Andrea Bernardoni

Leonardo and the “Chemical Arts”

Our traditional vision of Leonardo da Vinci is based principally on his studies of mechanics, hydraulics, optics, geology, meteorology, and anatomy. However, a perusal of his manuscripts reveals his lifelong interest in chemistry and metallurgy, fields to which he contributed both as an innovator and as a reliable chronicler of the technological inventions of others. He conducted studies on various types of materials (including glass, paper, and le terre di fusione, the clay used in the lost wax process) and sought to develop more efficient alembics and metallurgical furnaces, as well as ingenious devices to study the elements and the dynamics of the transformation of matter. Leonardo’s atelier therefore could be viewed as a veritable ‘technical laboratory’ in which he conducted experiments not only on the techniques and materials required for his art, but also to satisfy his thirst for knowledge by engaging in the heuristic study of natural and artificial phenomena.

The Biography of a technical picture: biringuccio's boring machine woodcut

ABSTRACT The object of this article is the first image of a horizontal boring machine that was presented in a woodcut found in Vannoccio Biringuccios De la pirotechnia. Studying this picture with a biographical approach enables us to consider it as a material object that has many relationships with its production and diffusion contexts. First of all, to point out the woodcut realisation context and to outline the dimension of its influence and circulation, we consider the relationship between image and the book that it is a part of. Secondly, through the studies of medieval technological iconography and the context of artillery production for the first part of the XVI century, we will try to reconstruct the pictures genealogy in order to elucidate the context of its genesis. Lastly, we point out the relationship between Biringuccios woodcut and the evolution of its kinematics idea in a series of boring machine pictures until the last part of the XVIII century.