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Questo contributo intende presentare il lavoro svolto durante la Summer School Tran(s)missions che ha avuto luogo in forma sincrona e asincrona dal 10 al 19 settembre 2021 presso il Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici dell'Universit�� degli Studi Roma Tre. Il corso, presentato in collaborazione con il Virtual Humanities Lab della Brown University, ha visto la partecipazione di 13 studenti, tra cui ricercatori, artisti, curatori, specialisti in scienze bibliotecarie, ingegneri, tecnici-archivisti che conducono studi interdisciplinari nell���ambito dell���Italianistica e della cultura visuale, aprendo le proprie prospettive d���indagine al rapporto tra parola e immagine, alla cultura visuale, ai media studies, ai material culture studies, ai film studies, al digital storytelling, al creative writing, alle digital and public humanities, alle arti visive, alla storia dell���arte, storia, e computer science., Umanistica Digitale, No. 11 (2021): DHs for society: e-quality, participation, rights and values in the Digital Age

This paper focuses on the interaction between scientific, literary, and artistic research in Leonardo da Vinci’s manuscripts, which aim to examine and represent natural forms. Drawing upon his employment of fables and emblems in scientific contexts, I argue that Leonardo undertakes an aesthetic and philosophical project that uses empirical, diagrammatic, and pictorial strategies toward the investigation of nature. Through case studies on the fables and the emblems of the lily, the butterfly, and the mirror, I show that Leonardo’s textual and visual forms are modeled on a recurrent binary structure. By means of this binary model, which is also echoed in his scientific diagrams, Leonardo illustrates the causes and the consequences of a natural phenomenon. Ultimately, thanks to the interaction of different fields of analysis – such as geometrical transformation of shapes, fables, and emblems – Leonardo is able to reach a truthful representation of Nature.

L’intervento intende mostrare le relazioni tra parole e immagini nei repertori leonardiani e la rielaborazione di tali cataloghi in forme narrative complesse, quali i rebus e le favole, che mirano a indagare gli elementi naturali. È ormai riconosciuta dai critici l’esistenza di un taccuino che fu compilato da Leonardo con ingenti liste di parole, il «Libro di mia vocaboli», di cui il Codice Trivulziano rappresenta la fonte principale. A questa raccolta è stato negli ultimi anni affiancato un secondo repertorio, oggi consultabile presso la Biblioteca di Windsor, dedicato a immagini nella forma di rebus e chiamato, in parallelo, ‘libro di mia figure’. Si intende rilevare innanzi tutto la ricorrenza di elementi naturali — in particolare, aria, acqua e fuoco — sia negli elenchi lessicali che in quelli visivi. In secondo luogo, l’analisi comparata dei manoscritti condotta tramite un case study relativo all’elemento dell’aria dimostra che la raccolta leonardiana di parole e immagini è funzionale all’elaborazione di strutture narrative complesse, come le favole, in cui coesistono la dimensione testuale e la componente visiva. Il contributo rivela l’esito della ricerca di Leonardo in ambito linguistico, artistico e scientifico, che coinvolge la forma letteraria nell’investigazione e nella rappresentazione dei fenomeni naturali.

Attraverso l’analisi comparata del rapporto tra parola e immagine nei manoscritti di Leonardo e nelle prime edizioni a stampa in volgare della Storia naturale di Plinio e delle Favole di Esopo, l’articolo mette in luce l’influenza del libro illustrato sulla composizione delle narrazioni testuali e visive leonardiane. Leonardo rielabora non solo i temi e la struttura dei testi, ma anche l’impianto editoriale e il ricco apparato illustrativo dei libri nella sua biblioteca. La presentazione simultanea sulle carte vinciane di osservazioni scientifiche, favole e illustrazioni conferisce al dato empirico una funzione etico-morale, inserendosi in un più ampio progetto di indagine del rapporto tra pittura e letteratura, opera d’arte e natura. The comparative analysis of the relationship between words and pictures in Leonardo’s manuscripts and in the first vernacular editions of Pliny’s Natural History and Aesop’s Fables reveals the influence of illustrated books on Leonardo’s composition of written and visual narratives. Leonardo reworks not only themes and structures, but also the editorial layout and rich graphic apparatus of the books belonging to his library. The simultaneous presentation of scientific observations, fables, and illustrations on Leonardo’s sheets conveys an ethical-moral value, and concerns his broader investigation of the relations between painting and literature, art and nature.

