An arc of twenty generations
Soundings Read Spanish Version
An
arc of twenty generations
By
David Whitman
With
a major exhibition in San José, California through January 4,
The Tech Museum of Innovation is making the case that the spirit of
Leonardo da Vinci and other artist-engineers of the Renaissance can
be found today — twenty generations later — in the high-tech
innovators of the Bay Area.
“Leonardo:
500 Years into the Future” opened at The Tech in late September.
The museum’s president, Peter Friess — a European-born art scholar
and one of the world’s leading authorities on clocks — forged a
creative, trans-Atlantic partnership with the Museum of the History
of Science in Florence, whose director, Paolo Galluzzi, curated
“Leonardo.” Nearly 60,000 tickets were sold during the
exhibition’s first five weeks, demonstrating the appeal of
“Leonardo” even in the midst of a global economic recession.
Under
the direction of the science museum, the renowned Italian firm Opera
Laboratori Fiorentini created more than 200 exhibits, including most
of the exquisite working models. Although the models were constructed
using Mediterranean oak and other materials common in
fifteenth-century Italy, Renaissance tools were not used, “otherwise
we’d still
be working on these models,” explained Massimiliano Di Cocco,
revving his high-speed drill to assemble an imposing trebuchet
designed to hurl rocks over towering fortress walls.
Last
August, Opera dispatched a team of 20 from Florence to San José
to mount the exhibition. Working day and night for nearly a month,
they transformed the 30,000-square-foot auditorium, site of The
Tech’s blockbuster show “Body Worlds” last year, into a
sophisticated exhibition space. During the installation, many
observers remarked that it seemed like a buzzing beehive of
gargantuan proportions. If so, the queen bee was Donata Vitali — a
commanding, brilliant and energetic young architect with flashing,
dark eyes and a playful sense of humor. Equipped with floor plans,
miniature bound notebooks, a cell phone and Mac powerbook, Vitali was
always at the center of her loyal, exuberant and very busy team. Her
conversations continually shifted from Italian to English to
Portuguese (the default language she spoke most often with her
American counterpart at The Tech because both had lived in Brazil).
To
their delight, journalists and other visitors taking
behind-the-scenes tours during the installation often heard songs
from the Tuscan workers floating above the hum of their power tools,
along with friendly shouts back and forth across the huge hall,
interspersed at times with colorful words not found in most
Italian-English dictionaries. The work halted only for lively,
mid-morning espresso breaks and a civilized midday meal. (The
Italians were alarmed to observe Americans scheduling work meetings
for the noon hour, rushing their lunch breaks, consuming fast food at
a fast pace and — most perplexing of all — sometimes even eating at
their computers.)
Late
one Sunday afternoon, after several weeks of strenuous installation
work, Vitali announced to the exhausted team that they could take the
rest of the day off. The Tech had given them passes to a local
amusement park, and several of them, including Vitali, immediately
set off to ride roller coasters. They were most impressed by the lone
wooden roller coaster ignored by most of the park’s other visitors.
Before riding it, they stood almost reverently before it, admiring
its beauty and old-world charm.
After
several whiplash-inducing rides in the park, Vitali alone decided to
attempt bungee jumping. With cameras trained on her as she
disappeared high into the setting sun, everyone smiled as she soared
across the cerulean sky, deliriously joyful — a sight Leonardo
himself no doubt would have found inspiring.
The
exhibition’s impressive models are not only representations of
machines invented centuries ago, they are also beautiful objects of
art in their own right. From the majestic model of Brunelleschi’s
dome of the Florence cathedral to Leonardo’s stunning flying
machine with its bat wings spanning forty feet, they comprise the
first section of the exhibition, called “The Renaissance
Engineers.” As a separate exhibition it appeared in Paris, Beijing,
Toronto and New York City. At the midway point, the show transitions
to a multimedia section called “The Mind of Leonardo.” That
section of the exhibition alone attracted millions of visitors in
Florence, Tokyo and Debrecen, Hungary in 2006 and 2007.
Bringing
these two popular exhibitions together for the first — and perhaps
only — time was an ambitious undertaking for The Tech and its
European partners. And making the unique exhibition all the more
remarkable are two original paintings from the early sixteenth
century, treasures of Renaissance art on loan from the legendary
Uffizi Gallery in Florence: “Leda and the Swan” and “The Virgin
and Child with St. Anne.” They were painted by two of Leonardo’s
most cherished students and are based on the master’s paintings —
one housed in the Louvre but the other, “Leda,” lost.
And
outside The Tech, across from César Chávez Plaza,
looking “windswept and alive” and bathed after dark in blue
spotlights, is a modern replica of Leonardo’s glorious Sforza
monument, a muscular stallion two stories high. At the close of the
fifteenth century, after seventeen years in Milan, Leonardo came
close to casting the horse when France invaded northern Italy and the
Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, diverted the 70 tons of bronze
intended for the monument to make weapons instead. To add to
Leonardo’s profound disappointment, his clay model was destroyed
when the invading crossbow army used it for target practice. Leonardo
left Milan, devastated.
Five
hundred years later, using Leonardo’s notebooks to guide them, the
Museum of the History of Science and Opera Laboratori Fiorentini have
created, in steel and fiberglass, a magnificent replica of the Sforza
monument that is considered to be the most authentic version of
Leonardo’s horse. A different artistic interpretation of the Sforza
horse, cast a decade ago, can be seen in Milan and at the Frederik
Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Four
years in the making, the horse on view at The Tech was first shown
last year in Hungary, then shipped to California last summer in two
freight containers, one topless with the horse’s head peeking over
the edge as it sailed from Italy through the Mediterranean, Strait of
Gibraltar, Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, Panama Canal, and finally
up the Pacific Coast to the Port of Oakland, where the huge
Renaissance pony had to clear U.S. Customs and Homeland Security
before finding its way to San José.
During
the outdoor installation of the colossal horse — a week-long,
unexpected attraction for tourists and passersby alike — children
would often stop to ask its name. The exhibition’s organizers
decided to hold a competition for school children to suggest a name
for the horse during its California stay. Representatives from both
museums, most notably Leonardo scholars Andrea Bernardoni and Laura
Manetti, reviewed the names and selected the one submitted by fifth
graders from the Mulberry School in Los Gatos: “Ambrogio,” a male
name common in northern Italy, meaning “eternal.” Next month that
class will take a special field trip to the exhibition, where they
will be greeted in front of their Ambrogio outside The Tech Museum by
television cameras, the director of the museum and — perhaps most
thrilling of all — the San José mounted police unit.
“Leonardo:
500 Years into the Future” continues through January 4 at The Tech
Museum of Innovation in downtown San José, California. For
information and tickets, visit http://www.thetech.org/leonardo/
