经济学人科技||天哪，达·芬奇竟然和我们有这种联系
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导读
感谢思维导图作者
Summer（琚儿），女，QE在职，梦想能仗翻译/音乐 /健康走天涯
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听力|精读|翻译|词组
Leonardo and us
达·芬奇和我们
英文部分选自经济学人Books and arts版块
Art history
艺术史
Leonardo and us
达·芬奇和我们
Contemporary reverence for da Vinci is more about our age than his oeuvre
当代人对达·芬奇的崇敬大多源于时代背景，而非其作品。
In the northern Italian city of Treviso, a Polish pianist, Slawomir Zubrzycki, sits down at an instrument that resembles a harpsichord and starts pumping a pedal with his right foot. As his hands float over the keyboard, the sound reaching his audience is as singular as it is beautiful: simultaneously reminiscent of the harpsichord, organ and a string quartet. The instrument is based on sketches Leonardo da Vinci made in his notebooks of a “viola organista” with the dream of simulating a viola ensemble that could be played from a keyboard. Hitting one or more keys brings the same number of strings inside the casing into contact with one of four bow-wheels spun by the pedal.
在意大利北部城市特雷维索，一位波兰钢琴家斯瓦沃米尔·祖布日茨基（Slawomir Zubrzycki）坐在一个类似于羽管键琴的乐器旁，开始用右脚踩踏踏板。随着他的手指在琴键上上下起伏，倾泻而出的音乐带给听众们的感受即独特又美妙：宛如羽管键琴、管风琴和弦乐四重奏交相鸣响。该乐器的原型是达·芬奇在笔记中遗留的一副草图“中提琴式风琴（viola organista）”，他梦想用琴键模拟出中提琴合奏的声音。击打一个或多个琴键，会带动琴箱里同样数目的琴弦与踏板驱动的四个滚轮中的一个相接触。
注：
The viola organista was an experimental musical instrument invented by Leonardo da Vinci. It was the first bowed keyboard instrument (of which any record has survived) ever to be devised.
Mr Zubrzycki’s concert, sponsored by the Benetton Foundation, was among the more unusual commemorations of the 500th anniversary of da Vinci’s death, which falls on May 2nd. It was also a reminder that, even in an age of polymaths, the breadth of the Tuscan master’s interests was exceptional. It encompassed not only painting, architecture, mathematics, engineering and numerous branches of science, but music too. “How many specialists would we need today to attempt Leonardo’s researches?” asks Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of the history of art at Oxford University. “At least 13. Maybe more.”
In the Antico Setificio Fiorentino, Italy’s oldest working silk mill, Beatrice Fazzini turns by hand a vertical warper: a cylindrical machine that prepares yarn for weaving. It was constructed in 1786 and is based on a design by da Vinci that Stefano Ricci, the fashion house which owns the mill, says has been used in Florence since da Vinci was alive. If that is indeed so, it was one of his very few inventions that had a practical application.
Like many an autodidact, da Vinci was long on inquisitiveness but short on intellectual self-discipline. He had astonishing powers of observation, an extraordinary talent for making connections between different areas of knowledge, a readiness to challenge contemporary beliefs and an uncanny ability to anticipate future discoveries. But his life yielded an endless succession of untested contraptions, unpublished studies and unfinished artworks.
Anniversaries are normally opportunities for reappraising the legacy of the great man or woman concerned. Da Vinci’s highlights the fact that, outside the field of painting, his legacy—as distinct from his genius—was modest. He had brilliant intuitions in fields as diverse as anatomy and hydraulics, but because he failed to publish his theories and findings, hundreds of years were to pass before they were discovered by someone else.
Even his artistic oeuvre, though sublime, is minute. Fewer than 20 finished works are generally attributed to da Vinci. He failed to complete some of his most important commissions such as the “Adoration of the Magi”. His ill-fated experimentation with materials ruined others, including “The Last Supper”. Hence the paucity of exhibitions devoted to his art in what should be his year of years. Florence is commemorating him with a show devoted to his master, Verrocchio.
即便是他的艺术作品，出神入化之余，也同样屈指可数。存世之作中，公认为达·芬奇真迹的完成品还不到20件。他没能完成其最为重要的一些委托作品，比如《三博士朝圣》。他走了霉运的绘画材料实验，则损坏了其他一些作品，比如《最后的晚餐》。因此，在这个500年一遇的达·芬奇周年纪念中，却没有几个关于达·芬奇本人画作的展览活动。佛罗伦萨为纪念达·芬奇举办的画展只能聚焦于达芬奇的老师委罗基奥（Verrocchio）的画作。
注：达·芬奇的最后的晚餐里用了一种他自己发明的颜料，该颜料不稳定，而且极其容易受潮。
Born out of wedlock in 1452, the son of a notary and a peasant woman, da Vinci had a lonely childhood and—probably lefthanded and almost certainly gay—grew up something of a misfit. He spent much of his life outside his native Tuscany in Milan, Rome and finally France as the guest of King Francis I. He died at Amboise in 1519.
