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International audience; Volume pubblicato con il contributo del Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca, della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa e del Dipartimento di Scienze del Patrimonio Culturale dell’Università di Salerno.

International audience; In 1584, Lomazzo mentioned a sketchbook Leonardo had compiled for the "condottiere" Gentile de' Borri, a fencing master in Milan at the time of his long stay at the Sforza court (1482-1499): this lost manuscript, whose unique surviving pages have been tentatively identified in a couple of sheets preserved in Venice, was focused on the theme of the most reliable military techniques, to be followed by both infantry and cavalry in battle. In Lomazzo's description (fitting also with other comparable sheets), such draft would have featured consistent references to the political context (mainly, Sforza's military alliance with the German Emperor), together with a peculiar comparison between the human and animal identities, almost as a prelude to Machiavelli's Art of War.

International audience; the text of a conference given on the occasion of the International Symposium "Leonardo da Vinci: arte della pace, arte della guerra" (Florence, Palagio di Parte Guelfa, December 5th, 2013).

International audience; This essay is devoted to the rediscovery of an important edition of Cicero’s Familiar Letters (Bologna, 1477), currently preserved in the Heidelberg University’s Library, which presents a consistent corpus of both interlinear and marginal annotations inscribed by several hands, among whom one, at least, is recognizable in Agostino Vespucci’s, once a student in Poliziano’s school, later known to have served as an assistant to Machiavelli in the Second Chancery of Florence. The book is annotated in three chronological periods: before 1493, under Poliziano’s direct mastery; between 1497 and 1508, with particular intensity in the years 1503-4, at the time of Vespucci’s association with Machiavelli; and in the decade 1520-30, by the hand of its last known possessor, Agostino Nettucci. Such precious incunable, therefore, reveals to be a peculiar witness of the cultural and political scenario of Florence in those years and offers some interesting hints about Leonardo’s life and work at the time of his return to Florence in the first five years of the 16th Century.

International audience; On the specific expertises provided by the two authors, this essay intends to propose an account of conceptual and figurative issues bearing witness to the interest of Leonardo da Vinci in the areas of the tragic and the comic. In fact, both some of the dramatic genres in his writings – mainly his compositions revealing literary ambitions (fairy tales, jokes, riddles as 'prophecies', witty sayings) – and a substantial part of his graphic production – particularly that focused on the representation of the abnormal and monstrous (as existing either in nature, or in the artist's mind, in the form of 'fantastic' inventions) and the physiognomic types or grotesque caricatures – reveal Leonardo's subtle criticism of contemporary times. The aporetic yet indispensable opposition and ambivalence of beauty and ugliness, youth and old age, smile and tears, permeates his figurative language, both in his writings and drawings, giving his reflections on the ethical and political problems and contradictions of Renaissance society a mocking and bitter outcome.

International audience; The tale of a meeting between Leonardo and Savonarola in the summer of 1495, later reported by Vasari (1550 and 1568) but confirmed by a memorandum remained in Leonardo's possession (Codex Atlanticus, f. 628 r), which refers explicitly to a "mission" assigned to him (presumably by Ludovico Sforza) to go to Florence, in order to get (through a competent mediator, probably Bernardo Rucellai) a detailed report about the new political rules promoted by the friar, lends credibility to a hypothesis of comparison between their anthropological conceptions, especially as they emerge from their "transfigured" use of the prophetic semantics, despite their shared repudiation of astrological quackery. If, on the one hand, Savonarola's preaching does not have any properly predictive character, in terms of intentional "divination", standing rather as a projection or representation of the contingency of the current days, in purely political terms, Leonardo's riddles, which he literally called "prophecies", on the other hand - and similarly - transform the genre of presages or predictions into entertainment tools for courtly audiences, that, however, in some cases, become a vehicle for a critical evaluation of the troubles of contemporary society. The likelihood that, on the occasion of his convocation in Florence in 1495, Leonardo was able to listen to Savonarola's sermons, so steeped in apocalyptic prophecy, may provide an explanation to the appearance of writings called "prophecies", among his notes, just in the last five years of the century. Their underlying vision of man, clearly pessimistic, offers significant points of contact with the negative anthropology advocated by Savonarola's preaching, which also makes use of animal apology, especially in the conceptual and ideological interpretation of the "anti-human" conflictuality among men, that makes them "beasts" towards themselves, in a sort of anticipation of Hobbes' famous motto homo homini lupus.

