Rethinking Leonardo for the Anthropocene

The aesthetic grace of Leonardo da Vinci’s depictions of nature—the backgrounds of his master paintings and the meticulous drawings in the preserved codices—has a significance that goes beyond mere visual pleasure. The Renaissance’s naturalism was enormously important for the development of a practice-oriented scientific culture rooted in empirical observation. A broad range of research on the practical foundations of science has highlighted this insight, research that spans from Marxist sociology to newer scholarship on practical knowledge in the history of art and science. This essay discusses Leonardo from the perspective of the current debate on the Anthropocene.