The Renaissance Man Comes

Talking about his bestselling book,Math and the Mona Lisa,which has appeared in a dozen languages and his new book,Leonardo’s Universe: The Renaissance World of Leonardo da Vinci,(National Geographic Books),co-authored with Keith Wamsley,Atalay admits that the process of writing about and knowing da Vinci was edifying. “There’s so much mystery surrounding him,as if he’s saying to us,I’ve spoken to you yet there’s more to me,” Atalay says. Much of da Vinci’s genius is in his notes. “He wrote about 20,000 pages,we have only about 5,000. We can only wonder as to the content of these missing notes,” he says,drawing attention to da Vinci’s paintings,sketches,models of scientific inventions,letters for job applications and coupling them with absorbing anecdotes. Atalay is already working on a new book — Patterns in Creativity of Beethoven,Newton and da Vinci.

Atalay,a scientist and artist himself,is uniquely qualified to offer a comprehensive overview of Leonardo’s art and science. “It was so compelling to study Leonardo the scientist doing art and once I began,I just couldn’t stop. He was a man who used nature for all his inspiration: artist,scientific and mathematical,” says Atalay. With da Vinci’s’s model providing the unifying thread,Atalay makes it possible,first,to glimpse Leonardo’s restless intellect,extraordinary psyche; the ideas for his works of art and to appreciate his art at a different level. “I think his greatest work is The Last Supper. As for Mona Lisa,the enigma of the face,the symmetry,smile never seems to fade,” he points out. “We must achieve a synthesis of art and science,developing it by using both sides of the brain,like da Vinci. This model can assist in bridging the cultural divide prevailing in our age of specialisation and it can help make us all more creative. Earlier,there were two intellectual cultures,art and science and they didn’t meet. Now we have the third,information age,and art and science need to be merged,” Atalay signs off.