International audience; This paper focuses on Leonardo's and Machiavelli's common interest in the conceptual exchange between human and animal identities, as testified by writings of both authors and particularly by the famous chapter XXV of "The Prince", whose metaphor of the "centaur-like" ruler seems to have been preceded by a singular drawing produced in Leonardo's workshop (possibly reproducing an autograph sketch by the master), only recently rediscovered in the Codex Atlanticus, apparently representing a centaur. The discussion is then brought on Leonardo's and Machiavelli's involvement in the enterprise of the mural pictorial decoration of the Great Council Hall in Palazzo Vecchio at Florence (c. 1503-06), with the allegorical episode of the "Battle of Anghiari" (left unfinished by Leonardo and now lost), whose copies show the presence of a "centaur-like" warrior possibly inspired by (and/or inspiring) Machiavelli's imagery.

International audience; The personality of Leonardo da Vinci and the multifaceted character of his experimental career – as an artist, scientist, technician and writer – offer the perfect example of how some patterns and paradigms, usually intended as the highest representation of the Western tradition and the best result it was able to reach, actually turn out to be the witnesses of a cultural crossroads. Although being often considered the major champion of European culture, in fact, Leonardo shows a remarkable interest in foreign (non-Western) habits and customs in many aspects of his life and professional training. Moreover, he directly experienced a mixture of suggestions from different cultural and intellectual provenances. Finally, he tried to be employed as a civic engineer by the Turkish Sultan, for whom he imagined an epic bridge to be built in order to unite Europe and Asia, from Pera to Costantinople. Such dream-like enterprise – never concretely realized – may be assumed as the symbolic synthesis of a route through the Mediterranean in the Renaissance.

International audience; An abridged version of a paper presented at the Conference "Marx e Gramsci. Filologia, Filosofia e Politica allo Specchio", held in Naples on December 4-5, 2008. A critical approach to Gramsci's category of cosmopolitanism against Croce's idea of intellectual apoliticality, through their own interpretation of Leonardo's personality as a thinker, to explain the cultural and political failure of the Italian Renaissance. With excerpts of unpublished letters of Gramsci's wife on the subject.

Purpose To test the accuracy of different mitral annular sites of the E / e ′ ratio in predicting invasive left ventricular filling pressure (LVFP) in patients hospitalized for coronary artery disease (CAD). Methods Forty-one patients with suspected or ascertained chronic CAD underwent non-invasive estimation of LVFP the same day as coronary angiography combined with right catheterization for pulmonary capillary wedge pressure (PCWP) assessment. The ratio between E velocity and early diastolic velocity of the mitral annulus (e′) was calculated as a surrogate of PWCP by (i) averaging septal and lateral e′ ( E / e ′A2); (ii) averaging septal, lateral, inferior, anterior ( E / e ′A4); (iii) using the sole septal ( E / e ′S); or (iv) lateral annulus ( E / e ′L). Patients were divided in two groups according to the PCWP: 25 with the PCWP

