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Two case studies of hypothetical reconstruction are presented according to the principles of the Critical Digital Model [Apollonio et al. 2019]. One of the case studies is an architecture that was designed but never realized, and the other is the reconstruction of a historical art exhibition hosted into an architecture still existing today. This study is part of a wider research which is being currently carried out in the international Erasmus + project CoVHer. The main objective of the CoVHer project is to identify shared standards for the construction, evaluation and sharing of 3D hypothetical reconstructions. This research exploits the diversities of the two case studies to classify and re-define the methods of digital representation, which deal with the geometrical/mathematical nature of the models themselves and tries to define good practices to produce scientifically valid, sharable, and reusable 3D reconstructions.

Original hand drawings by Leonardo are astonishing collections of knowledge, superb representations of the artist's way of working, which proves the technical and cultural peak of the Renaissance era. However, due to their delicate and fragile nature, they are hard to manipulate and compulsory to preserve. To overcome this problem we developed, in a 10-year-long research program, a complete workflow to produce a system able to replace, investigate, describe and communicate ancient fine drawings through what Leonardo calls “ the best sense ” (i.e., the view), the so-called ISLe ( InSightLeonardo ). The outcoming visualization app is targeted to a wide audience made of museum visitors and, most importantly, art historians, scholars, conservators, and restorers. This article describes a specific feature of the workflow: the appearance modeling with the aim of an accurate Real-Time Rendering (RTR) visualization. This development is based on the direct observation of five among the most known Leonardo da Vinci's drawings, spanning his entire activity as a draftsman, and it is the result of an accurate analysis of drawing materials used by Leonardo, in which peculiarities of materials are digitally reproduced at the various scales exploiting solutions that favor the accuracy of perceived reproduction instead of the fidelity to the physical model and their ability to be efficiently implemented over a standard GPU-accelerated RTR pipeline. Results of the development are exemplified on five of Leonardo's drawings and multiple evaluations of the results, subjective and objective, are illustrated, aiming to assess potential and critical issues of the application.

This contribution to the literature presents an in-depth analysis of the scene drawn by Leonardo da Vinci in the preparatory drawing, Adoration of the Magi, dated 1481, that is now housed at the Département des Arts Graphiques du Musée du Louvre in Paris, France. This analysis focuses on the architectural elements and highlights how the drawing discloses three distinct vanishing points/centers of vision: one for the classical architecture to the left of the scene, one for the Nativity hut, and one for the structure with stairs. If we consider the structures as belonging to the same 2D projected space, at least two must be depicted out of square, conversely, if we consider them as straight, standard structures, they cannot belong to the same 2D projected space. Given this assumption, we propose, on the one hand, some variations of the scene where the structures are straightened and projected according to only one of the viewpoints at a time, on the other hand, a set of variants of the scene are presented, considering the out-of-square structures. The scenes are generated by applying inverse perspective projections. These results prompt a discussion on possible reasons why Leonardo made these conscious or unconscious “formal errors”.

Historical buildings and their decorative apparatus have a key role in the transmission of national and local traditions, requiring careful conservation of these structures and their overlapping decorative layers, mostly made up of stuccos and coatings. Unfortunately, the procedures and methodologies for both documenting and preserving such cultural heritage are not clearly standardised in Estonia, where most historic manor houses are managed by private owners who have no precise guidelines to follow during the restoration of such complex structures. To amend this issue, the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) organised an international workshop on “Colour Measurement and Documentation in Architectural Paint Research” with the aim to bring together several experts, techniques and tools from different countries in order to define, optimise and modernise the methodologies employed for the identification, documentation and preservation of historical painted interiors and colours. In addition to a theoretical session, the workshop held in October 2019 entailed practical work at the Kirna Manor House, analysing the entrance hall of the building. The paper presents the results of the research and the discussion between international experts.

