Sublime

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, born around 80 BC, served in the Roman army under Caesar and specialized in the design and construction of artillery machines. His duties took him to what are now Spain and France and as far away as North Africa. Vitruvius later became an architect and worked on a temple, no longer in existence, in the town of Fano in Italy

Brunelleschi’s successor as a theorist of linear perspective was another of the towering Renaissance polymaths, Leon Battista Alberti (1404 –1472), who refined many of Brunelleschi’s experiments and extended his discoveries about perspective. An artist, architect, engineer, and writer, Alberti was like Leonardo in many ways: both were illegitimate

Léonard conserve néanmoins un intérêt marqué pour la construction d’églises, et il dessinera plus de 70 autres superbes dômes et plans idéalisés d’intérieurs d’églises tout en étudiant les transformations des formes géométriques et la problématique de la quadrature du cercle.

Un de ses prédécesseurs, Leon Battista Alberti, artiste-ingénieur, a écrit quelques années auparavant que cette matière est essentielle à l’artiste car, pour dépeindre correctement un individu ou un animal, il faut avant tout connaître ses caractéristiques internes. « Isole chaque os de l’animal, ajoute dessus ses muscles, puis recouvre le tout de

Le travail de Vitruve plaît particulièrement à Léonard et à Francesco car il confère une dimension concrète à une analogie remontant à l’Antiquité et plus précisément à Platon, une métaphore définitoire de l’humanisme renaissant : la relation entre le microcosme que constitue l’homme et le macrocosme que constitue la terre.

Alberti was a major influence nonetheless. Leonardo studied his treatises and consciously tried to emulate both his writing and his demeanor. Alberti had established himself as “an avatar of grace in every word or movement,” a style that very much appealed to Leonardo. “One must apply the greatest artistry in three things,” Alberti wrote, “walking

The Italian Renaissance was producing artist-engineer-architects who straddled disciplines, in the tradition of Brunelleschi and Alberti, and the tiburio project gave Leonardo the opportunity to work with two of the best: Donato Bramante and Francesco di Giorgio. They became his close friends, and their collaboration produced some interesting churc

Francesco di Giorgio from Siena.8 Thirteen years older than Leonardo, he was another exemplar of an artisan who combined art, engineering, and architecture. He had begun as a painter, moved as a young man to Urbino to work as an architect, returned to Siena to run the underground aqueduct system, and was a sculptor in his spare time. He was also in

Léonard est profondément influencé par le livre d’Alberti et se fait l’écho de son injonction dans ses propres carnets. « Un bon peintre doit principalement représenter deux choses : l’homme et l’intention de l’esprit », écrit-il. « Le premier est simple à dépeindre au contraire de la seconde, qui doit être traduite par les gestes et les mouvements