Decoding Leonardo's Codices
International Conference

The conference is organized by the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut and the Museo Galileo,
under the patronage of the Comitato Nazionale per la celebrazione dei 500 anni dalla morte di Leonardo da Vinci.

The aim of this international conference is to evaluate the current state of research regarding how Leonardo's manuscripts were compiled, and the complexity of their dispersion after the artist's death. Furthermore, the conference will investigate the pioneering initiatives starting in the last decades of the 19th century for facsimile reproduction and text transcription of Leonardo's codices and loose sheets thanks to the rapid evolution of printing techniques: photography, lithography, heliophotography. Finally, the conference will discuss how to make use of new digital methods for publishing and disseminating through the internet the indispensable resources for the responsible use of Da Vinci's manuscripts such as bibliographic resources, watermark archives, glossaries, lexica, and chronologies.


PROGRAM

THURSDAY, 10 OCTOBER
Venue: Teatro Niccolini

17:30
Opening Lecture
Leonardo Self-Taught Author and His Manuscripts
Carmen Bambach (The Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New York)


FRIDAY, 11 OCTOBER
Venue: Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai

SESSION 1
THE COMPILATION OF LEONARDO'S MANUSCRIPTS
Chair: Alessandro Nova (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz)

9:00
Welcome address
Alessandro Nova (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz)

9:15
Come lavorava Leonardo: un percorso nel labirinto delle sue carte
Fabio Frosini (Università di Urbino)

9:45
La compilazione del Codice Leicester
Domenico Laurenza (Schroeder Arts, New York/Museo Galileo, Firenze)

10:15
Dalla parte di Melzi
Carlo Vecce (Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale")

10:45 Discussion

11:00 Coffee break

11:30
Da sinistra a destra. Leonardo cambia direzione
Francesca Borgo (University of St. Andrews)

12:00
Trasgressioni
Frank Fehrenbach (Universität Hamburg)

12:30
Leonardo's Preparations for Presentation Drawings and Books
Matthew Landrus (University of Oxford)

13:00 Discussion


SESSION 2
THE HISTORY AND DISPERSAL OF LEONARDO'S MANUSCRIPTS
Chair: Carmen Bambach (The Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New York)

15:00
Unfinished Business: Leonardo's Artful Art and Its Written Legacy
Claire Farago (University of Colorado Boulder)

15:30
Deconstructing the Forster Codices: An Artefactual History
Nicholas Pickwoad (University of the Arts London)

16:00
Tracing the Forster Codices. A Cold Case between "Historiographie Romancée" and Chinese Whispers
Antonio Becchi (Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin)

16:30 Discussion

16:45 Coffee break

17:15
Giovanni Ambrogio Mazenta's "Alcune Memorie": Document or Deception?
Janis Bell (Independent Leonardo Scholar)

17:45
Fortuna de los manuscritos vincianos madrileños
Elisa Ruiz García (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

18:15 Discussion

19:00
Site visit: Exhibition "Leonardo da Vinci and Perpetual Motion", Museo Galileo (for speakers only)


SATURDAY, 12 OCTOBER
Venue: Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai

SESSION 3
PUBLISHING AND REPRODUCING LEONARDO'S MANUSCRIPTS
Chair: Costanza Caraffa (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz)

9:30
Trascrivere, pubblicare, catalogare il Codice Atlantico: un bilancio degli ultimi cento anni
Pietro C. Marani (Politecnico di Milano)

10:00
Filigrane dal Codice Atlantico. Proposta per una loro valorizzazione "design oriented"
Claudio Calì (Politecnico di Milano)

10:30 Discussion

10:45 Coffee break

11:15
Le lastre fotografiche del Codice Atlantico
Andrea Bernardoni (Università di Siena/Museo Galileo, Firenze)

11:45
Leonardo's Manuscripts as Facsimile? Observations on the Commissione Nazionale Vinciana Glass Plates
Dorothea Peters (Freelance Photohistorian)

12:15 Discussion


SESSION 4
DIGITAL TOOLS FOR RESEARCH
Chair: Francesco P. Di Teodoro (Politecnico di Torino)

13:30
Dai Glossari alla Leonardo//thek: nuovi strumenti e nuove prospettive d'indagine per il lessico vinciano
Barbara Fanini (Accademia della Crusca/Università di Firenze)

14:00
Leonardo//thek@ 1.0: un'infrastruttura digitale per evitare il naufragio nell'oceano di dati del Codice Atlantico
Paolo Galluzzi (Museo Galileo, Firenze)

14:30 Discussion

14:45 Coffee break

15:15
Codex Madrid I: Internet Edition and Print Edition in Comparison
Thomas Kreft (RWTH Aachen University)
Dietrich Lohrmann (RWTH Aachen University)

15:45
Computational Characterization of Leonardo's Papers
Margaret H. Ellis (New York University)
C. Richard Johnson Jr. (Cornell University, Ithaca)
William A. Sethares (University of Wisconsin–Madison)

16:15 Discussion

16:30 Concluding Remarks


VENUES
Teatro Niccolini
Via Ricasoli 3
Florence / Italy

Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz
Max-Planck-Institut
Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai
Via dei Servi 51
Florence / Italy

CONTACT
Laura Manetti
Museo Galileo
l.manettimuseogalileo.it

Mandy Richter
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut
richterkhi.fi.it

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