**lumiere labs version - davinci's … vinciʼs signature in the cosmos dr. robert d. elliott...
Post on 12-Apr-2018
231 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
DA VINCIʼS SIGNATURE IN THE COSMOS
Dr. Robert D. Elliott (NCSU)
Five hundred sixty-five years have passed since the birth of Leonardo Da
Vinci on April 15, 1452. A recent discovery in 2005 of his painting of Christ,
thought forever lost, now bursts upon the 21st century replete with a cosmic
message proclaiming his understanding of the workings of the cosmos –
born out in a heretofore unnoticed cryptic signature, discovered by the
authors in 2010; and (revealed at the national SECAC Conference 2013).
During 2005 a badly overpainted Salvator Mundi (Christ as Savior of the
World) was restored by Diane Modestini for NY art dealer Robert Simon.
An intact DaVinci original (1509) was uncovered, last seen in the collection
of King Charles I in 1650.
Unlike the existing copies by Leonardoʼs assistants, which showed Christ
holding the traditional globe of the earth, Leonardo paints his Christ holding
a rock crystal ball. Curiously, there are three very prominent white dots that
break the crystal-like continuity of this sphere.
The authors hypothesized that these are stars forming a triangle and were
possibly part of a constellation. In 2010, Dr. Elliott discovered that the
prominent triangle made by these star-like spots could be linked to a known
observable star-pattern in the sky - that found in the Constellation of Leo
the Lion. Utilizing Photoshop to proportionally size and overlay the Leo
Constellation of the modern sky chart atop Leonardoʼs crystal sphere; the
finding was that the angles in both were a precise match, even to the
congruence of relative sizes of Leonardoʼs painted stars and those in the
actual Leo constellation
Properly sized to the three dots on the sphere, I realized that two outer
stars in Leo the Lion match and trace out the circumference of the sphere.
Thus the differences in sizes and blur of Leonardoʼs stars correspond to the
relative visual magnitude of Denebola, Chertan ,and Zosma the three stars
in the triangle of Leo, while the heart star Regulus, and Algieba: demarcate
the outer circumference of the crystal sphere. There are two known
constellations in the night sky that feature a triangle shape, the
constellation Triangulum, and the triangle that appears in the Spring sky in
the constellation of Leo the Lion.
Mathematician Myrick Pullen verified, mathematically, that a match of three
points has a very convincing probability; and that four or five points of
congruence is extremely high.
Boldly, Leonardo places his own star signature, as Court Painter atop that
symbol of Platoʼs (and Christʼs) universe, the sphere.
Soon thereafter, I contacted Professor Martin Kemp and shared my
hypothesis that the three stars matched precisely the triangle found in Leo -
to which he responded that my idea was “ingenious.”
Upon revealing our discovery to owner Dr. Robert Simon; restorationist
Diane Modestini affirmed that the three spots were original to the painting.
Noted Leonardo scholar Martin Kemp, in 2009, upon assessing the newly
discovered Salvator Mundi ascertained that the orb was painted to
represent a rare and precious pure rock crystal, as denoted by its tiny
natural speck-like inclusions. “His Christ is conjointly Savior of mankind
and Master of the cosmos.”
In Nature (Dec., 2011), Andre J. Noest (University, the Netherlands),
amplified Kempʼs analysis by suggesting that “the painting shows no optical
distortion in the folds of the clothes, for example, as would be expected
from refraction by an orb of calcite, quartz, or glass, or even a water- filled
glass vessel. In reality, an inverted and nonlinearly reduced image of most
of the chest, arm and shoulder would appear within the orbʼs outline; the
heel of the hand would appear in the top half of the image.” Noest
concludes that
“The absence of refraction or reflection effects suggests that the orb
depicts an idealized celestial sphere, with the painted specks on its surface
representing heavenly bodies.”
The author and mathematician Pullen believe that the painted stars may
indicate some familiarity with a telescopic image of a star. The broken
edges of the three spots might be intended to depict the blinking of stars;
as opposed to the steady beam of larger planets. Also in a higher power
telescope the light will “wander” a bit.
“Construct glasses to see the moon magnified” - (Leonardo, Codex
Atlanticus, (fol. 190 r-a))
Vasari wrote that between 1513-15, Leonardo was developing instruments
for grinding large concave mirrors on the rooftop of the Vatican..
.. “In order to observe the nature of the planets, open the roof and bring
the image of a single planet onto the base of a concave mirror. The image
of the planet reflected by the base will show the surface of the planet much
magnified.” -Leonardo (codex Arundel. C. 1513)
During the last decade before his death, Leonardo completed his painting
by placing his own star signature above the mystical crystal orb held in the
hand of Christ as Savior of the Cosmos. He signed none other of his
paintings except this one - utilizing a cryptic triangle from Leo the Lion seen
exactly as it would have appeared overhead in April 1452.
Written in three stars, the leitmotif of this ʻhereticʼ and ʻmagician,ʼ as his
contemporaries had come to view him, would forever signal that Leonardo
Da Vinciʼs ideas, though willingly suppressed in his church dominated era,
would one day be acknowledged by some future generation. Visually he
would bequeath them… through his calculations and notebooks…and in
painted form - to us… in scattered evidential remnants - a riddle to be
applied.
Notes
The authors would like to acknowledge the William Keating Bayley
Information Technology Laboratory at NC State University for its gracious
technical assistance.
1 Luke Syson, Leonardo Da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, p. 104.
2 Martin Kemp, “Art History: Sight and Salvation, Nature 479, 2011, p. 174
3 Jay M. Pasachoff, A Field Guide to Stars and Planets, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1992, p. 87
4 Andre Noest, Nature, Dec. 2011, p. 303 5 Monica Azzolini, The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and
Politics in Renaissance Milan [ Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2013], pp. 133, 134.
6 Giorgio Vasari, “Life of Leonardo Da Vinci”, inLives of the most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, translated bu Gaston DeC. De Vere, (London: Philip Lee Warner, 1912-1914), p. 95
7 Myrick Pullen, “Salvator Mundi and golden rectangle diagram.”(illustration). The mathematical angles seen in the crystal orb compared to the angles in published star charts were measured and computed by Mathematics scholar, Myrick Pullen, Fearrington, NC
top related