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LEONARDO500: Leonardo’s Books. New Light on Leonardo’s Intellectual World

In our age, Leonardo da Vinci is regarded as an outstanding genius, the lonely forerunner of modern science and technology, able to read directly in the great Book of Nature without the mediation of culture or literacy. His manuscripts tell another reality: that of a man deeply rooted in his times, in dialogue with contemporary intellectuals and artists, and mostly with ancient and modern authors. As a passionate reader of both scientific and literary texts, young Leonardo in Florence approached works such as Dante’s Comedy, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pliny’s Natural History. At the end of his life, he owned almost 200 books: an extraordinary number, in fifteenth century, for a man who was not a professional of literacy and culture, but an artist and an engineer.

Carlo Vecce will illustrate this research project (developed by Accademia dei Lincei and Museo Galileo) which aims at the reconstruction of Leonardo’s library, in order to give new light on his extraordinary intellectual world.

 

Carlo Vecce, a Renaissance Scholar specialising in the History of Literature and Civilization, is Professor of Italian Literature at the University “L’Orientale” of Naples, and Director of the PhD School in Literary, Linguistic and Comparative Studies. He has also taught at the universities of Pavia (School of Palaeography and Musical Philology, Cremona), Chieti and Macerata. He has been a visiting professor at Paris 3 (Sorbonne Nouvelle) and at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). His research focuses on intellectual workshops in the dawn of Modern Age and the relationship between languages (literature and visual culture, as far as cinema). A major research subject is Leonardo da Vinci’s intellectual world, explored in depth in his manuscripts and in the documentary reconstruction of his life and his library.

Under the guide of Carlo Pedretti, he worked on the manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci, publishing the Book on Painting (Codex Urbinas, 1995) and of Codex Arundel (London, British Library, 1998). He published also an anthology of Leonardo’s Writings (1992), and a biography Leonardo translated in several languages (1998, new ed. 2006). In 1994 he was appointed as a member of “Commissione Vinciana”.

Under the patronage of UNESCO, he organised the international conference I mondi di Leonardo (Milan, 2002), held the prestigious Lettura vinciana (2011), and is a member of “Commissione Vinciana” since 1994.

  • Organized by: Istituto Italiano di Cultura Los Angeles
  • In collaboration with: Chapman University