On May 19, 2013, at 8:00 PM, Karen Reeds <karenmre...@gmail.com> wrote:
> As a historian of science, I've spent a lot of time looking at > facsimiles of Leonardo's notebooks. I wouldn't put anything ingenious > past Leonardo, > but I haven't yet seen anything I'd call origami. > > Letterfolds could be an exception. I haven't seen any Leonardo letters > close-up, but just today I saw 2 examples of letterfolds in an > Renaissance italian oil painting ca 1579, i.e. 70 years after > Leonardo: > "Domenico Giuliani and his Servant." Circle of Bartolomeo Passarotti, > 1579. Manchester City Galleries, Manchester. > http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/domenico-giuliani-and-his-servant-205778 > Currently on display at the Princeton University Art Museum. > >> From the shading on the open letter, I think that the lefthand > margin was first valley-folded to mark the left side of the space for > the letter and then the top was valley- folded to demarcate a space > for the salutation. The partially folded letter next to it seems to > be folded in thirds and then thirds again--very typical for > Renaissance letters. The servant holds a letter that has been > completely folded (and further wrapped?) and, I think, tied with a > thin thread. > > Wishing David could weigh in on this! This is enormously interesting Karen. That the painter is showing a sheet in three states suggests that he was charmed by the ingenuity of the fold, and chose to display it. Almost a diagram! I have a slightly different fold sequence interpretation than yours, here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16726942/DomenicoGiuliani-Reconstruction.jpg What's different in my reconstruction is that it involves an insertion and a sort of lock. If so the "thin thread" you see in the painting (but which I can't make out, alas, in the on-line image) might instead be the shade of a flat flap on what has become a closed 'envelope'. Another difference is that while the sheet is indeed divided into 3, both left-right and top-bottom, these are not evenly spaced: one of the three lines is the margin (left and top, respectively), and these are used to lock together the shape. The other fold serves to hide away the written side. In the painting, the sheet being written on corresponds to step (2); the view of the folded letter to step (7), pre-insertion; and the final flat version that the servant holds in his hand to step (8). Make it and see! Jose Tomas Buitrago mentions a 1526 engraving by Durer, where the 2 folded letters on Erasmus' desk appear to be of the same construction as in your painting--that is, divided into three parts but not equally. (Presumably this information originates from Joan Sallas who visited Cali, Colombia a few years ago.) JTB also mentions a so-called Leonardo painting at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (which I saw in person in Milan last year); but in the opinion of many--and me too--it is too stiff & lifeless to have actually been done by Leonardo. Nor is it obvious that the bands on the 'letter" are folds: the shading is peculiar. So the jury is still out on Leonardo & letterfolds. Curiously, in 2008 right here on the o-list Joan Sallas pointed out a painting by Agnelo Bronzino--the Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi--painted about 1540 in Florence, and currently I believe at the Uffizi. It contains some patterned folding in the collar. I went to the trouble of reconstructing the fold and identified it as what today we would call a "Miura", in two alternating scales. See: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16726942/LucreziaFull.jpg There's some real ingenuity here since the 2 scales prevents the pattern from being completely collapsible (look at the crease pattern to see why) as indeed one would want for a cloth collar. That sort of thinking--not just about collapse, but *controlled* collapse--is an extremely modern notion; engineers working on deployable design in folding are only just starting to consider it. So clearly there is some real folding innovation taking place in 16th century Europe, and painters are getting excited enough about it to want to represent it accurately in their art. Even if David Lister's skeptical verdict re Leonardo and origami still, unfortunately, seems to hold--- Saadya ------------- Saadya Sternberg, PhD Origami Artist & Curator e: saa...@saadya.net w: origami-aesthetics.blogspot.com -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
