Being Leonardo is an immersive biography of the universal genius Leonardo da Vinci. The immersive biography is an innovative editorial concept that projects the user into the world of the Renaissance genius, where he becomes Leonardo, living his life over in the first person.
Being Leonardo is centered around the figure of Leonardo da Vinci as a whole, not on any single aspect of his eclectic artistic, scientific and technological research, but on his world and his mind as an entirety.
Thanks to new technological/ergonomic developments, the iPad becomes a subjective viewer that allows us to “enter” imaginary worlds, taken from the universe of Leonardo, and to “see” with his own eyes.
The App offers several different keys to access and means of utilisation.
Timeline
A thematic timeline presenting the artist’s life, with all of the contents organised around four tracks: life story, work, ideas, events and personages. This format allows for an easy, comprehensible consultation.
Synapses
In the section devoted to Leonardo’s ideas, we present an original access to the Leonardesque world through the amazing intuitions and inventions he depicted in drawings, codices, treatises and paintings. The true object of admiration is the genius of Leonardo: his incredible inventiveness, able to anticipate the future and explore all of the facets of knowledge.
Visions
Mystery and emotion accompany the experience of exploring this immersive wunderkammer, a sort of three-dimensional voyage encompassing the entire life of Leonardo and presenting the fundamental environments of his existence represented in 3D, with interactive machines and paintings. What is fascinating is Leonardo’s revolutionary vision of the world, which assumes the form of a day-to-day report, a diary of the life of a genius in his treatises. These codices/diaries are an extraordinary way of relating to the life of Leonardo, a visual narration of the world and its weltanschauung, an authentic “pictographic Renaissance”.
Inside da Vinci’s drawings
The immersive biography translates the real and imaginary scenes drawn by the Florentine genius into panoramas sweeping over 360°. Especially noteworthy among the immersive environments are Verrocchio’s workshop, the Milan of da Vinci’s urban planning, a battle with its innovative weapons, a Tuscan landscape for the drawings on flight, the refectory of the Last Supper and various settings of paintings for the preparatory drawings
Interactive drawings and paintings
Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous paintings and drawings will be made interactive in this project. They include the Virgin of the Rocks, the St. Jerome of the Pinacoteca Vaticana, the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Annunciation. Thanks to the App, they will become dynamic and three-dimensional. Technology allows us to approach an artwork in fluid, dynamic form, as if holding it close to us: using the iPad, we can literally “touch a painting with our hands”.
Machines and inventions in 3D
Buildings, machines and inventions have been reconstructed in 3D. The three-dimensional models of Leonardo’s machines are interactive and grouped in large immersive environments such as canals, cities, nature, construction sites, battles and flight.