Such is the status he has acquired as the definitive, universal genius that the few questions raised in his quincentenary year are being put almost surreptitiously, as in a show at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome that largely comprises models based on da Vinci’s designs. It opens with a display of treatises and often exquisite drawings by other Tuscan artist-engineers, including Francesco di Giorgio Martini, that show da Vinci was far from unique in combining technology with painting—and that some of his peers managed to get a lot more built or printed than he did.
Paradoxically, the most direct applications of da Vinci’s researches outside art are to be found within his art. His understanding of physics, botany and geology vastly enhanced his painting. His study of light enabled him to develop sfumato, the technique that gives the outlines of his subjects their naturally undefined quality. “And if he hadn’t studied anatomy, he wouldn’t have been able to paint the most enigmatic smile in the history of painting,” says Fiorenzo Galli, the director-general of the Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci in Milan.
The “Mona Lisa” has become the world’s best-known painting. Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” is the world’s best-known drawing. Does that make him the greatest artist in the Western tradition? Even Professor Kemp, who has spent a lifetime studying da Vinci’s achievements, hesitates to go that far, stressing instead the Tuscan master’s huge influence on other painters. “
If you were looking for someone who did as much to divert the stream of art, then you would have to keep searching until you came to Picasso,” he says. Da Vinci revolutionised Madonna and Child compositions, and altered the portrayal of narrative subjects and the way portraits were composed. Jonathan Nelson, who teaches art history at Syracuse University in Florence, notes that he was also the first artist to give women realistic bodies “with anatomically identifiable musculatures, but looking soft and feminine”.
The notion that da Vinci stands alongside Michelangelo and Raphael at the very pinnacle of artistic achievement is nonetheless relatively modern. Until well into the 19th century, he was seen as a genius, but on a level below the others. As Donald Sassoon, a British historian, has recounted in his book, “Becoming Mona Lisa”, published in 2001, it was anti-clerical French historians who initiated the “cult of Leonardo”, seeing in him an ally in the fight against religious obscurantism: “He was not afraid to dissect corpses; he did not paint halos on his religious figures…Unlike Raphael and Michelangelo, he was never the servant of popes. He put Man at the centre of creation.”
