LEONARDO DA VINCI'S INFLUENCE ON RENAISSANCE ANATOMY

LEONARDO DA VINCI has been described as the man who awoke too early in the darkness, while all the others were still asleep. His gigantic efforts in the realm of what we now call science tragically failed to disturb his fellows from their slumbers. Only by his painting did he rouse them to their senses. The dominant pattern of his life shows Leonardo, through his own isolated mental exertions, tracing out the, path from art through the experimental observation ofnature to the new outlook of science. As one follows him through the sequence of his notebooks one is struck by the early date of his efforts to analyse the phenomena of perspective. When Leonardo defined perspective as 'a function ofthe eye' he set himselfthe task ofsystematic observation ofmatters ranging from the distant stars and their transmitted light to the terminations ofthe optic nerve in the brain. In this way were born his extensive studies ofthe properties oflight, optics and the anatomy ofthe eye, as well as his early interest in the anatomy of the brain. A second line of approach to anatomy arising from Leonardo's artistic vision lay inherent in his definition of the purpose of art; this is to paint 'man and the intention of his soul' in terms of the 'attitudes and movements of the limbs'. The pursuit of this goal led him to analyse the postures and gestures of men's bodies in terms of their mathematical and mechanical laws. It led him also to make his first examinations of the mechanical instruments responsible for those gestures and attitudes; and so he dissected the human body, not only to reveal the forms of its muscles but to trace the source of their forces back to the spinal cord and brain. Such work was well under way during his first long sojourn in Milan (1482-99) when his notebooks already contain studies of the brain and cranial nerves, and his experiments on the spinal cord of the frog. In this period, too, he summarized his knowledge into a Treatise on Painting and the Human Figure, the one fragment of his work which was destined eventually to break through the shadows into publication. There can be little doubt that these preliminary anatomical ventures opened to Leonardo's view the challenge offresh worlds to conquer such as the vascular system and the abdomino-thoracic viscera. These parts of the body as well as detailed explorations of the muscles, bones and nerves occupied him during the second phase of his anatomical work in Florence in the years I500-6. This period coincides with the shift of his interest from anatomy as subservient to art, to anatomy as the expression of a scientific urge. During these years he united both forms of his striving into the greatest of his visions, the one of the destrucdon of life, the Battle ofAnghiari, the other ofits creation, the Mona Lisa. 360