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Leonardo's Optics
Mikhail A. MOGILEVSKY
"Now do you not see that the eye embraces the beauty of the whole world? ... It counsels and corrects all the arts of mankind... it is the prince of mathematics, and the sciences founded on it are absolutely certain. It has measured the distances and sizes of stars; it has discovered the elements and their location... it has given birth to architecture and to perspective and to the divine art of painting. Oh excellent thing, superior to all others created by God!
The eye is the window of the human body through which it feels its way and enjoys the beauty of the world. Owing to the eye the soul is content to stay in its bodily prison, for without it such bodily prison is torture… And it triumphs over nature, in that the constituent parts of nature are finite, but the works that the eye commands of hands are infinite."
These enthusiastic words show what Leonardo thinks of the eye - the main instrument both of a painter and a scientist. Three features of “the window of soul” and related problems appear to be of particular significance for Leonardo da Vinci: (a) The anatomy of the eye and the mechanism of seeing. (b) Optical effects in the nature perceived through this “window.” (c) And a more special problem - how to express in the best way all the diversity of a real world in a flat picture.
Today we present a brief description of Leonardo’s activities in various aspects of optics, which is regarded as the “most reliable” science on various effects in nature perceived by the eye. Undoubtedly, it will be interesting and instructive for the reader to trace how the unsurpassed genius in the history proceeded from the formulation of problems to fundamental conclusions.
More information on these and other subjects you can find in the printed version of our journal.
