Friday September 2 – 13.10-14.00 hrs – Aula Magna

	Pietro Marani Politecnico di Milano

....

Art and Science in Leonardo

.

Abstract:

Art, for Leonardo, is science. The way to understand nature and to represent it, in every its aspect, through “Drawing” and “Painting”. The painting, then, is the mirror of nature and the best expression of the artist’s mind and creativity. And, if the nature is the reflection of the Divine, the painting is relative of God, and the artist, finally, is comparable to God. Within this context of Leonardo’s thought, the lecture by Professor Pietro C. Marani, Full Professor of Modern Art History in the Politecnico di Milano, will show the relation between painting and science in Leonardo’s work, focusing on his scientific and artistic drawings and especially on the three portraits executed by Leonardo when in Milan: The musician (now in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan), the Lady with the Ermine (now in the Czartoryski Museum in Cracow) and the Belle Férronière (in the Louvre, Paris). Each of them is the proof of the supremacy of the painting on the other arts (Music, Poetry and Sculpture) and, at the same time, the best representation of the identity of art and science.

.

Pietro C. Marani biosketch:
Full Professor in Modern Art History, he teaches Modern Art History, Contemporary Art History and Museology in the Politecnico of Milan. He has been Director of the Soprintendenza per I Beni Artistici e Storici and Vice-Director of the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, co-Director of the restoration campaign of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. He is President of the Ente Raccolta Vinciana, founded 1904, in the Castello Sforzesco, Milan, and member of the Commissione Nazionale Vinciana, founded 1903, in Rome. He has written more than two-hundred essays and books on Leonardo da Vinci, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, the Lombard artists of the Renaissance: Ambrogio Bergognone, Bramantino, Bernardino Luini, and on the painting and the architecture of Italian Renaissance, and, finally, on problems of museology and restoration. He collaborated to the catalogue of the works of art preserved in Milanese Museums: Pinacoteca di Brera, Pinacoteca del Castello Sforzesco, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Quadreria dell’Arcivescovado. He was the curator of the catalogue of paintings kept in the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum, and of the works of art in the Certosa Museum, Pavia ( with B.Fabjan ). He has studied unpublished works by Verrocchio, Cesare da Sesto, Sodoma, Giampietrino, Pietro Antonio Magatti e Giuseppe Bossi. He has published the Catalogue of the Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci and His Circle kept in French Public Museums (2008). He has collaborated to the two important exibithions devoted to Leonardo Drawings and manuscripts held in the Metropolitan Museum in New York (2003) and in the Musée du Louvre, Paris ( 2003 ). He has organized and curated various exibithions in many important cities ( Montreal, Musée des Beaux-arts; Venice, Palazzo Grassi; Milan, Palazzo Reale; Milan, Castello Sforzesco; Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera; Florence, Palazzo Pitti; Rome, Palazzo del Quirinale ecc. ecc. ). Some of his books are translated in eight languages.