Da Vinci And Michelangelo's David

Is Michelangelo’s David a work of art or a scientific craft? In today’s world, many people place a clear division between the arts and sciences; the arts and humanities occupy one realm of being while the sciences and logic occupy another. In clear contrast to this notion, history shows that some of the worlds most famed painters and sculptors lived dual lives among the leading scientists, doctors, and mathematicians of their day. The hyper realistic figures and architecture seen in the paintings and sculptures of the great masters of art was achieved through their knowledge of the human body’s complex anatomical structures and in depth understanding of geometry and engineering. Art works such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and Michelangelo’s …show more content…
While history considers da Vinci to be one of the greatest painters of all time, his feats in science and engineering can arguably rival the genius shown in his art. In his youth, da Vinci was apprenticed in the workshop of Andrea di Cione, better known as Verrocchio. While his training exposed the young artist to the artistic skills of drawing, painting, and sculpting, he was also introduced to technical and scientific skills such as chemistry and metallurgy among others. The Vitruvian Man is a drawing by da Vinci taken from one of his notebooks. The drawing is based upon the ideas of ideal human proportions described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius; as a Renaissance man, da Vinci well learned in the knowledge of Ancient Greece and Rome. In his treatise on architecture, De Architectura, Vitruvian described the human figure as being the principal source of proportion among the classical orders. This picture is da Vinci’s attempts to relate man to nature, as he believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy to the workings of the …show more content…
One of Buonarroti’s most famous Sistine Chapel segments is The Creation of Adam, which illustrates the Biblical creation narrative from the Book of Genesis in which God breathes the breath of life into Adam, the fist man. Upon first glance, the painting appears to be just another artist representation, albeit a magnificent one, of the biblical tale. A closer inspection of the fresco showcases and solidifies Michelangelo’s role as a man of science as well as art. Scholars have argued for hidden meanings in the piece; in 1990, Indiana physician Frank Meshberger made a case in the American Journal of Medicine that the figures and shapes depicted behind the figure of God represent an anatomically accurate picture of the human brain. Other academics have built upon Meshberger’s interpretation of the painting; upon closer examination, they assert that the borders in the painting correlate with “sulci in the cerebrum in the inner and outer surface of the brain, the brain stem, the frontal lobe, the basilar artery, the pituitary gland, and the optic