Venice

Venice is about the Italian Renaissance.

The Renaissance was a high-water mark in the history of human civilisation. It was an era of great confidence and belief in the potential of the human spirit. This spirit enthused great men to produce works of genius in seemingly endless abundance.

Art and Science

The connection between art and science has never been more clearly articulated than during the Renaissance. The almost naive enthusiasm in the possibilities of the age recognised no boundaries between endeavours in art and science, as would be the case today (art and science were referred together as "natural philosophy").

In science, Galileo famously discovered that objects of different weights fall at the same speed by dropping balls off the leaning tower of Pisa. Galileo also constructed the first telescope which radically altered the Renaissance view of the cosmos.

Galileo achieved his advances by careful observation and depiction of nature. This was the same approach as the Renaissance man in whom the connection between art and science was most clearly seen: Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo (and Michelangelo) achieved more accurate representations of the human form by considering the underlying structure: they performed and analysed dissections (they did this before physicians copied the idea - a case of art leading science).

In Venice this connection between Renaissance art and science is represented by Galileo's moon (as captured through a refracting telescope) reflecting in the sea as Leonardo's moon (taken from Leonardo's Codex Leicester):

The other great scientific/artistic advance of the Renaissance dealt not with human structure, but with architectural structure. The discovery of perspective resulted from the earlier close observation of human form, and its representation in two dimensions.

The earliest recorded use of perspective was by the brilliant Florentine artist/architect Brunelleschi. Brunelleschi painted the Baptistry in front of the cathedral in Florence (a picture now lost) probably using two-point linear perspective (see right). In linear perspective, lines which were parallel in three-dimensional space converge to a point (the vanishing point) in two-dimensional space.

Brunelleschi arranged a clever experiment in which he positioned his picture in front of a viewer looking at the real Baptistry (the viewer was looking through a peephole). The accuracy of the perspective image proved capable of fooling the eye.

Brunelleschi's perspective image of the Baptistry is referenced in Venice. Consider the overlay image on the right. The red-and-white striped poles are coincident with the vertical elements of the Baptistry, and the chain linking the tops of the poles is coincident with the projected lines to the vanishing points. One of the vanishing points is visible at the end of the chain, whilst the other vanishing point (the other end of the chain) has indeed vanished, being outside the image ("Beyond the visible", as Leonardo was fond of saying).

Note that the Baptistry in this orientation is toppling over the waterfall.

Truth and Beauty

"This may be witnessed in the principles of mathematics, that is to say, number and measure - termed arithmetic and geometry - which deal with discontinuous and continuous quantities with the utmost truth. Here no one hazards guesses as to whether two threes make more or less than six, or whether the angles of a triangle are less than two right angles."
- Leonardo da Vinci on the subject of "truth"

We tend to think of the sciences as being immune to aesthetic considerations of beauty, but this is not the case. Formulae in mathematics (the most formal science) are often praised and judged on aesthetic qualities such as "elegance". Mathematical formulae can also be used to produce great beauty. Perhaps the greatest example of the beauty of mathematics is the Mandelbrot Set (the sky in Venice is part of the Mandelbrot Set - see the section on The Mathematical Universe).

Mathematical truth (including geometry) has a beauty which derives from simplicity, and this was realised by Renaissance artists. Special ratios and proportions were thought of as divine, beauty coming from proportional harmony. Leonardo made the first reference to the sectio aurea - the Golden Section. The simplest of geometrical constructions - the circle and square - were thought to be "perfect" forms. In his famous sketch, Leonardo revealed his belief in the perfection of humanity by depicting a man inscribed in a circle and square.

(Obviously there were no short, fat blokes in Renaissance Italy...)

Order and Chaos

So the Renaissance world was a world of proportion, mathematical harmony, and order - "the ultimate rationality of nature". Every natural phenomena could be analysed and modelled through systematic observation, be it Galileo dropping balls or Leonardo dissecting corpses. However, developments in physics and mathematics in the twentieth century have shaken our complacent, comfortable certainties.

Developments in quantum physics revealed the limitations of the observational process. While in mathematics, Gödel's Theorem stated that in any mathematical system there will always be true propositions which cannot be proved. Suddenly, absolute truth was in doubt.

The world of Galileo and Leonardo was a linear world: straight lines, squares, linear equations, possible to observe and predict. Chaos theory has revealed that we live in a nonlinear world: proportion and linearity are scarce. The behaviour of nonlinear, chaotic systems cannot be predicted. However, the emergence of computers does allow us to reveal the shape of chaos: the Mandelbrot Set again.

if Leonardo was going to draw late-twentieth century man he would have had to inscribe him in a chaotic geometrical construction (see right).

La Tempesta

The Renaissance was a time of rapid scientific advance, and a general fascination with end-of-the-world themes. In this respect, it was a time very much like out own Y2K era (the end of the world tends to happen every 500 years). Leonardo, in particular, was fascinated by great floods and their effect on wiping out traces of past history and civilisations: "The deluge of the waters have destroyed every vestige of the past..." These drawings were prophetic: at this stage, the golden era was almost over.

Are there now other threats to history and civilisation? In Civilisation, Kenneth Clark considers the fragility of great civilisations, and notes that civilisation require confidence: "Confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws". The Renaissance was, of course, a time of tremendous confidence, but are we now starting to see the signs of a lack of confidence in the structure of our own civilisation? A lack of confidence in politics, religion, global economics, marriage, social cohesion? Are we losing sight of the things which used to bind us together?

The one thing which really provides confidence to our current civilisation is the rate of technological advance, growth, and the accompanying consumerism. People are happy to go with the flow as long as their lives keep getting easier, mobile phones keep getting smaller, and towers keep getting taller. In Venice, the World Trade Center towers were drawn to represent a symbol of our current civilisation's confidence in progress. Let's just hope the rate of progress does not begin to stall.

An important innovation in Venetian art during the Renaissance was the poesia. This was painting which was meant to operate in the indirect manner of poetry: visual poetry. Foremost among this painters was Giorgione. As the end of the Renaissance was looming nearer, Giorgione painted his masterpiece.

From Civilisation, page 91: "In history all points of supposed perfection have a hint of menace; and Giorgione himself discovers it in that mysterious picture known as La Tempesta (The Storm) (pictured right). What on earth is going on? What is the meaning of this flash of lightning, this broken column? Nobody knows; nobody has ever known. Whatever it means, it certainly doesn't show any confidence in the light of human reason."

The bridge and the lightning make a reappearance in Venice, but where is the missing top half of Giorgione's stone column? I can tell you it also makes a reappearance, dragging the other wooden poles over the abyss. It would appear Giorgione's broken column is again providing that "hint of menace" to our age of supposed perfection.