1 The Birth of Science - MSRI

11.2 The Renaissance 295
worthy geographical and nautical maps (as shown by the Catalan Map of
1375). The Portuguese prince Henry the Mariner (1394–1460) was one of
the first to support the use of astronomical methods for high seas navigation.
11.2 The Renaissance
Starting in the mid fourteenth century, a flow of Greek documents coming
from Constantinople made its way to Italy and from there to the rest of
Europe, triggering what we now know simply as The Renaissance. The
flow increased in the early fifteenth century. Two hundred thirty-eight
manuscripts, for example, were brought back by Giovanni Aurispa from
his voyage of 1423. 25
Renaissance intellectuals were not in a position to understand Hellenistic
scientific theories, but, like bright children whose lively curiosity is set
astir by a first visit to the library, they found in the manuscripts many
captivating topics, especially those that came with illustrations: anatomical
dissections, perspective, gears, pneumatic paraphernalia, large bronze
casts, war machines, hydraulic devices, automata, “subjective” portraits,
musical instruments.
The most famous intellectual attracted by all these “novelties” was Leonardo
da Vinci, who not only took an interest in all the things just listed, page 365
but even ventured — unsuccessfully, alas — to master Archimedes’ works.
He fared much better when he tried to put in practice some of the ideas
contained in ancient works, especially when he could use his extraordinary
gifts of observation and depiction: for instance, in trying to recover
anatomy through the dissection of corpses and in making observations in
hydraulics.
For a while now Leonardo da Vinci has no longer appeared as a lone
genius, but as the most important representative of a milieu where for
many decades the same subjects had been pursued, the same books had
been prized and similar drawings had been made. 26 Many of Leonardo’s
favorite technological subjects had earlier occupied, in the first half of fifteenth
century, the Sienese Mariano Taccola, who was particularly keen
on Philo of Byzantium’s works on pneumatics and military engineering.
25 Aurispa, above and beyond being a humanist, was one of the many merchants who devoted
themselves to the profitable traffic of manuscripts from Constantinople to Italy in the early fifteenth
century. We may be sure that a part of the books that reached Italy at that time was lost after a few
generations. Incidentally, the ideas that sprouted in those years among Italian artists included perspective
and the possibility of building larger domes by making their section parabolic (or nearly
so) rather than semicircular.
26 This reappraisal started with [Gille: IR].
Revision: 1.11 Date: 2003/01/06 07:48:20