2019 was the year that marked Leonardo Da Vinci’s death anniversary. The Renaissance genius in fact passed away on May 2nd of 1519. This anniversary was so important worldwide that Kooness couldn’t close its magazine year without writing something about it.
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Painting, sculpture, drawing, literature, engineering, ballistics, science, physics, landscape studies, geography, anatomy, medicine, urban planning … these are just some of the topics that Leonardo da Vinci treated during his life. Since he was a boy, Leonardo had a tormented connection to the world. In one of his copious notes, he wrote that his dialogue towards the world was “long and anguished”, and that he has always been a curious boy. Leonardo was in fact an attentive observer of everything was around him. But, for Leonardo, to be an observer wasn’t enough. He needed to have an active role in culture and society.
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Leonardo was born near Florence in 1452. The city was culturally the most vivid and active of all Europe: Florence as the “cradle of Renaissance”, as many as said and wrote. This young, inquiring boy had training at Verrocchio’s atelier where he learned artistic techniques and good use of plastic materials. Since the beginning, Leonardo focused himself on the use of his hands and brain: those elements – “the head, the hand” – that we could see inside his Code together with beautiful drawings. Leonardo’s Codes are those rare, precious and meticulous notes and sketches that the artist used to do, always.