This paper aims to unravel the perspective construction used by Leonardo da Vinci for his iconic and celebrated unfinished painting the Adoration of the Magi. This study is the final step of years-long research brought forward by our department focused on the study of the perspective construction used by Leonardo in the preparatory drawings of his masterpiece. The first two published studies demonstrate how Leonardo re-interpreted the Albertian rules of perspective construction and used them in a non-rigorous way to draw the architectural elements of the preparatory drawings. Starting from these discoveries, this contribution aspires to complete the analysis by investigating if the same aberrations and formal errors are also present in the final painting. By inverse construction and comparison with the preparatory drawings, we observed probable perspective aberrations analogous to those observed in Uffizi’s preparatory drawing.

The knowledge-intensive society paradigm fosters relationships between technology and human actors with data, values, and knowledge that become mutual drivers for social innovation. The cultural heritage sector is naturally influenced by this vision, and museums and cultural institutions have a prominent role in dissemination of cultural values. This chapter focuses on a method developed to combine the power of the computer visualization technology with the cultural elements spread across collections, introducing some notes and remarks on how digital replicas of drawings, manuscripts, and museum objects can be successfully employed to spread knowledge. Through a custom application called ISLe, aimed at visualizing 3D models that accurately replicate the original items, some experiences in the production of digital replicas are introduced, highlighting opportunities and criticalities to be considered in the adoption of technology that can be potentially shared and exploited by many possible figures involved in cultural heritage.

Colours play a crucial role in the field of architectural heritage. Colour analysis and colour rendition are involved in several critical facets of heritage preservation, conservation and restoration. These aspects are related to accurate documentation and an accurate representation of heritage artefacts and architectural works. The aim of this paper is to describe critical issues and open problems of the processes involved in this field. Documentation is performed in multiple ways, acquiring heterogeneous data ranging from archival images, photographs, drawings using various consumer or professional instruments (eg, digital cameras and spectrophotometers). The reliability of colour acquisition might be influenced by instrumental reasons (the technology used to acquire colour information), by environmental changes (architectural heritage surveys are often performed outdoors), by morphology (complex architectural objects are characterised by concavities and convexities which complicate the reflection evaluation), or by materials (showing different reflection, porosity and transparency indexes). Identification of materials, such as colorants, pigments and dyes, is also a vital process in the heritage field. Colour information could be used as an approach to the identification of materials, but these methods are still under development, and many issues need to be solved to achieve reliable results. Visualisation techniques of a heritage artefact also present the problem of the correctness of the colour representation. Several problems need to be faced in this context: the reliability of the acquisition, colour management of the rendering software, model complexity, and fragmentation of the devices upon which the model is visualised.

To establish a method to clarify the color image of the city, this study explores the colors of Tokyo from two approaches. The first survey is conducted by extracting colors from aerial photographs, to investigate how the landscape in Tokyo has greyish color impression and which kind of grey it consists of. In the other examination, the changes for over thirty years in the colors and materials of the building facades are visualized in the study site, which is a group of buildings in Hillside Terrace in an area of Tokyo designed by world-renowned Japanese architects. Both macroscopic perspective and chronological microscopic viewpoints are effective to grasp the color image of the city. The visualized urban color images enable to express the mood of the city.

Il pezzo descrive nel dettaglio le fasi operative per la ricostruzione digitale della mostra tenutasi alla chiesa dello Spirito Santo nel 1817 curata da Antonio Canova. Il tour virtuale consiste in una passeggiata all'interno della chiesa ricostruita a partire da rilievi laser e fotogrammetrici dell'attuale chiesa rielaborati sulla base di analisi storico/documentali, ed allestita con i quadri digitalizzati, allora esposti ed ora di proprietà delle pinacoteche di Cento e di Bologna, disposti all'interno della navata principale secondo le informazioni tratte dal documento del 1818 ca. "Descrizione de' quadri restituiti a Bologna: i quali da' Francesi, che occuparono l'Italia nel MDCCXCVI, erano stati trasportati in Francia". La ricostruzione è poi sfociata in un video animato divulgativo di otto minuti presentato alla mostra "Antonio Canova e Bologna, alle origini della Pinacoteca di Bologna" tenutasi tra il 4 dicembre 2021 ed il 20 febbraio 2022 e curata da Alessio Costarelli.

