ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

The construction of an icon: Roberto Marcolongo’s contribution on Leonardo da Vinci

• In Event: Shifting Perspectives in Historiography of Science under the Fascist Rule 2

English Abstract

Roberto Marcolongo (1862 –1943), mathematician, physicist and historian of science, joined the Reale Commissione Vinciana (Royal Vinciana Commission), chaired by Giovani Gentile (1875-1944) and composed of eminent figures of Italian culture and university, and collaborated in the organization of the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci e delle invenzioni italiane (Milano, 9 May – 1st Oct. 1939).
This initiative aimed to identify the ‘Italic’ contribution to the mathematical sciences, exalting Leonardo as the ideal of an Italian genius, able to dominate and intervene in every field of knowledge. On this occasion, Marcolongo published the monograph Leonardo da Vinci artist-scientist, a volume explicitly devoted to celebrate Leonardo da Vinci, a multifaceted artist and scientist, historically placed in the “turbulent period of the Italian Renaissance”. The book was the result of serious historic studies but, according to a emerging and rapidly prevailing historic vision, Marcolongo constructed the myth of a superman, overshadowing Leonardo the scholar, a man of his time who knew the sources, analyzed them, elaborated them, and used them to implement and experiment. The proper portrait of Leonardo would be restored only at a later stage.
In this talk we will propose a comprehensive overview on Marcolongo’s historic writings devoted to Leonardo da Vinci, underlying their objective merits, but also their criticalities, and in particular the weakness of some points of his historic reconstruction, due to his political and ideological convictions.
The talk is in collaboration with Giuseppina Ferriello and Maria Talamo.

Author

• nicla palladino, Università del Molise