Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist

As anyone with half a brain knows this time of year marks the end of school....or at least the end of the semester (or term, if you're British). Of course those of us who are older students continue through the summer, dreaming of the days when we, too, could bask in the glory of a “Summer Vacation”. But that's beside the point. The point is, this time of year marks a very key point in a student's academic career. It is the point at which we are all collectively assessed to determine whether or not one modicum of smarts stuck somewhere in our brains at one point or another during the school year. That which I refer to, of course, is The Final Exam. Luckily enough, I’m exempt from such trivialities at my age....meaning, as I said above, I trade in my summer freedom for freedom from testing. Not willingly, mind you. That's just how the system works, dammit. 

Anyway, again, it is at this time of year when normally we as students review all we've learned and try to recall bits and bobs to write down on a piece of paper to prove we're not all brain dead. Most often, we realize we've forgotten most of what we learned in the beginning of the year and have to study, study, study to refresh ourselves, reminding ourselves in the process how perfectly daft we are, in many cases and in many subject areas.

SO, that said....have I got a treat for you! I have discovered something that can push you to feel even MORE underachieving, thick and basically completely inadequate and mediocre!! 

Leonardo da Vinci (need I really say more? Ok, Ok, I will...), was an unthinkably brilliant man and so far ahead of his time that his achievements continue to impress us hundreds of years later. I was irritated back in January/February when I failed to get tickets for the exhibit of his works they'd had at the National Gallery, but yesterday I saw something better. In my opinion, anyway.

The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace is hosting the exhibit 'Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist'. From the website: This exhibition is the largest ever of Leonardo da Vinci’s studies of the human body.  Leonardo has long been recognised as one of the great artists of the Renaissance, but he was also a pioneer in the understanding of human anatomy.  He intended to publish his ground-breaking work in a treatise on anatomy, and had he done so his discoveries would have transformed European knowledge of the subject.  But on Leonardo’s death in 1519 the drawings remained a mass of undigested material among his private papers and their significance was effectively lost to the world for almost 400 years.  Today they are among the Royal Collection’s greatest treasures. 

 

After a short film introduction, guests take a self-guided audio tour of several rooms, each demonstrating how da Vinci's fascination with the human body lead him to explore, in greater and greater detail, how humans are assembled and how everything works. As one of the few people allowed to dissect humans in those days, it was doubly lucky da Vinci was such a meticulous artist as well as a brilliant thinker. His findings were so revolutionary that some could not be conclusively proven until the development of MRIs in the 1980s. Arguably his greatest investigations focus on the workings of the heart - and the artist came tantalisingly close to discovering the science behind the circulation of blood, a century before it was officially achieved. According to Royal Collection curator Martin Clayton, da Vinci became fascinated with a swelling he discovered at the root of the aorta, just beneath the aortic valve. “In order to investigate this he injected melted wax into the heart of an ox in order to make a cast from inside the cavity. He then made a glass model from the cast which he pumped with water containing a suspension of grass seeds so that he could witness the 'turbulence' that took place...

From his research he deduced that this swelling was responsible for the closure of the aortic value after each beat of the heart - a theory which was not suggested again until 1912 and even then not conclusively confirmed until less than 30 years ago.”

Other studies concentrate on muscle form and the body's reproductive organs, particularly the formation of embryos, with astonishingly detailed drawings of babies still inside their mother's bodies....based, interestingly enough, on an ox's womb, which he used during war time when he had was forced to flee the city and, as a result, use animals instead of human subjects for dissection.

One study illustrating every bone in the human body is accompanied by 240 individual drawings of astounding clarity and more than 13,000 words of notes - all in his famed 'mirror writing'.

Professor Peter Abrahams, Professor of Clinical Anatomy at Warwick Medical School, added: 'For me as an anatomist, what Leonardo did was bring all his disciplines of architecture, geometry, engineering and combine it with an art expression that was quite unique. He put all these things together to try and explain not only how things looked but how things worked, and in that he was certainly unique. If you were to take ten specialists in the fields of which he worked, geometry, anatomy, physiology, engineering and architecture, I doubt if ten professors in those fields would have the knowledge base and talents that Leonardo had.

According to the Daily Mail: Da Vinci, who died in 1519, bequeathed all his notebooks and drawings to his young assistant, Francesco Melzi, who, over the next 50 years, tried to make sense of his master's daunting legacy. His son sold on many of the papers to the sculptor Pompeo Leoni who mounted the anatomical drawings into a large album which eventually made its way to England and is believed to have been bought by King Charles II. It has been in the Royal Collection, which is held in trust by The Queen for the nation, since at least 1690. The collection boasts the largest compendium of Leonardo drawings in the world, some 600 in all, of which 268 are anatomical sketches. Only one other of his anatomical drawings exists elsewhere today. Of these, 87 are currently on display at The Queen's Gallery in Buckingham Palace - many of which have never been publicly seen since they were drawn by the genius himself.

First to replicate the articulation and curvature of the spine

“This is not an easy exhibition; the intellectual pitch is demanding, but the reward for the visitor who stretches his mind and eye to keep pace with Leonardo is quite wonderful.” (London Evening Standard) It explores this sector of Leonardo’s interests, places it in context and leaves us with the indelible impression of philosophical genius. This is an exhibition for surgeons and historians of medicine as much as it is for connoisseurs and historians of art. I stood in awe of these drawings and manuscripts, overwhelmed by a broad intelligence of which I have always been aware but until now have more or less under appreciated. How can any single one of us NOT pale in comparison?

Also, these online images do his drawings very little justice...I highly recommend going to view them in person...or check out the official website: http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/exhibitions/leonardo-da-vinci-anatomist/the-drawings

First to accurately count and draw the different teeth in an adult human