In pursuit of a more objective approach to efficiently support the urban color design, the aim of this study is to introduce a multiscale approach to the urban space color analysis. The paper starts with an introduction of a robust method, based on color corrected images. Specific features, problems and solution are then illustrated. The Collegio di Milano complex, designed by the famous architect Marco Zanuso, was selected as a case study to prove the methodology’s effectiveness.

Digital literacy and technology education has gained much relevance in humanities and heritage related disciplines during the recent decades. Against this background, the purpose of this article is to examine the current state of educational programs in digital cultural heritage and related disciplines primarily in Europe with supplemental information from the US. A further aim is to highlight core topics, challenges, and demands, and to show innovative formats and prospects.

Smartphone camera technology has made significant improvements of sensors quality and software camera performance in recent years. Devices as Apple iPhone X and the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus, allow to reach levels of image resolution, sharpness and color accuracy very close to prosumer SLR cameras, enabling also on-the-fly processing and procedures which were considered impossible to achieve until a few years ago. Starting from these premises, a series of issues and opportunities concerning smartphone application to artifacts documentation will be discussed. In particular, consistency and reliability of both shape and color representation achievable for small-medium artifacts belonging to exhibitions and museum collections. A low-cost, easy-to-use workflow based on low-cost widespread devices will be compared to consolidated digitization pipelines. The contribution focus is based on color accuracy of textured models achievable through smartphones by means of an internally developed application for the achievement of highly reliable developments of raw formats (.DNG) from Apple iPhone X. Color consistency will be calculated in terms of the mean camera chroma relative to the mean ideal chroma in the CIE color metric (ΔE*00) as defined in 2000 by the CIE on the CIEXYZ chromaticity diagram.

Historical buildings and their decorative apparatus have a key role in the transmission of national and local traditions, requiring to pay attention to the conservation of these structures and their overlapped decorative layers, mostly made by varnishes and stuccos. Unfortunately, procedures and methodologies for both documenting and preserving such particular Cultural Heritage are not clearly standardised in Estonia, where several historic manor houses are managed by private owners which have not precise guidelines to follow during the restoration of such complex structures. In this context, the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) organised an international workshop on “Colour Measurement and Documentation in Architectural Paint Research” with the aim to bring together several experts, techniques and tools from different countries in order to define, optimise and modernise the methodologies nowadays employed for the identification, documentation and preservation of historical painted interiors and colours. The workshop held in October 2019, besides a theoretical session, carried out a practical work at the Kirna manor house (Järva County, ca100 km from Tallinn), analysing the entrance hall of the building. The paper presents first results of the research and discussion between international experts.

Il contributo è parte di un volume che raccoglie i risultati delle ricerche svolte nell'ambito del progetto promosso dall'Accademia di Brera e patrocinato dal "Comitato Nazionale per le celebrazioni dei cinquecento anni dalla morte di Leonardo da Vinci", dal titolo 'L'Accademia di Brera e Leonardo da Vinci. Eredità storica e persistenze contemporanee'. Il contributo descrive i risultati dell'indagine eseguita, attraverso l'ausilio i ISLe (un artefatto comunicativo digitale in grado di riprodurre e mostrare analiticamente in forma percettiva la tridimensionalità di un disegno) sul celebre disegno 'Studio di proporzioni del corpo umano', di Leonardo da Vinci, e sulla sua copia/calco di Andrea Appiani, pittore e direttore dell'Accademia di Brera nel 1807.

