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Writer's pictureDr Takeshi Takama (CEO)

[Drawing] The difference between Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo



Before becoming a scientist, I wanted to be an artist, so I love stories where art and science come together. The first half of this video tells how artistic anatomy led to the creation of realistic art in the Renaissance. It's not the main point of this video, but I've noticed that the difference between Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo (in an anecdote) is a difference in how they reasoned about science.

The most famous fusion of art and science is Leonardo da Vinci, isn't it? Da Vinci used dissection to create very realistic figure drawing during the Renaissance. That's why the Mona Lisa is of such great value!


Another artist who emerged at the same time was Michelangelo. I often use the sculpture of David to explain how to make a vision. Michelangelo's approach was different to that of da Vinci (just for this anecdote). We don't know if it's true, but when a king asked Michelangelo how he managed to make such a wonderful statue of David, Michelangelo replied: "It is very easy. I throw away the parts that are not David".



Unlike Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo did not create his art from anatomy but surface appearance in this anecdote (in reality, Michelangelo did a lot of dissections). In this video, you will see the example of David several times. If you analyse the anatomy of the sculpture of David, you will see that it is very accurate. But it can be only on the surface, but not by examining the muscles and bones that make up the bulges and indentations according to the anecdote, unlike da Vinci did. That's why da Vinci might have said that Michelangelo's work was "like a sack full of nuts".


It is not that either approach is wrong, but that they are different approaches to "making realistic art", which is the same as scientific problem-solving.


Leonardo da Vinci's method is deductive reasoning: undulations of the body by building up the theoretical correctness of anatomy.

Inductive reasoning is the process of finding a trend that seems to be generally true from a large number of examples, as Michelangelo might have done in the anecdote.

By the way, the second half of the video is the same as the book "Dynamic Art Anatomy" recently published by Roberto Osti. It was so interesting that I bought the book too (^^;).


By the way, this is a picture I made yesterday. Recently I started colourings.




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