An arc of twenty generations

By David Whitman

With a major exhibition in San José, California through January 4, The Tech Museum of Innovation is making the case that the spirit of Leonardo da Vinci and other artist-engineers of the Renaissance can be found today -- twenty generations later -- in the high-tech innovators of the Bay Area.

“Leonardo: 500 Years into the Future” opened at The Tech in late September. The museum’s president, Peter Friess -- a European-born art scholar and one of the world’s leading authorities on clocks -- forged a creative, trans-Atlantic partnership with the Museum of the History of Science in Florence, whose director, Paolo Galluzzi, curated “Leonardo.” Nearly 60,000 tickets were sold during the exhibition’s first five weeks, demonstrating the appeal of “Leonardo” even in the midst of a global economic recession.

Under the direction of the science museum, the renowned Italian firm Opera Laboratori Fiorentini created more than 200 exhibits, including most of the exquisite working models. Although the models were constructed using Mediterranean oak and other materials common in fifteenth-century Italy, Renaissance tools were not used, “otherwise we’d still be working on these models,” explained Massimiliano Di Cocco, revving his high-speed drill to assemble an imposing trebuchet designed to hurl rocks over towering fortress walls.

Last August, Opera dispatched a team of 20 from Florence to San José to mount the exhibition. Working day and night for nearly a month, they transformed the 30,000-square-foot auditorium, site of The Tech’s blockbuster show “Body Worlds” last year, into a sophisticated exhibition space. During the installation, many observers remarked that it seemed like a buzzing beehive of gargantuan proportions. If so, the queen bee was Donata Vitali -- a commanding, brilliant and energetic young architect with flashing, dark eyes and a playful sense of humor. Equipped with floor plans, miniature bound notebooks, a cell phone and Mac powerbook, Vitali was always at the center of her loyal, exuberant and very busy team. Her conversations continually shifted from Italian to English to Portuguese (the default language she spoke most often with her American counterpart at The Tech because both had lived in Brazil).

To their delight, journalists and other visitors taking behind-the-scenes tours during the installation often heard songs from the Tuscan workers floating above the hum of their power tools, along with friendly shouts back and forth across the huge hall, interspersed at times with colorful words not found in most Italian-English dictionaries. The work halted only for lively, mid-morning espresso breaks and a civilized midday meal. (The Italians were alarmed to observe Americans scheduling work meetings for the noon hour, rushing their lunch breaks, consuming fast food at a fast pace and -- most perplexing of all -- sometimes even eating at their computers.)

Late one Sunday afternoon, after several weeks of strenuous installation work, Vitali announced to the exhausted team that they could take the rest of the day off. The Tech had given them passes to a local amusement park, and several of them, including Vitali, immediately set off to ride roller coasters. They were most impressed by the lone wooden roller coaster ignored by most of the park’s other visitors. Before riding it, they stood almost reverently before it, admiring its beauty and old-world charm.

After several whiplash-inducing rides in the park, Vitali alone decided to attempt bungee jumping. With cameras trained on her as she disappeared high into the setting sun, everyone smiled as she soared across the cerulean sky, deliriously joyful -- a sight Leonardo himself no doubt would have found inspiring.

The exhibition’s impressive models are not only representations of machines invented centuries ago, they are also beautiful objects of art in their own right. From the majestic model of Brunelleschi’s dome of the Florence cathedral to Leonardo’s stunning flying machine with its bat wings spanning forty feet, they comprise the first section of the exhibition, called “The Renaissance Engineers.” As a separate exhibition it appeared in Paris, Beijing, Toronto and New York City. At the midway point, the show transitions to a multimedia section called “The Mind of Leonardo.” That section of the exhibition alone attracted millions of visitors in Florence, Tokyo and Debrecen, Hungary in 2006 and 2007.

Bringing these two popular exhibitions together for the first -- and perhaps only -- time was an ambitious undertaking for The Tech and its European partners. And making the unique exhibition all the more remarkable are two original paintings from the early sixteenth century, treasures of Renaissance art on loan from the legendary Uffizi Gallery in Florence: “Leda and the Swan” and “The Virgin and Child with St. Anne.” They were painted by two of Leonardo’s most cherished students and are based on the master’s paintings -- one housed in the Louvre but the other, “Leda,” lost.

And outside The Tech, across from César Chávez Plaza, looking “windswept and alive” and bathed after dark in blue spotlights, is a modern replica of Leonardo’s glorious Sforza monument, a muscular stallion two stories high. At the close of the fifteenth century, after seventeen years in Milan, Leonardo came close to casting the horse when France invaded northern Italy and the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, diverted the 70 tons of bronze intended for the monument to make weapons instead. To add to Leonardo’s profound disappointment, his clay model was destroyed when the invading crossbow army used it for target practice. Leonardo left Milan, devastated.

Five hundred years later, using Leonardo’s notebooks to guide them, the Museum of the History of Science and Opera Laboratori Fiorentini have created, in steel and fiberglass, a magnificent replica of the Sforza monument that is considered to be the most authentic version of Leonardo’s horse. A different artistic interpretation of the Sforza horse, cast a decade ago, can be seen in Milan and at the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Four years in the making, the horse on view at The Tech was first shown last year in Hungary, then shipped to California last summer in two freight containers, one topless with the horse’s head peeking over the edge as it sailed from Italy through the Mediterranean, Strait of Gibraltar, Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, Panama Canal, and finally up the Pacific Coast to the Port of Oakland, where the huge Renaissance pony had to clear U.S. Customs and Homeland Security before finding its way to San José.

During the outdoor installation of the colossal horse -- a week-long, unexpected attraction for tourists and passersby alike -- children would often stop to ask its name. The exhibition’s organizers decided to hold a competition for school children to suggest a name for the horse during its California stay. Representatives from both museums, most notably Leonardo scholars Andrea Bernardoni and Laura Manetti, reviewed the names and selected the one submitted by fifth graders from the Mulberry School in Los Gatos: “Ambrogio,” a male name common in northern Italy, meaning “eternal.” Next month that class will take a special field trip to the exhibition, where they will be greeted in front of their Ambrogio outside The Tech Museum by television cameras, the director of the museum and -- perhaps most thrilling of all -- the San José mounted police unit.

“Leonardo: 500 Years into the Future” continues through January 4 at The Tech Museum of Innovation in downtown San José, California. For information and tickets, visit http://www.thetech.org/leonardo/

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