Artist Statement
“Occasionally,” Vasari wrote of Leonardo da Vinci, “heaven sends us someone who is not only human but divine, so that through his mind and the excellence of his intellect we may reach out to heaven.” Leonardo da Vinci (Vinci 1452–Amboise 1519) was a “universal genius” of the Italian Renaissance. His wide-ranging mind and boundless curiosity about every aspect of human experience and the natural world is soundly celebrated in the Western tradition.
Leonardo embodies the creativity of the “many-sided people of the Renaissance” (Jacob Burckhardt). He was capable of making connections no one else could see, especially between the sciences and the humanities. He was the artist-scientist extracting rules from nature… then remaking nature in his own works.
As our habits of specialization isolate the arts from the sciences and the sciences from one other, we become increasingly intrigued by Leonardo’s capacity to encompass and extent almost the entire body of knowledge of his time. Our Leonardo, then, is likely to emerge as the model of the all-encompassing mind, the homo universalis.
Leonardo died on May 2, 1519, near Amboise in France. On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, we will learn about this phenomenal man in all his incarnations: artist, sculptor, mechanic, physicist, architect, anatomist, astronomer, philosopher, writer, poet, engineer, inventor, humorist, stage designer, and mathematician. Was there ever another man like him?
To mark the beginning of Legacies of Leonardo: Celebrating 500 Years of Inquiry at the University of Florida, the One Health Center of Excellence, in collaboration with the Arts in Medicine Programs at UF and the University Galleries, present a “microscopic” art exhibition. First exhibited in November 2015 at the Italian Institute of Technology this traveling show unveils the “marvelous real.”
Opening Reception
March 1, 2018, 5:00pm–7:30pm
UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine
1515 SW Archer Road, RM 1302
Gainesville, FL 32608
With support from
