Giuseppe Pagano, Bruno Ravasi, Anatomy Hall, Exhibition on Leonardo Da Vinci, Palazzo dell’Arte, Milano, Italy, 1939

Leonardo da Vinci has been variously called the father of palaeontology, ichnology, and architecture, and is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time. He epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal and is widely considered one of the most diversely talented individuals ever to have lived.

The installation is part of a larger exhibition, which dealt with the discoveries made by researchers and scientists during the fascist regime as a whole: the fields of science. The exhibitors thought to enrich the exhibition taking as a reference Leonardo, the scientist, the artist, the researcher by excellence.

The hall belongs to the second section, and has as its entry motif a large black panel with a printed sentence of the artist “o speculatore di questa nostra macchina non ti contristerà perché con l’altrui morte tu ne dia notizia ma rallegrati che il nostro altore abbia fermo lo intelletto tanta eccellentia di strumento”. Proceeding further, you are immediately attracted by a composition placed at the center of the room, a pink tree fixed to a black metal frame that supports a human heart.

This composition is influenced by Fausto Melotti’s work, a contemporary sculptor from Pagano. He used geometric abstraction as metaphysics, to make a conceptual construction of modernity.

The main frame acts as a “scene” of a theater, where a metallic lattice supports the secondary frame. There rests the vitro cube containing a human heart. Therefore, he creates a fake perspective that attracts attention right on the heart, understood as the center of man, considered a symbolic starting point for the study of human anatomy.

The color of the walls, white, has been chosen to create a contrast with the colored panels attached to them. It shows the designs and writings of the artist. While the vertical elements are made of opaque material, the horizontal ones of the false ceilings are made of canvas, so as to allow light to enter from the overhanging skylights.

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