Those and other factors have endeared him to a wider, contemporary public. Da Vinci abhorred the slaughter of animals and was probably a vegetarian. He satisfies the modern requirement for artists to be outsiders with an eccentric streak. And his creative record chimes perfectly with the spirit of an age that tolerates, even venerates, unfinished work—all the more so if it is cryptic. Surveying the events this year to celebrate da Vinci’s genius, Professor Nelson says “I think these shows tell us more about us than about him.”
翻译组：
Helga，女，笔译民工，经济学人爱好者
Zoey，女，材料专业在读博士生，英语语言爱好者Xingyi，爱喝汤，爱钢琴，碰床秒睡的大能猫，NUS食品系
Helen，女，坐标武汉，职业翻译，翻硕已毕业英语二笔二口，爱好陶笛洞箫古诗词
校核组：
Max，Catti2口，会弹吉他的冰上尤里
Alex,男，工科研究生，文学与科学爱好者，经济学人忠实读者
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观点|评论|思考
本次观点由Vincent独立完成
Vincent，男，狱警，电子与法学双硕，诗歌哲学爱好者
达·芬奇也许是有史以来最富才华的艺术大师。他精力充沛、智力超群，不仅为人类留下了《最后的晚餐》、《梦娜丽莎》等艺术的顶峰之作，而且在机械工程、地质学、植物学、地理学、光学、力学、天文学、土木工程、兵器学等诸多领域，也令人难以置信地取得了卓越的成就。
天才究竟因何而生？据传达·芬奇从师学艺时异常刻苦，腰带上总是系着一个笔记本，本子上画满了人的面孔、躯干、动植物的速写，写满了寓言、格言以及哲学、科学和文学札记。虽然他师从佛罗伦萨著名的画家、雕刻家安德烈·委罗基奥，但实际上委氏的绘画生涯却早早因他绽放的光芒而终结。一部《基督洗礼》由当时的师徒二人合作完成，达·芬奇负责画其中一个天使并因此初露锋芒。他笔下的天使形态自然，表情活泼，栩栩如生，一扫中世纪以来宗教画作人物形象刻板、表情定式之阴霾。委氏对这个年轻学生惊人的技艺赞叹不已，深觉后生可畏，自此不碰画笔，专事雕刻。
天才往往是不世出的精品，唯有上帝才知道精神与意境这类东西是如何跨越时空在陌生人之间流转的。想象一下当青年达·芬奇驻足于卡兰奇卡小教堂壁画前，那个透视画法、衣纹下准确表现人体结构、广泛应用明暗技巧之第一人，像流星一样存在于绘画史的天才马萨乔是不是正应了上帝之意旨将自己未竟的天赋在这一刻一并让渡于他。完美的人物造型、空间的表现、画面的构图以及生动的写实主义气息，成为后世达·芬奇的绘画风格。
1481年，达·芬奇为圣多那托修道院制作了祭坛画《博士来拜》，这是他早期在佛罗伦萨创作的最成功的作品。该画取材于《新约》，说的是东方三圣贤看到一颗奇特的星星，他们从中得知救世主降生了，于是便前来礼拜刚刚出世的圣婴。这类题材在其时颇为流行，但画家往往不能摆脱宗教绘画图解故事之陋习（这是始自公元六世纪或者更早，基督教文化传播过程中的集体无意识），而达·芬奇的作品在这方面却有突破。他着力描绘人们对救世主降临所表现出来的惊喜激动情绪，而这种情绪与画中端庄、安逸、文静的圣母的神情形成对比，互相衬托。画中三位圣贤构成一个较为稳定的三角构图，从而使画中的众多人物得到了完美的统一。
由于佛罗伦萨美第奇家族的式微，达·芬奇创作生涯主要在米兰。这期间的《岩间圣母》充分体现了他富有个性的风格。一改传统宗教画作之风格，画中的玛利亚被描绘成人间一位幸福的母亲，基督则是一个充满生命活力的孩子，天使是一位美丽多姿的少女。人物表情温和自然，整幅作品饱含温情，极具人文主义倾向。他将人物安排在幽静、雄奇的重叠山岩之间，通过三角形构图，同时借助于巧妙的明暗处理，使整个画面完整和谐。米兰岁月最出名的作品当然是《最后的晚餐》，当时各个修道院餐厅的壁面上都有描绘《最后的晚餐》的风俗，达·芬奇的作品画于克拉基阿修道院。据传此作前后用了两年的时光，工期一拖再拖，焦急的修道院院长为此大发雷霆并与达·芬奇发生争执。一直琢磨犹大造型的达·芬奇最后以固执可恶的院长为模特描绘了犹大，总算一扫心中不满。此画巧妙于人物的安排。基督作为整个画面的中心，头稍稍向左偏，右手垂着，左边是善良的约翰，犹大好像被恐惧感觉笼罩着，他左手在桌上胆怯地张开，右手紧紧地抓住钱袋。犹大的邪恶的黑脸和约翰的白脸形成鲜明对照。十二个门徒，三人一组，分成四组；每一个部分又具有波浪式的关联和起伏。画中的背景使中心人物基督产生了浮雕般的效果。基督身后衬着窗子的外光，使所有人物的形体都产生一种立体效果。背景中透视远近法技巧的运用，更加强了这种效果。至于另一幅名画《蒙娜丽莎》则是他回到故乡佛罗伦萨之后的创作了，画家的作品不仅是一种卓越的模仿，更是一种卓越的创造。在佛罗伦萨，晚年的达·芬奇与米开朗基罗有过一次巨人间的对话，米开朗基罗画了一幅《卡希那之战》，另一边则是达·芬奇的《安加利之战》。达·芬奇选取战斗最紧张的瞬间，描绘争夺战旗的战斗，高举的战刀，因愤怒扭曲的脸，嘶鸣的战马，极尽渲染战场上复仇的兽性和粗野的热情。米开朗基罗的画作则表现了一群正在河边洗澡的士兵，在闻知敌军来袭时匆忙应战的场面。古板的佛罗伦萨市政府官员无法适应达·芬奇画作中展现出的高度激昂的情绪，将竞赛胜利者的荣誉授予年轻的米开朗基罗。
本质上，人类的智性与共情力进化自“更为轻易”的判断与分别心，那是人类本性里的鄙陋，是能够通过对艺术的理解获得开启的“狭隘”。艺术凭何吸引我们？就像所有的颜色都拥有自己的频率和节奏，传达独一无二的能量与气息。你所选择的色彩，它们其实以自己的方式在你身上营造出一种“磁场”，固有频率一定会于周遭所在的其他振幅交互发生反应，这是你在高中物理里已经学过的道理。除了艺术之外，给予后世滋养与启发的那个时代又凭何打动我们？即便我们未必有机会在那些作品前驻足，是否因为它们触及到我们个体中原已拥有的某种质地。看似不相关的细节，仔细想想往往是相连的，缺席的、未表达的、不在场的，是“田野中隐藏的景”。思考不在场为何不在场的故事，会对整个叙事有更重要的启发。这也是某段艺术史能给我们的极大的助益。
“我们像穿越雷区的孩子一样单纯而危险。在艺术与梦里，你应该狂放不羁地前行，在生命里，你应该公正而不为人知地活着。”往往唯有天才，才了解天才的愿景。