Leonardo's Anatomy

28 July 2013 - 02:03 By Alastair Sooke
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If Da Vinci's studies of the human body had been published in his lifetime, they would have changed the course of science, says Alastair Sooke

One day, probably in the winter of 1507-08, Leonardo da Vinci was chatting with an old man in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. The man said he felt nothing wrong other than weakness, though he was more than 100 years old. "And thus," Da Vinci recorded, "without any sign of any mishap, he passed from this life. And I dissected him to see the cause of so sweet a death."

It was not the first time Da Vinci had sliced into a corpse. By 1508, by his own reckoning, he had conducted more than 10 human dissections. Nine years later, it was more than 30. But his study of the old man rekindled a long-held obsession.

In the years that followed, Da Vinci embarked on arguably the most exhaustive campaign of anatomical investigation ever waged in the history of medical science. The fruits of this research, 18 sheets known as the Anatomical Manuscript A, overflow with more than 240 drawings as well as 13000 words of notes.

These pages form the focus of Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Man, an exhibition opening at The Queen's Gallery in Edinburgh on August 2. "They are the finest illustrations of particular anatomical structures to this day," says curator Martin Clayton, who plans to show the drawings alongside modern CT and MRI scans to demonstrate their far-sighted brilliance.

Da Vinci's interest in anatomy can be traced back to April 1489, when he started a notebook now known as the Anatomical Manuscript B. On the first page, he projected a "Book entitled On the Human Figure". Its 44 folios contain several drawings of a human skull.

In time, though, his attention shifted.

"He felt frustrated," says Clayton. "He had very little access to human material, and the aims he had set himself were foundering. He went on to other things."

This meant anything from designing monuments to painting The Last Supper.

When, in around 1504, he was commissioned to do a mural of the Battle of Anghiari, which involved twisting bodies, his enthusiasm for anatomy resurfaced.

By the time he dissected the centenarian, Da Vinci was a public figure with sufficient clout to conduct post-mortem exams. Unlike in 1489, he now had access to corpses - often executed criminals. "This period marks something of a crux in his career," says Clayton, "when he shifts from being an artist doing science on the side to what he is for the last 12 years of his life: a scientist who also does a bit of art."

The 18 sheets at the Edinburgh exhibition probably date from the winter of 1510-11, when Da Vinci was filled with optimism and purpose. "This winter of 1510 I believe I shall finish all this anatomy," he wrote.

Although his interest in anatomy was not unique among artists, his scalpel-sharp observation, coupled with the lucid presentation of his findings, set him apart.

Clayton cites a remarkable model Da Vinci made showing how the heart's aortic valve works - "something that wasn't observed again until the 20th century - and Leonardo posited it in 1513".

The tragedy is that he never got around to publishing this work. The death of anatomist Marcantonio della Torre in 1511, with whom Da Vinci worked, coupled with political turmoil curtailed his efforts to finish his treatise. He retired to the family villa of his pupil, Francesco Melzi.

"He had time, he had his papers at his disposal," says Clayton. "He could have written up his treatise." Instead he designed well heads and made 'little landscape drawings'.

"It's frustrating: you want to slap him and say, 'Just concentrate. Publish it! You're almost there!' But it didn't happen."

In the centuries after his death in 1519, the surviving sheets from his notebooks languished unappreciated and unpublished, until the end of the 19th century. Hence, his stupendous anatomical discoveries had no impact whatsoever on science.

For Clayton, this does not lessen their significance. "I hope that the history of science isn't only reducible to great and influential discoveries," he says. "A lot of the satisfaction in following the history of science is getting a new perspective on how our forebears apprehended the world. Leonardo was pushing understanding of the body further than anybody else in the Renaissance."

© The Daily Telegraph

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