“The winning tables in De Divina Proportione ” on the occasion of 500 years after his death

After Florence and Milan, Leonardo da Vinci is also honored in Romagna with an exhibition on the occasion of 500 years since his death.

The Mateureka, Museum of Mathematics and Calculation Mateureka of Pennabilli (Rimini) has set up the exhibition “The winning tables in the De Divina Proportione ” which presents a little known but fundamental aspect to better understand the work of the great artist. The exhibition presents the influence that the mathematician Luca Pacioli had on Leonardo da Vinci in the field of mathematics and painting.

From the mathematical analysis of the drawings and sketches, present in the Codes of Leonardo, it is clear that the mathematics, present in his writings, must be distinguished in two periods: before the encounter with Luca Pacioli and after this meeting, which took place in Milan in 1496.

Regarding the perspective in his paintings, the exhibition analyzes three works: the Annunciation, of youth age; the Adoration of the Magi, of the Florentine period, and the Cenacolo, of the Milanese period characterized by collaboration and friendship between Luca and Leonardo. While in the first two works Leonardo applies the perspective with the accuracy that every good artist of the time would have used for craft, in the Last Supper, instead, perspective mathematics is perfect.

But the heart of the exhibition is the public display, for the first time, of all the 60 color tables of the polyhedra that Leonardo painted to thank his friend Luca for the lessons of mathematics and geometry obtained in Milan. These tables have a remarkable artistic interest and are wonderful to see so much that Pacioli himself, fascinated by their beauty, inserted them in his volume on the proportion, called by him divine, and presents them with these words: “the supraeme et legiadrissime figures of all the platonic et mathematic regular bodies et dependent, which in prospective design it is not possible to make them better,...facte et formate of the prencipci today among mortals Lionardo our from Venci ”.

An exhibition designed mainly for schoolchildren in Visit to the museum and from them accessible from January to May, but open every day, also to individual visitors, in June, July and August 2019.