'Leonardo Comes To Town' by Frederico Bertelli

From June 13^th to august 12^th The Chester Beatty Library will display the Codex Leicester an autograph manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) containing his observations on the nature and properties of water as well as other aspects of science and technology. Of particular interests is the correlation between science and painting that spreads from these pages. In particular, if we look at the Leonardo’s “treaty about painting” this idea emerges with particular strength:

Scienza è detto quel discorso mentale il quale ha origine da' suoi ultimi principî, de' quali in natura null'altra cosa si può trovare che sia parte di essa scienza, come nella quantità continua, cioè la scienza di geometria, la quale, cominciando dalla superficie de' corpi, si trova avere origine nella linea, termine di essa superficie; ed in questo non restiamo satisfatti, perché noi conosciamo la linea aver termine nel punto, ed il punto esser quello del quale null'altra cosa può esser minore. Adunque il punto è il primo principio della geometria; e niuna altra cosa può essere né in natura, né in mente umana, che possa dare principio al punto

Treaty about painting – Volume 1

In brief the meaning of this passage is: science is a mental discourse that starts from geometry, which is about the study of volumes, areas and lines, and in final instance, of points. So are the points the starting point of geometry because nothing can be found either in nature or in the human mind as more axiomatic. But this straightforward idea can be also found if we look at the painting of Markey Robinson. Some critics sees him just as a good primitive, but this would just be reductive. It is true that the term primitive is often used in relation to Markey’s work, but primitive is also an elusive term. If we think at primitive as the works of untutored artists, yes, aspects of Markey’s work are naïve, but however, Markey’s mature work was too knowing to be just classified naïve: his works became more and more absorbed in exploring and communicating the essence of form and the mood and emotion beneath the surface of the paintings through strong volumes, structural control and sense of pattern. In particular Markey was interested in the shell of an old form not out of nostalgia for a lost Celtic Eden or because of romantic yearnings but because of the artistic potential for line, structure, color and mood. One of his favorite subject were cottages, because of their versatility. In particular cottages created great possibilities for line, because of their versatility. Cottages could be positioned together in informal groupings or they might visually echo the shapes of hills or mountains. They could be used in order to give a decorative “modern” flatness or to produce spatial relationships with other figure. With the cottage, Markey abstracted conventional imagery. He reinterpreted the landscape, creating new shapes, allowing him also to test the agility of his line. And in same way this is close to the Leonardian idea of geometry applied to painting.