The present article combines an individual, object-based approach with digital technologies with the aim to define the relation of verbal and visual inscriptions in Leonardo da Vinci’s technical-scientific and literary-artistic works. By conducting a comparative analysis of Leonardo’s folios featuring fables, emblems, and engineering projects,I identify the archetypes of this interaction in the books contained in his personal library and examine the convergence of his use of empirical, diagrammatic, and pictorial strategies toward the investigation of nature. The material component of this study consists in a series of analytical drawing tables which examine recurrent patterns, and textual and visual connections in Leonardo’s manuscripts. The identified patterns are subsequently cataloged and examined through the web-publishing platform “LILeo” created in collaboration with the Rutgers Digital Humanities Laboratory as part of my dissertation project. By digitally highlighting the interaction of elements on the space of the page, and enabling the layering of drafts belonging to similar projects in Leonardo’s works and sources, this study traces the formal patterns of the artist’s analytical thinkingin order to uncover the origins of his interdisciplinary research.

By examining the theme of “nature,” this elegant and groundbreaking volume reassesses the image of Leonardo in the history of culture and outlines the state of scholarship concerning his thought. Its interdisciplinary approach explores a variety of issues for which Leonardo has become a unique testing ground in both artistic and scientific research, and serves to dispel recurring myths that have emerged from his critical reception over time, thereby providing a solid basis for the study of the sources of his creative process.

Sono analizzate le Favole di Leonardo attraverso il confronto con le fonti e l’esame della struttura e dei temi. L’articolo mostra come i frammenti leonardiani siano la rielaborazione della tradizione favolistica antica e di testi pertinenti ad altre tradizioni, quali la Naturalis Historia di Plinio, gli antichi bestiari e i sonetti del Burchiello. L’intento è di illustrare le innovazioni introdotte da Leonardo a livello della selezione e della caratterizzazione dei personaggi, e della strutturazione del racconto. Si sono inoltre identificati due schemi principali, probabilmente connessi a due momenti diversi di scrittura, e il tema della raccolta nella rappresentazione della Natura, che emerge gradualmente attraverso il reiterarsi di motivi e termini lessicali. Analysis of Leonardo’s Fables led through the study of sources, and the examination of the structure and the themes. Leonardo’s fragments are re-elaborations of the Aesopic fable and of texts belonging to other traditions, including Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, ancient bestiaries and Burchiello’s sonnets. The analysis aims to show the innovations introduced by Leonardo with regards to the selection and characterisation of subjects in his fables. Eventually, it identifies two primary types, probably connected to two different moments of writing, and Leonardo’s main interest in the representation of Nature, which materializes gradually thanks to the reiteration of subjects and terms.

Leonardo’s ‘Aesops’: The Axe and the Walnut. Through a comparison between Leonardo’s manuscripts and the editions of Aesop belonging to his library, the essay examines the development of narrative texts and Leonardo’s visual sequences. In particular, the essay shows how the illustrative apparatus of the Aesopus is recalled in a series of Da Vinci’s drawings about the relationship between man and nature, and in his tales on plants. As showed in the reworked version of the tale of the walnut, Leonardo had not settled for stereotyped characters of Aesop’s tradition, but dramatizes them drawing on Alberti’s fables and on classic and contemporary poetical texts, with the goal to represent the natural dynamics in a concise and immediate form, and give an ethical-moral function to the phenomenon.

A new edition of Leonardo da Vinci's Fables, Facetiae, Bestiary, and Prophecies, curated by Giuditta Cirnigliaro and Carlo Vecce. It shows Leonardo's wonder in front of the marvels of Nature, his scientific discoveries, the work of the artist and his personal life. Leonardo's passion for little animals, such as spiders, lizards, and ants, emerges through the reading, along with his creative imagination. By following the free stream of the images, the writing records on paper the changing nature, the fight for life, the time's eternal flow.