Introduction
The Institute will meet daily, Monday through Friday. Every day a visiting scholar will present a topic based on his/her own expertise and lead a group discussion using as a starting point a selection of pre-assigned readings. Generally, meetings will be held in the morning and afternoons are reserved for individual meetings, the independent exploration of research resources, and the development of the individual projects. Occasionally, the Institute will meet in the afternoon.
On Monday, June 25th, the Institute will meet in the morning and afternoon. The Institute director will present the scope and organization of the Institute, give an orientation to research resources, and encourage faculty to share their expectations, interests, and research goals. In the evening, NEH Summer Scholars and visiting faculty who are in Florence will gather for an informal welcome dinner offered by a private donor.
The Institute will be organized topically around three major themes, one theme per week: Word and Image, Painting and Drawing, Craftsmen and Scholars. The three themes, which will be interwoven throughout the Institute, have been selected to address the most cogent issues in the study of Leonardo's works and thought and in analysis of the relations between art and science in the early modern period.
Week 1 – Word and Image
The first week will be devoted to Leonardo's thinking and writing process. It will focus specifically on Leonardo's idiosyncratic form of writing and the interpretative challenges it presents. As it is well known, Leonardo never completed a book, even though he planned many on every possible branch of knowledge. His heterogeneous and fragmentary notes present immense challenges of interpretation and dating, which are fundamental for an understanding of Leonardo's thought process and of his methods for transferring scientific observation into pictorial and graphic language. Two eminent visiting scholars will guide the faculty through the intricacies of Leonardo's writings.
Martin Kemp, Professor Emeritus, Oxford University, UK, will open the Institute with a two-day presentation that will offer a substantive and stimulating introduction to the relationship between art and science in the Renaissance and to Leonardo's mind. The author of innumerable books, articles, and exhibitions on Leonardo, Kemp will teach us strategies to reconstruct Leonardo's thought process from his notebooks, especially from the Codex Leicester, of which he is preparing a new critical edition.
Carlo Vecce, Professor of Literature at the University of Naples "L'Orientale", is an expert on Leonardo's literary writings and a careful editor of some of his manuscripts. He will lead the NEH Summer Institute for two days, sharing his expertise on the relation between word and image in Leonardo's writings. Building on his editorial work on Leonardo's Codex Arundel (British Library) and the Libro di Pittura (Vatican Library) he will explain how Leonardo compiled his notebooks and how they were rearranged after the artist's death.
Week 2 - Painting and Drawing
In the second week NEH Summer Scholars will have the unique possibility of examining up close some of Leonardo's paintings and drawings together with curators and restorers. This direct observation of Leonardo's works, coupled with the in-depth study of restoration reports, will be fundamental to acquire a fresh understanding of how Leonardo imbued his paintings and drawings with scientific knowledge. The Institute will also have the opportunity to engage in broader consideration on the application of modern science to the conservation, restoration, and study of Leonardo's works.
Antonio Natali, Director of the Uffizi Gallery, will guide NEH Summer Scholars to an in-depth examination of Leonardo's paintings. In his approach to Leonardo's paintings, on which he has published extensively, Dr. Natali combines the study of iconography and religion with modern technical analysis.
Alessandro Nova, Director of the KHI and Professor of Art History, University of Frankfurt, has written extensively on Leonardo, including on the artist's anatomical project. He will address NEH Summer Scholars on Leonardo and the wind, a topic that touches on one of Leonardo's main concerns --how to represent what is impossible to represent.
Cecilia Frosinini, Vice Director for Painting Restoration at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence, the world famous institution for the restoration and conservation of works of art, will guide NEH Summer Scholars through the state-of-the art laboratories of the Opificio. In past years Dr. Frosinini and her team have conducted extensive technical examinations on Leonardo's paintings in Florence and elsewhere. She will share with us the issues, debates, decisions, and technical analysis surrounding the conservation and restoration of Leonardo's paintings.
Marzia Faietti, Director of the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, Uffizi Gallery (GDSU) and an expert on Renaissance drawing, will share with NEH Summer Scholars her unique knowledge of Leonardo's drawing technique. She will make it possible for NEH Summer Scholars to examine first hand a selection of works on paper by Leonardo and his contemporaries.
Jonathan Nelson, Assistant Director for Programs at the Villa I Tatti—The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies and Professor of Art History, Syracuse University, has written extensively on Florentine art and Leonardo, including a perceptive essay on Leonardo and femininity. He will lead the discussion on Leonardo, mythology, women, and femininity.
Field trip to Milan
The Institute will take a one-day trip to Milan to study Leonardo's works there, including the Last Supper, The Musician, and other works by Leonardo's followers. In Milan we will meet Pietro Marani, Professor of Art History, Politecnico di Milano, who was responsible for overseeing the restoration of Leonardo's Last Supper in the late 1980s. Marani has written extensively on Leonardo as a painter and on Renaissance art in Milan. He will guide us through Leonardo's works in the city, including the Last Supper.
Florence-Milan is an easy two-hour train ride. The train-ride and museum entries are included.
Week 3 - Craftsmen and Scholars
In the third week NEH Summer Scholars will delve into the theoretical foundations of Leonardo's investigation of the natural world, addressing the issues of his sources, his debt to earlier authors, and his own personal contribution to the conceptualization and visualization of old and new scientific problems. Themes pertaining to the circulation of practical and theoretical knowledge will dominate the discussion, with a special emphasis on the transmission and contacts between craftsmen's workshops and universities, academies, and courts.
Paolo Galluzzi, Director of the Museo Galileo, Florence, and Professor of the History of Science, was the curator of many exhibitions including Mechanical Marvels: Invention in the Age of Leonardo (1996) and Leonardo's Mind (2006). An expert on Leonardo's scientific thought, Galluzzi will present the problems pertaining to Leonardo's technical drawings and manuscripts.
Sven Dupré, Director of the Center for History of Science and Professor of History of Science, University of Ghent (Netherlands), will explore networks for the exchange and dissemination of scientific knowledge and Leonardo's participation in them. A cultural historian of science, the coordinator of the collaborative project Circulating Knowledge in Early Modern Science (Flanders) and the curator of the exhibition Galileo's Telescope: The Instrument that Changed the World (Museo Galileo, Florence, 2008), Dupré has worked extensively on optics, instruments, and experiments, and the relations between science and material culture.
Domenico Laurenza, researcher at the Museo Galileo, is an expert on Leonardo's anatomical studies, having written the acclaimed book De figura umana: fisiognomica, anatomia e arte in Leonardo (2003). He is currently editing a critical edition of Leonardo's Codex Leicester. Under his guidance NEH Summer Scholars will explore Leonardo's anatomical project, the artist's stunning anatomical drawings, and the place of anatomy within Leonardo's vision of art and science.
Frank Fehrenbach, Professor of Art History, Harvard University, will focus on Leonardo's knowledge of optics, showing the artist's connection with the medieval optical tradition as well as the artist's original interpretation of well-established religious subjects. In his research, Fehrenbach combines the close analysis of images and texts with wide ranging conclusions on art, science, and religion.