Art and Science

ArtSci - ISSN 2515-8767 - © ISTE Ltd

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This study aims to understand the construction by Leonardo da Vinci of the Vitruvian Man, which represents the graphic resolution of an ancient challenge set by the Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio in his treatise De Architectura. It seeks to explain the genesis of this work, its progressive elaboration, and the way in which Leonardo succeeded in addressing a problem that had remained unanswered for centuries. The analysis also highlights the seminal role of mathematics, which since the earliest civilizations has been regarded as a universal language of knowledge and perfection. Long considered to unlock the secrets of the universe, its use in this emblematic drawing reveals Leonardo’s scientific spirit, driven by the pursuit of universal harmony.

Until the Challenger expedition, and despite isolated studies that proved otherwise in the early 19th century, the naturalist community was convinced that the depths of the sea were devoid of animal life. But as soon as the Challenger’s discoveries were published, zoologists became aware of completely new forms of life, and the artists who depicted the organisms studied by scientists at the time enabled specialists, but also a wider audience to visualise these surprising creatures. Other expeditions, notably that of the Valdivia, revealed an ever more diverse and abundant abyssal life, which was lithographed or painted in watercolour until the mid-20th century, before photography opened up another artistic perspective.

The relationship between the mineral and the living has always been a subject of debate, but nowadays it is of growing interest, probably due to scientific advances that have blurred the classical distinction between living and non-living. The first part of this article explores various passages from mineral to living: in ancient stories (Genesis and Greco-Roman mythology) and contemporary role-playing games on the one hand, and in the emergence of life on the other, as understood by science over the centuries. The second part focuses on the reverse passages, from the living to the mineral: several possible mineralizations of organisms, in vivo (biomineralizations) and post-mortem (fossilizations, petrifications), with their artistic and literary revivals, are thus addressed. The third part evokes the proximities between the mineral and the living: natural proximities (in particular those involving epiliths such as lichens) or due to humans (from prehistoric cave paintings to Arte povera). We will finally see how certain writers and artists reach a true intimacy with the mineral world in which they project themselves and find themselves.

Baartman was a woman of the indigenous Khoisan people of South Africa. In 1810, when working as a housemaid in Cape Town, she was coaxed to travel to England to be shown as a savage African, the "Hottentot Venus". She was exhibited as an ethno-erotic freak in Britain and Paris. After her death in late 1815, her body was dissected and George Cuvier published lurid details of her anatomy in an 1817 report. Her remains were kept, and periodically displayed, in the Museum of Natural History (Paris) until finally being repatriated to South Africa in 2002. The tragic story of Baartman’s exploitation has been the subject of many books, films, and articles. Here the focus is on two relatively poorly documented aspects of her exploitation by both artists and scientists. First shown is the artistic exploitation through an exhibition of the depictions of her by the artists of satirical prints, a very popular medium in Baartman’s time. The depictions of her, always in profile with greatly exaggerated buttocks, became in satirical prints, a generic portrayal of African women. In line with the orthodox racism of the early 1800’s, the depictions emphasized the differences between and Europeans and African peoples, the "otherness" of Africans. Secondly, in an exhibition tracing the use of images and characteristics of her, especially (but not only) her skull and brain, the scientific exploitation of Baartman will be shown. The features of her morphology were used to support the divisive view of the inferiority of African peoples. This began with an 1816 report on her visit to the Professors of the Natural History Museum and Cuvier’s 1817 report on the dissection of her corpse, and continued on well into 1970’s.