BACKGROUND: Because high circulating plasma leptin is associated with many features of the metabolic syndrome (MS), such as abdominal obesity, insulin resistance and high blood pressure (BP), we analysed the ability of plasma leptin concentration to predict the risk of developing MS in a prospective investigation of adult male participants of the Olivetti Heart Study (OHS). METHODS AND RESULTS: Three hundred and sixty out of 907 men participating in the 1994-95 and 2002-04 OHS examinations (mean age at baseline 50.4 years, range 25-73 years) were free of MS at first visit according to NCEP-ATP III criteria (modified for the lack of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol measurement at baseline). During an average follow-up period of 8 years, there were 52 incident cases of MS (14.5%) due, in particular, to a rise in the prevalence of high BP (+42.4%), abdominal obesity (+16.4%) and impaired fasting glucose (IFG, +6.1%). In multivariate analyses, a one standard deviation difference in baseline plasma leptin concentration was associated with a 1.58-fold greater risk of developing MS (95% confidence interval = 1.10-2.30, P = 0.016) accounting for age, waist circumference, homeostatic assessment model index, smoking, alcohol consumption and physical activity. In particular, plasma leptin was positively associated with the risk of developing high BP (0.006) and IFG (0.014), after adjustment for confounders. CONCLUSION: In this sample of an adult male population free of MS at baseline, circulating plasma leptin was a significant predictor of the risk of MS and, in particular, of its high BP and IFG components, independently of potential confounders.

Le but de cette contribution est d’illustrer la conception de la guerre dans la pensée de Léonard de Vinci, à partir de ses écrits présentant une valeur philosophique (soit anthropologique, soit plus spécifiquement politique), à comparer avec ses créations figuratives (non seulement celles proprement artistiques mais aussi les dessins et projets liés au domaine de l’art militaire). Léonard s’est intéressé à la figure du guerrier et à sa représentation iconographique, selon une vision qui oscille entre deux extrémités conceptuelles : l’homme vertueux et la bête indomptée, le chevalier doué d’un appareil de qualités héraldiques, morales et techniques (champion de l’art de la guerre entendue comme discipline humanistique) et l’homme réduit à sa condition primordiale d’animal instinctif et colérique. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the conception of war in Leonardo da Vinci’s thought, on the basis of those writings of his endowed with a philosophical value (in both anthropological and political terms), to be compared with his figurative works (not only the properly artistic ones but also those referring to the field of the military arts). Leonardo’s interpretation of the figure of the warrior and its iconographic representation wavers between two conceptual extremes: the virtuous man and the wild beast, the knight displaying a heraldic apparatus of moral and technical qualities (champion of the art of war in the sense of a humanistic discipline) and the man reduced to the primitive condition of instinctive and irascible animal.

International audience; Un pregiudizio di apoliticità ha a lungo pesato su Leonardo. Al sentimento di avversione nutrito per lui in epoca risorgimentale, si tentò di reagire costruendo un Leonardo moralisé, che fungesse da espressione nazionalistica del genio italiano, tra neo-positivismo e rinascita latina. Uno sconcertante effetto di tale situazione fu l’acre protesta di Benedetto Croce, che, in una memorabile conferenza del 1908, demolì il Vinci come filosofo, passando proprio attraverso l’elemento della apoliticità. Da allora, poco è cambiato: il tema “Leonardo e la politica” ha continuato ad essere trascurato. Eppure, prescindendo da questioni di partigianeria politica dichiarata e militante, che, dato lo status professionale e l’indole solipsistica di Leonardo, sarebbe arduo aspettarsi da lui, una selezione di alcuni fra i suoi scritti frammentari e un conseguente esame lessicale e semantico consentono di evidenziare una sua discreta familiarità con il vocabolario politico della prima modernità, segnato dall’impiego di una lingua volgare, ancora in fieri, che connette gli ambienti ufficiali della politica con il circuito delle strade e delle botteghe. Da un drammatico memorandum della disfatta del ducato di Milano è possibile individuare tre famiglie categoriali di precipuo interesse politico: lo stato (termine-concetto fondamentale, la cui gestazione semantica giunge al suo culmine al tempo di Leonardo); la roba (insieme di vincoli patrimoniali, tra pubblico e privato); la libertà (condizione imprescindibile di equilibrio politico). Il presente contributo si propone di tessere una trama concettuale tra queste categorie, ricorrendo a stralci di svariati scritti vinciani, afferenti a molteplici ambiti: dall’urbanistica all’arte militare, dall’anatomia alla teoria artistica.