Among many other themes, Leonardo da Vinci&rsquo, s Manuscript B contains several drawings of centrally planned churches, some of which are represented using a plan view paired with a bird&rsquo, s-eye view. The use of a bird&rsquo, s-eye instead of an elevation represents an innovative depiction technique, which allows combining the immediacy of the perspective view with the measurability of the fa&ccedil, ades, and therefore to describe the three-dimensionality of the buildings. To understand the reasons behind the use of this original technique, the edifices&rsquo, shape and classify them, we decided to use 3D digital reconstruction techniques, for their ability to avoid misunderstandings in the reconstruction process and in the results. This article describes the method to create the digital models of sixteen churches. A Visual Programming Language (VPL) script was used as the 3D base for modelling the churches achieved from a classification code expressing the aggregative rules of the churches. Then, the geometric process for the construction of the plan and its relationship with the elevation measures were studied for each church. Finally, this information was used for the completion of the 3D models, distinguishing more output variants each time there was an inconsistency between plan and perspective view, a variability of one architectural element or an uncertainty.

Il saggio si propone di approfondire il tema della costruzione prospettica nelle botteghe fiorentine della seconda metà del XV secolo partendo dall’analisi del famoso disegno di Leonardo da Vinci Scenario architettonico e rissa di cavalieri (studio prospettico per l'Adorazione dei Magi) conservato al Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi a Firenze. Lo sviluppo di uno strumento di acquisizione e restituzione digitale dell’artefatto grafico in grado di mostrare una risoluzione di 50 m e una fedeltà del colore e della trama indistinguibile dal reale ha consentito di osservare dettagli capaci di restituire l’intero processo grafico dell’artista. In questo modo è stato possibile ricostruire l’intera procedura prospettica e formulare nuove ipotesi in merito alle aree ‘grigie’ di conoscenza della procedura.

In this paper, we present a series of case studies of origami-like geometries modelled and animated following the principles of the synthetic method applied through parametric modelling applications. The aim of this research is to analyze the benefits and criticalities of the proposed method in the field of applied origami design. The presented method will be compared with the algebraic-based analytical approach highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of both methods. This paper is based on the PhD thesis of the last Author and we present a selection of the most interesting generative algorithms we have studied and designed.

English edition of the catalog of the exhibition held in Vinci, Museo Leonardiano, 15 April 2019 - 6 January 2020, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death. The exhibition aims to illustrate the strong link between the Tuscan genius and his hometown, Vinci, through a series of documents from various archival sources. In particular, the 'Landscape' 8P, the first known drawing by Leonardo, has be exhibited, after the careful restoration carried out by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, which revealed unseen aspects that were previously unobservable. The catalog reports on all the studies carried out on the basis of these new observations and, more generally, on the figure of Leonardo. The exhibition of the Landscape drawing, dated 5 August 1473, kept in the GDSU of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, which has been analyzed as a schedule of Leonardo's subsequent activity and it will be the starting point for historical, artistic, geographical and cartographic studies. The Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna was asked to create a three-dimensional digital communication artifact of the drawing, by means of an application called ISLe that can allow all visitors and scientist to observe and understand, interpret and imagine the secrets and characteristics of the drawing by Leonardo. The application is therefore proposed as a means of subrogating, investigating, describing and communicating drawings, their methods and their contents, down to the microscopic scale and faithfully reproducing their shape, character and appearance. The digital communicative artifact, using five photographs, reconstructs and restores, digitally rendering, the three-dimensionality of ancient drawings with high color fidelity capability (difference imperceptible to the sight of the expert observer), at a resolution of 50 µm, guaranteeing the restitution of the entire formal quality and surface reflectance of the original. The technical solution developed by the University of Bologna allows to obtain extraordinary results by virtue of a series of specific characteristics: A. An effective 48-bit color acquisition using a linear sensor that avoids the classic interpolation of Bayer pattern sensors, allowing a very wide tonal and color range; B. An LED-based lighting system developed by a technical partner that avoids the typical problems of fluorescent lighting that prevent the acquisition of information at certain wavelengths of light; C. A solution developed to render the surface with micro and macro-scopic fidelity; D. A solution to display the communication artifact in high fidelity using a low-cost rendering engine that is portable to multiple devices (walls, PC monitors, touch tables, tablets, smartphones); E. A visualization interface for visitors to museums and exhibitions based on the usual touch and gestures because they are borrowed from those of smartphones. The essay completely describes this experience by introducing new fundamental discoveries on Leonardo's way of marking and drawing.