Lots of stuff available on the Codex Atlanticus via Google.
Nothing yet on the hidden room, so far as I can find, but the Codex stuff is plenty interesting for me.
Posted on 01/13/2005 12:05:31 PM PST by aculeus
Researchers have discovered the hidden laboratory used by Leonardo da Vinci for studies of flight and other pioneering scientific work in previously sealed rooms at a monastery next to the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata, in the heart of Florence.
The workshop rooms, located between the Institute for Military Geography and the Basilica, contain frescos painted by Leonardo that have "impressive resemblances" to other examples of his experimental work. The frescos include a triptych of birds circling above a subsequently erased representation of the Virgin Mary that "constitutes a clear citation of the studies by the maestro on the flight of birds", the three researchers, Alessandro del Meglio, Roberto Manneschalchi and Maria Carchio, said yesterday.
An angel at the side of the fresco scene bears a striking resemblance to the angel in a painting of the annunciation attributed to Leonardo in the Uffizi Gallery, they added.
Leonardo's use of the rooms was referred to in letters written by Pietro di Novellara to Isabella D'Este and they were cited by Giorgio Vasari in his 16th-century biography, Lives of the Artists, they said.
"The finds are particularly interesting as they will help us to understand the context in which Leonardo was working in these rooms exactly 500 years ago," said Professor Alessandro Vezzosi, a Leonardo scholar.
The Tuscan-born scientist, painter, philosopher and poet was aged 51 when he returned to Florence in 1503 after many years in Milan, where he already had established his reputation, and a period of extended travel. (His first spell in Florence came when he was 17 and became a member of the painters' guild). The rooms he took in the 16th century were in a religious house run by monks from the order of the Servi di Maria - the Servants of Mary - in a part of the monastery set aside for renting to lay people as guestrooms.
Other notable figures who would take accommodation in the same monastery later included Andrea del Sarto and Franciabigio. Leonardo's second sojourn in Florence would last three years, during which his popularity grew dramatically and he painted classics such as the Mona Lisa.
Part of Leonardo's suite was walled-in after stables were built on an adjoining lot. Also discovered recently by the researchers was a previously unknown staircase dating back to 1430, which they believe was the work of the Florentine sculptor and architect Michelozzo di Bartolommeo. They also found paintings in a second-floor room, which they think are the work of the artist Morto da Feltre, who Vasari said was drawn to the monastery by the presence of Leonardo.
The discovery coincides with the opening in Rome yesterday of another major exhibit of 70 tables from Leonardo's Codex Atalanticus incorporating his visions of flying and other machines at Rome's Lincei Academy. "This will be the only chance many people ever get to see the Codex," said the exhibition's curator, Carlo Barbieri.
The tables on display are from the so-called Hoepli version of the Codex. Academics spent 15 years copying a reproduction of the original that was published in 1904 by the Hoepli publishing house. The exhibition displays Leonardo's designs next to working models of both his machines and modern machines. There are models of Leonardo's bicycle, his flying machine and his "car", driven by spiral springs contained within drums beneath the wagon, similar to a wind-up toy.
Academics believe the "car" was created for the entertainment of nobles at a Renaissance celebration, possibly for use as a kind of mobile stand for a theatrical prop.
Excitement over the Leonardo discoveries was marred by an announcement from the director of the Uffizi, Annamaria Petrioli Tofani, that she was leaving Italy to work in the United States and at the Hermitage gallery in Russia. She is leaving after 41 years at the Uffizi because authorities refused her request to postpone her retirement until the age of 70.
lesson learned! :]
Wow, talk about a window to the past!
My visit to Florence would have been at least interesting if I had known this was there, probably within feet.
About 25 years ago, a small pair of crypt rooms was discovered where Michelango had had to hide out for some period of time -- got in some kind of trouble with local authorities. The walls were covered with charcoal drawings, overlaying one another, interacting with one another, blended in with the architecture. I believe there was a Nat'l Geo article on it.
Just what makes the Mona Lisa such a great work of art?
Wish they would post pictures.
If you'd bothered to read the article, like I might, you'd know the Leonardo they were talking about was from the Teenage Mutant Nija Turtles ("Heroes in a half shell [Turtle Power]").
What a dumb, sophomoric show, but if memory serves, when I was a senior in High School, that show was incredibly popular. Not that I ever watched it, my kids do on occasion, but I think some of the Freshman used to watch it, and not for its camp appeal either. Little weirdos. I wish I was back there to beat them up right now.
Owl_Eagle”Guns Before Butter.”
The eyes seem to follow you no matter from which angle you view the picture.
Really!
In the socialist world, you have to retire when the government tells you to.
I find it mind-boggling that a room could exist for 500 years without anyone discovering it. It's as if the folks there had no curiousity as to why the interior wall was so far away from the exterior wall.
Lots of stuff available on the Codex Atlanticus via Google.
Nothing yet on the hidden room, so far as I can find, but the Codex stuff is plenty interesting for me.
"Researchers have discovered the hidden laboratory used by Leonardo da Vinci for studies of flight and other pioneering scientific work in previously sealed rooms at a monastery next to the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata, in the heart of Florence."
The original Area 51...(Zona Cinquantuno)...
This is the reason that MIlton Friedman left the University of Chicago for Stanford. The latter refused to bend its mandatory retirement rule.
Has nothing to do with socialism even though some like to blame it for everything from acne to foot odor.
Did they find his code book?
What's that supposed to be, an early pallet jack?
MM
Wonder how many paintings are layered upon each other.
Painters who practice and experiment on the walls of their workshop tend to paint overtop previous examples.
A wonderful book -- Inventing Leonardo by Richard A. Turner -- is worth a read.
And here, for your fancy, is an excerpt from Walter Pater's 1869 critical essay on the Mona Lisa:
"The presence that rose thus so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are come,"and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the mysticism of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern philosophy has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea."
The University of Chicago is not a socialist institution?
It was a bastion of left-wing ideology in 1977.
But I get your point. I spoke cynically, without thinking. ;)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.