Context: The endocannabinoid system modulates food intake and body weight in animal models. Treatment with the cannabinoid type 1 receptor blocker, rimonabant, reduces body weight in obese individuals. Objective: The aim of this study was to determine whether single nucleotide polymorphisms of the gene encoding cannabinoid type 1 receptor, CNR1, are associated with body fat mass and distribution in two independent samples of white European adult men. Design, Setting, and Participants: The 3813A/G and 4895A/G single nucleotide polymorphisms at the exon 4 of CNR1 were genotyped in 930 participants to the Olivetti Prospective Heart Study (OPHS) in Southern Italy and in 216 participants to the Wandsworth Heart and Stroke Study in the United Kingdom. Retrospective analysis was also performed on an OPHS subsample (n = 360) for which anthropometric data from 1987 and 1994–1995 examinations were available. Main Outcome Measures: CNR1 genotypes and anthropometric measures of body fat distribution were determined. Results: In the OPHS study, the 3813G allele was associated with increased subscapular skinfold thickness (24.2 ± 9.1 vs. 22.8 ± 7.7 mm; P = 0.031) and waist circumference (WC) (99.1 ± 8.8 vs. 97.7 ± 8.8 cm; P = 0.050). No association was observed with 4895A/G variant. Haplotype analysis confirmed that the unique haplotype carrying the 3813G was associated with increased WC and subscapular skinfold thickness. Similar results were observed in the OPHS retrospective subsample and the Wandsworth Heart and Stroke Study sample. In the latter, the 3813G was associated with increased WC (96.8 ± 11.3 vs. 91.6 ± 10.4 cm; P = 0.006). Conclusions: Genetic variants at CNR1 are associated with obesity-related phenotypes in men. The detection of polymorphic variants in genes involved in the process of fat accumulation may help identify specific targets for pharmacological treatment of obesity and related metabolic abnormalities.

We thank Zhou1 for his note on our meta-analysis of the effect of statin treatment on blood pressure. Zhou pointed out the potential impact of statin therapy on the imbalance between NO and reactive oxidative species production occurring in animal models of salt-sensitive hypertension.2 This ability of statins was indeed the basis for one of the explanations that we proposed for the relatively small but clinically meaningful antihypertensive effect of these drugs in humans.3 We share Zhou’s considerations and recollect the experimental evidence in support of the concept that genetic or acquired susceptibility to …

OBJECTIVE: The mechanisms underlying high blood pressure in the framework of metabolic syndrome (MS) are not clarified: we thus analyzed the relationship of MS and its components to renal tubular sodium handling among participants of the Olivetti Heart Study, an epidemiological investigation of a representative sample of adult white male population in southern Italy. METHODS: Proximal (FPRNa) and distal (FDRNa) fractional sodium reabsorption were estimated by the clearance of exogenous lithium in 702 participants aged 25-75 years examined in 1994-1995. Blood pressure and relevant anthropometric and biochemical variables were also measured. The diagnosis of MS was based on modified National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP)-Adult Treatment Panel III (ATP III) criteria. RESULTS: FPRNa, but not FDRNa, was directly associated with body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, diastolic pressure, serum triglyceride and uric acid, independently of age and of antihypertensive treatment. After adjustment for age, FPRNa, but not FDRNa, was significantly greater in individuals with MS, as compared to those without [77.6% (95% confidence interval = 76.7-80.1) versus 74.4% (73.7-75.1), P < 0.001]. A similar difference was observed after the exclusion of participants on current antihypertensive treatment (P = 0.018). In untreated individuals, a significant interaction was observed between obesity and insulin resistance as related to FPRNa (P = 0.002): the highest age-adjusted levels of FPRNa were detected in obese hypertensive and obese insulin-resistant participants. CONCLUSION: In this sample of an adult male population, MS was associated with an increased rate of FPRNa. This finding is relevant to the pathophysiology of MS and possibly to the prevention of its cardiovascular and renal consequences.