LEO & MATH

Leonardo + mathematics. Meeting about mathematics related work of Leonardo da Vinci in Brussels.  
The location will be the Brussels Muntpunt. Date: April 4 – 5.
Lecturers in chronological order: Dirk Huylebrouck (Belgium), Jos Janssen (The Netherlands), Rinus Roelofs (The Netherlands), Denes Nagy (Australia), Tibor Tarnai and Andras Lengyel (Hungary), Eva Gyarmathy (Hungary), Ken Brecher (USA), Patrick W Fowler (Great Britain), Eugene A. Katz (Israel), Gabriele A. Losa (Switzerland), István Orosz (Hungary). Johan Rutgeerts (Belgium), Laurens Luyten (Belgium), Javier Barrallo (Spain): Radmila Sazdanovic (USA) Slavik Jablan (Serbia): Elena Maria Marchetti and Luisa Rossi-Costa (Italy): Christopher W. Tyler (USA): Andrew Furman (Great Britain) and Karel Wuytack (Belgium) David Wade (Wales); Jos Pauwels (Belgium); Antonia Redondo(Spain), Koen Deprez (Belgium): Walt van Ballegooijen (The Netherlands).
The title of my lecture: Leonardo and the „Secret Perspective”. It will be on Friday (4th of April) at 4 PM. Let me give a short detail:
"In a letter (to Pirckheimer, dated October 13th, 1506) Dürer recounts his plan to ride out from Venice to Bologna to meet someone who would initiate him into the secret art of perspective. If we let our imagination run wild, we might suspect Leonardo da Vinci. But the voice of reason points to the Franciscan monk and mathematician Fra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli, a close colleague and friend of Leonardo’s, who had to make the long ride from Florence to hook up with Dürer. The tryst probably did take place, at least on the evidence of a painting by the Venetian painter Jacopo de Barbari, and provided that one is prepared to recognize the German artist in the figure of the man standing behind the monk.  More difficult to answer is the question of what Dürer really had in mind in describing the art of perspective as “secret” (“heimlich”). He could hardly have meant “perspective” in its everyday sense of “vision from a distance,” as we continue to use the word today, given that he was well familiar with the concept and had employed it widely in practice. As previously mentioned, however, the term had a far broader scope of meaning in those days, which encompassed the tricks of anamorphic representation, especially when the word perspective was accompanied by the adjective “secret.”  This adjective is certainly apt to describe the technique whereby the artist distorts an object beyond recognition, reserving the ability to reconstitute the undeformed image for a select few privy to a clever ruse." 

In the same evening at 7PM in the Hungarian Cultural Centre (nearby) I will give another lecture (Hidden Images) and I will show some animations. You are welcome to both events.