History of Art

For Leonardo da Vinci, the diagram was more than a sketch—it was a "scaffold for the artist's imagination." This post explores how the Renaissance master used disegno (drawing) and misura (measure) to transform the static rules of geometry into dynamic observations of the natural world, from the flight of birds to the Vitruvian Man.

How does the brain turn a "monstrous," upside-down image on the retina into the seamless world we see? From the 11th-century diagrams of Ibn al-Haytham to the radioactive "brain-photographs" of modern neuroscience, we explore the wet-ware of human vision, and how artists are still trying to map the fire within the eye.