Volume 44, Number 14 · September 25, 1997
The Vision of Leonardo
By Henri Zerner
Leonardo da Vinci: Scientist, Inventor, Artist 1997, and the Singapore Art Museum,October 3, 1997-February 1, 1998.
an exhibition at the Museum of Science, Boston, March 3-September 1,, Catalog of the exhibition edited by Otto Letze, by Thomas Buchsteiner
Gerd Hatje/Distributed Art Publishers, 224 pp., $35.00
Leonardo da Vinci was convinced of the power of vision as an instrument of knowledge. He felt that it was above all through our eyes that we grasp and understand the world, that visual representation is the primary method of recording knowledge, and, most importantly, that such knowledge enables us to master and control our environment. The Scholastic tradition of the later Middle Ages gave a privileged status to abstraction, the manipulation of concepts. By giving priority to experience—especially visual experience—and experimentation, Leonardo announced a new era in Western culture. Between the sixteenth century and the nineteenth, the development of science was intimately linked to vision, because the visible could efficiently be recorded. We can estimate a person's temperature by touching his forehead, but the mercury in the thermometer makes the temperature visible and consequently measurable.
Review, 5410 words
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