The Leonardo 2019 Committee is Formed

The wheels that led to Cinquecento started spinning three years ago, when Mingarelli had a conversation with Anna Galluccio, the Italian embassy’s scientific attaché in Ottawa.

Although their discussions remained on the back burner for a while, ultimately the Leonardo 2019 committee was formed, and planning snowballed as Mingarelli invited internationally renowned da Vinci scholars to come to Carleton — and, much to his surprise, they accepted.

Those scholars include Martin Kemp, an emeritus research professor in art history at Oxford University and one of the world’s leading experts on da Vinci and the Renaissance and links between art and science, who will deliver the Faculty of Science’s annual Herzberg Lecture on Nov. 21, 2019.

Two months before that, on Sept. 10, best-selling author and historian, Ross King, whose most recent book, Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies, won the 2017 RBC Taylor Prize, will also do a lecture at Carleton.

But people interested in or curious about da Vinci won’t have to wait until next fall.

On May 8, Carleton President Benoit-Antoine Bacon, a neuroscience researcher, will give a talk in the Health Sciences Building called Da Vinci’s Vision: The Beauty (and Limitations) of Painting a 3D World.

And on Monday, April 15 — da Vinci’s birthday — Mingarelli will officially launch Cinquecento with a lecture at the Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre focusing on Leonardo’s life and some of his lesser-known contributions, such as anatomy, astronomy and culinary arts, among others.

The free event begins at 7 p.m. and will include refreshments and highlights from Diluvio, an exhibition of wire-mesh sculptures that draw inspiration from da Vinci’s Diluvio drawings.

Diluvio, which opened last month and will remain on display in the lobby of the MacOdrum Library until April 30, means “deluge,” and the Diluvio drawings sketch out the dynamic properties of air and water in motion, channelled through the power of cataclysmic storms.

“There are sections in Leonardo’s notebooks where he absolutely praises nature’s creativity,” says Prof. Manuel Báez of Carleton’s Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism, whose students created the sculptures.

“He was moved by that to declare a clear, profound distinction between mathematics as conceived by mankind and the mathematics of nature.”