Leonardo's life spanned the progression from the 1400s to the 1500s, the two centuries that embrace what is known as the Renaissance. For the art historian, the Renaissance begins in 1401 at Florence and reaches its peak in the first twenty years of the 16th century in the hands of a line of renowned artists: Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Giorgione and Correggio. It then descended into what is generally described as Mannerism. Scientists, on the other hand, turn to a later starting date, namely 1543 when Nicolaus Copernicus published his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium and Andreas Vasalius his De humani corporis fabrica libri septem: two works that put paid to long-standing orthodoxy and began the modern history of astronomy and anatomy respectively. By the same token, philosophers associate with the Renaissance Telesio, Bruno and Campanella, thinkers who lived in the full flush of the 16th century. This non-coincidence of starting points, therefore, meant that when Renaissance art was sinking from its zenith Renaissance science was embarking on great discoveries, and Renaissance thinking was elaborating original philosophical systems.
ITALY
In the first half of the 15th century, Italy, and Florence in particular, was the artistic and economic centre of Europe. As already stated, the Renaissance began in Florence. Its leading players, however, namely Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo, lived and did their best work elsewhere. In the realm of science, Copernicus was a Pole and Vasalius a Fleming, while the three great thinkers Telesio, Bruno and Campanella hailed from the south of Italy. During Leonardo's apprenticeship in the second half of the century, Florence was no longer the centre and its art was no longer studded with the likes of Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Donatello and Paolo Uccello, but with artists who were primarily skilful organisers of their ateliers, such as Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio and Pollaiolo. Leonardo's and Michelangelo's most exacting works were completed in Milan and Rome respectively. After the year 1500, the core of the Italian Renaissance was in Rome. It was here, in fact, that Raphael, Michelangelo and, for a very few years, Leonardo illuminated the most splendid period of the Renaissance thanks to a trio of ambitious popes: Julius II, Leo X and Clement VII. On the international stage, however, the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, the discovery of a "New World" far away to the west, the rising fortune of Spain and Flanders, and the Lutheran Reformation directed against the Church of Rome all eventually combined to deprive Italy of its central position and generate a centrifugal, anti-Italian thrust in the hundred years between 1450 and 1550.
HUMANISM AND SCIENCE
The culture of the Renaissance can be summed up as the expression of a few tenets: a return to the origin of things (archaeological humanism), naturalism, a mathematical and harmonious view of the world, the convergence of art and science (scientific humanism), and the primacy of visual representation as a language. Scientific humanism is but one facet of a movement that involved literature, history and art. Mantegna is perhaps the most typical exponent of the 15th-century archaeological humanism that became something deeper in the hands of Raphael and others at the start of the 16th century: not just erudite and archaeological citation, but a new form of artistic language usually called the classic style. Leonardo's naturalism (passed on to Raphael in Florence) certainly assisted this transition from archaeological humanism to the classic style. Naturalism, indeed, is the other main feature of the period. It was closely linked to the current great interest in mathematics since they are, in certain fields, two sides of the same coin. Naturalistic rendition of the human body in art, in fact, obviously requires an understanding of its correct proportions. These, in turn, lie within the compass of mathematics and are perceived as a harking back to the models bequeathed by the Greeks and the Romans, and a return to the proportional canon devised by Vitruvius (1st cent. BC). Mathematics also underlay the naturalistic representation of space. Harmony, namely the correct combination of the parts of a whole was another theme closely linked to proportions that fascinated the men of the Renaissance. The connection between a naturalistic and a mathematical approach is typical of the early years of the Renaissance. It arose in the works of Brunelleschi and Masaccio in Florence, and culminated with Piero della Francesca elsewhere. Subsequently, however, naturalism set its face against obedience to the law and order dear to mathematics. Leonardo lived through this dramatic change, itself the fruit of a realisation that nature is far too complex and too fickle to be bridled by mathematical laws. His nuanced representations of the human figure and his airy perspective were his most famous answers to the 15th century's outmoded linear and mathematical conconception of art.
