Geocentro Magazine - numero 6 - novembre/dicembre 2009

). Il passaggio dal rilievo alla carta avviene poi attraverso una
sintesi individuale di elementi percettivi, metrici ed ordinali,
che propongono sempre una visione diagrammatica dello
spazio, percepito e delineato nella sua unitarietà.
Il suo più alto contributo alla rappresentazione del territorio
riguarda specialmente la componente verticale dei monti e
dei laghi. Il metodo che Leonardo impiega nella restituzione
grafica delle masse orografiche si basa sul tentativo di
delineazione delle forme di monti e colline nel rispetto dei
loro mutui rapporti di proporzionalità e nell’introduzione
della sua teoria delle ombre, che conferisce alle carte una
forza comunicativa senza precedenti e conferma l’importanza
cartographical science.
Talking about the representation, during the Renaissance
new surveyors, painters and miniaturists went further into
the creation of maps with greater power of description and
expression.
After more or less fi fty years since the publishing of Alberti’s
essays, another genius in both Art and Science, Leonardo da
Vinci (1452-1519), gave a unique, original contribution
to this discipline, thanks to the methods proposed by Leon
Battista Alberti and to the Ptolemaic Geographia, both in
the drawing techniques from the reality (through perspective
instruments such as the “Velo”, conceived by Alberti in order
to establish a geometrical correspondence with a perspective
view) and in the methods of surveying and sketching maps.
Leonardo’s maps stand out a mile from the naïve and childish
sketches realised by the surveyors and the experts of the time,
even if his interest for the cartographical representation doesn’t
have a professional purpose.
Leonardo isn’t a cartographer, but he deals with this science
for scientifi c and analytic purposes: landscape planning and
war strategies.
In order to understand his cartographical work, we need to
take a step behind, shifting our focus from the maps to the
representations more in general; that’s to say to the language of
the drawings and of the paintings. For Leonardo, this latter
wasn’t a mere visual repetition of what was already known;
instead, it was “the key to open the world of phenomena” (as
Giulio Carlo Argan said).
Th e innovative basis of his cartographical production, therefore,
can be found in the rules enunciated in the Libro di pittura.
Th e way Leonardo chooses to survey and graphically represent
a piece of land is summarised in the rule given in his own note
in the Manuscript L, France Institute (f. 21 r): “On the top
of the hills and on theirs sides, look at the shapes of the land
portions, at their division, and at all the things in front of
you, and draw them in their own shape”. Th e transformation
from the sketch to the map is done through a personal synthesis
of perceptive elements, metric and ordinal, always giving a
diagrammatical view of the land (conceived and represented
as a whole).
Leonardo’s contribution to an accurate landscape representation
is particularly relevant for what concerns the vertical component
of mountains and hydrography. In the graphical reproduction
of mountainous blocks, he tries to sketch the shapes of every
massif and hill following their mutual proportions. Moreover,
his “theory of the shadows” gives to the maps a communicative
power never achieved before, a proof of the importance of a
careful study on them. “… shades in painting need much more
investigation and speculation than their outline; and evidence
of this precept is that the outline can be made to shine using
veils transparency, or fl at glass placed between the eye and the
thing to be drawn; but this rule does not apply to shades, due
to the lack of sensitivity of their shape, for, more often than
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