“… più visino ala inprensiva&rquo; (Codex Atlanticus, f. 245r, formerly 90rb): Leonardo and the power of painting
Italiano

by Frank Fehrenbach

Saturday 14 April 2018, 10.30 am
Vinci, Teatro di Vinci

The goal of this Lettura is to briefly outline the key features of Leonardo’s “natural theory of painting”, in order to gain an understanding of the value attributed to painting within the dynamic totality of nature. To what extent does painting surpass common perception? What significance pertains, in Leonardo’s view, to painting within the context of nature as a whole?

Leonardo believed that painting is endowed with an extraordinary power, capable of engaging the observer with a kind of spell. This power does not just depend on the ability to render living reality as a real presence in the portrayed image. Over and above the ancient rhetorical model of “evidentia” (which creates an illusion of the presence of narrated things in the listener’s mind), painting is able to make visible reality appear in a strengthened and condensed form.

In his writings on the theory of painting Leonardo relied directly on physiological models of perception. The deità della scienzia della pittura (Codex Urbinas Lat. 1270, c. 12v)—‘deity of the science of painting’—stems not only from its essential proximity to the organ of sight, the noblest sense. Its unique power also lies, according to Leonardo, in the intensificatione of the process of vision (for example, providing images for simultaneity, relief, vivacity). In the system of cognitive elaboration of experience that takes place in the brain, special significance is reserved for the so-called imprensiva (an internal organ situated in the first “ventricle” of the brain). What was Leonardo’s purpose in “inventing” this internal sense? How does it relate to the physics of impetus, that is, to the transmission of kinetic forces? What significance does imprensiva hold for painting?
(The lecture will be given in Italian)