My most esteemed and illustrious Lord,
May this missive find Your Excellency in great health and illuminated by the High Graces. This note is to advise you that the project has been completed as per my Lord’s exacting specifications. In addition to the illustration, supporting documentation with itemized deliverables and additional notes on the production of the diagram are further provided.
In regards to the matter concerning the young workshop assistant, it has been impressed upon him that he is to speak to no soul on the work he has carried out. I assure Your Grace that the boy is as discrete as he is talented, and I can vouch for his character. He’s also smart enough to realize the consequences of a tactless tongue and appreciate the importance of this work for the betterment of Man.
One last matter shall conclude the object of my letter, and it is in regards to an unfamiliar lady who showed up at my shop with images similar to the ones used in this project. Dressed in leather and blue silk, she was interested in assessing the accuracy of her diagrams, as well as their possible provenance. We gave no counsel whatsoever to her in these matters. I am but a simple engraver and not a formulaic man, but in my estimation, this young lady seems to have intimate knowledge of the illustrated subjects. Where she may have come by such knowledge and materials, I know not. My astute assistant penned her likeness, as can be seen in the accompanying folio. I bring special attention to the graphical design of the ring on her left hand, which appears to be from a Guild unfamiliar to our city.
I hope this information is useful, and I am at your disposal should more be required of my services.
May the light of Providence continue shining on Your Lordship.
I am as ever
Your Humble Servant
Hippolytus of Westdale Hills
The earliest known date that Leonardo Da Vinci may have become a heretic was 1507-08. At this time, the Church had much more power than it does now. If they didn’t like what you were up to, then you could get in trouble with the inquisition. It was at this point when Leonardo embarked in one of the most astonishing projects of his life that consisted of going into morgues to dissect and sketch human bodies. He painstakingly, and with scalpel in hand, used his skills to draw diagrams of human bodies that are some of the most incredible images when one considers the context in which they were produced.
Leonardo approached the gruesome task not as a medieval physician speaking of humours, vital forces, and other metaphysical terms but used plain language borne of his engineering and artistic endeavors. His findings were amazing. He compared the bodies of a diseased old man and a boy at a hospital to record the differences. He delved into the vascular system finding that ‘weakness caused by a lack of blood’ made the arteries ‘very dry, thin, and withered… in addition to the thickening of the walls, these vessels grow in length.’ (Nicholls, 2004). He studied the heart and corroborated the Aristotelian view that the heart is where ‘the tree of the vessels grow.’ Hounded and ‘hindered’ by the Church for his rather grim research, Da Vinci’s observations and more importantly, his anatomical illustrations were kept hidden for centuries and did not influence anyone, as far as we know.
Like the existence of the Antikythera mechanism, these historical tidbits keep me up at night. It makes me wonder how much more different our history would have been if we had just been more open to the reception of scientific novelty.
I was recently testing AI’s ability to create accurate scientific illustrations and generated an illustration of the ossicles (malleus, incus, and stapes), which are the smallest bones in our bodies and help us process sound. To my astonishment, the software created an accurate representation of these bones. It also generated Latin text to fill up the white space in the illustration. This floored me. I am no language expert or metaphysician, but the text appears to accurately describe the nature of the ossicles in Latin. 😮
The illustration reminded me of Da Vinci’s anatomical drawings, and this took my fiction writing brain back to the end of the middle ages when Da Vinci was alive and ushering the Renaissance in secret labs.
After writing the fictional letter, I found out that the ossicles themselves were discovered in 1521 by Alessandro Achillini and Jacopo Berengario da Carpi. I did not know this, so I guess I was not too far off the mark with my post-Medieval narrative experiment.
In the letter, I imagined a paranoid world where scientific and technical knowledge that we now take for granted could be received with rumours and superstition. If you're an alchemist or an eager researcher like Leonardo, then next thing you know, when you least expect it, the Inquisition is at your door. As it seems to have happened to anatomists of the time.
I added a plot twist at the end. A mysterious young lady looking for more information on the diagrams. It's a good thing that the assistant had the presence of mind to draw a picture of the enigmatic lady dressed in leather and blue silk.
Thank you for reading.
Resources
Charles Nicholl. 2004. Leonardo Da Vinci, Flights of the Mind- A Biography.
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