make a time to meet
with her through the semester to consult on your projects.
8
HONR 208R: LEONARDO AND THE SCIENCE OF ART
See also the Yale University Art History research guide, which has Renaissance-related
links available on the open web:
http://guides.library.yale.edu/content.php?pid=120316&sid=1035941
*ARTstor (though the University Libraries’ home pages; see also Art Library).
*JSTOR (through the University Libraries’ home pages).
*Oxford Art Online (formerly Grove Art)
Bayer, Andrea, ed., Art and Love in Renaissance Italy (New York/ New Haven: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 2008).
Berenson, Bernard, Italian Painters of the Renaissance (many editions of his four essays
on regional schools) (Oxford, 1980).
Berenson, Bernard, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1970).
Blunt, Anthony, Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450-1600 (London, 1975).
Brucker, Gene, The Society of Renaissance Florence: A Documentary Study (New York,
1977).
Brucker, Gene, Renaissance Florence (New York, 1969).
Burckhardt, Jacob, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C.
Middlemore (New York, 1958).
Burke, Peter, Culture and Society in Renaissance Italy, 1420-1540 (New York, 1972)
(published in 1974 as Tradition and Innovation in Renaissance Italy).
Burke, Peter, The Italian Renaissance: Culture and Society in Italy (Princeton, 1987).
Cole, Bruce, The Renaissance Artist at Work: From Pisano to Titian (Westview Press,
1990).
Cole, Michael W., ed., Sixteenth-Century Italian Art (Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006).
Edgerton, Samuel Y., The Mirror, the Window, and the Telescope: How Renaissance
Linear Perspective Changed Our Vision of the Universe (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2009).
Feigenbaum, Gail et al, eds., Sacred Possessions: Collecting Italian Religious Art, 15001900 (Issues and Debates) (Getty Research Institute, 2011).
9
HONR 208R: LEONARDO AND THE SCIENCE OF ART
Garrard, Mary and Norma Broude, eds., The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art
History (New York: HarperCollins, 1992).
Hale, John, Renaissance Europe: Individual and Society (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1971).
Hartt, Frederick, History of Italian Renaissance Art (Pearson, 2010; multiple editions).
Kemp, Martin, The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to
Seurat (New Haven, 1990).
Kemp, Martin, Seen/Unseen: Art, Science, and Intuition from Leonardo to the Hubble
Telescope (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
King, Ross, Leonardo and the Last Supper (Walker and Co., 2012).
Murray, Peter, The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1986).
Onians, John, Bearers of Meaning: The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages,
and the Renaissance (Princeton, 1988).
Pedretti, Carlo, Leonardo da Vinci: Nature Studies from the Royal Library at Windsor
Castle; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu … (Johnson Reprint Corp., 1980).
Pedretti, Carlo, Leonardo da Vinci on Painting: A Lost Book (Libro A) Reassembled
from the Codex Vaticanus Urbinas 1270 and from the Codex Leicester (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1964).
Panofsky, Erwin, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (New York, 1972).
Pope-Hennessy, John, An Introduction to Italian Sculpture, 3 parts (Gothic to Baroque)
(Oxford, 1986).
Rublack, Ulinka, Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe (Oxford
University Press, 2011).
Shearman, John, Only Connect: Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance
(Washington, DC/Princeton, 1992).
Smith, Christine, Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism: Ethics, Aesthetics, and
Eloquence, 1400-1700 (New York, 1992).
Steinberg, Leo, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion (New
York, 1983).
10
HONR 208R: LEONARDO AND THE SCIENCE OF ART
Vasari on Technique: Being the Introduction to the Three Arts of Design, Architecture,
Sculpture, and Painting (New York, 1960).
Wallace, William E., Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man, and His Times (New York,
2010).
Wackernagel, M., The World of the Florentine Renaissance Artist, trans. A. Luchs
(Princeton, 1981).
Wilde, Johannes, Venetian Art from Bellini to Titian (Oxford, 1981).
Zwijnenberg, Robert, The Writings and Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci: Order and
Chaos in Early Modern Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
* * *
The University’s grading scale is copied below:
•
A+, A, A- denotes excellent mastery of the subject and outstanding scholarship.
•
B+, B, B- denotes good mastery of the subject and good scholarship.
•
C+, C, C- denotes acceptable mastery of the subject.
•
D+, D, D- denotes borderline understanding of the subject. It denotes marginal
performance, and it does not represent satisfactory progress toward a degree.
•
F denotes failure to understand the subject and unsatisfactory performance
•
XF¬ denotes failure due to academic dishonesty.
* * *
CourseEvalUM:
Your participation in the evaluation of courses through CourseEvalUM is a responsibility
you hold as a student member of our academic community. Your feedback is confidential
and important to the improvement of teaching and learning at the University as well as to
the tenure and promotion process. CourseEvalUM will be open for you to complete your
evaluations for Spring semester courses between Tuesday, April 23 and Friday, May 10.
You can go directly to the website (www.courseevalum.umd.edu) to complete your
evaluations starting April 23. By completing all of your evaluations each semester, you
will have the privilege of accessing the summary reports for thousands of courses online
at Testudo.
* * *
University Closure:
If the University is forced to close for an extended period of time, the material missed
will be made up either with rescheduled classes or extra assignments relevant to that
11
material. If a test or exam cannot be rescheduled in a normal fashion, other means of
assessment will be employed.