Leonardo's Botany

For a new science between art and nature

Santa Maria Novella, Florence

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Santa Maria Novella, Florence

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Lungimirante

Leonardo's Botany

Green Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci's systemic thinking and his view of the natural world for a new cultural and scientific Renaissance.

Florence celebrates the most brilliant of thinkers, son of the Italian Renaissance, five hundred years after his death. From 13 September to 15 December, the Museo di Santa Maria Novella will host an exhibition conceived and produced by Aboca, on Leonardo's systemic approach to the arts and science. Thus, the forms and processes that guided his investigation into the relationship between man and nature are brought to the fore. The exhibition also lives on throughout the city with the reproduction of the five Platonic solids positioned in different squares to represent the five elements of the cosmos. A dodecahedron wrapped in a forest of majestic plants closes the exhibition in a representative manner and symbolises Leonardo's genius. An installation that allows the public the opportunity to experience at first hand how nature has been and can again be at the centre of the harmony of the world and the living system.

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Inside the Santa Maria Novella Museum, the exhibition opens up to the spectator in a luxuriant illuminated forest. A green invasion of a sacred space, curated by the Guicciardini & Magni architecture studio in collaboration with lighting designer Fulvio Baldeschi and Linea Light Group. The approach is twofold: lively and dynamic ambient lighting, static and spot lighting with beams to enhance the works on display.

A double mirrored stage duplicates a vertically developed forest at the entrance. A scenic opening supported from below by Periskop , an aluminium projector with a powerLED source with a black finish and 30° optics. Reproducing the contrasts of a living nature, in an imaginative sense, are a series of strips and Navata, projectors managed via DALI, for a play of chiaroscuro of various intensities. The cyclic increase and decrease of the luminous powers makes it possible to obtain real waves of light, for an effect that recalls in every way the vitality of the forest.
Countless Eyelets have been placed on the vases around the perimeter of the exhibition. Adjustable and small in size, they refer to a certain minimalist aesthetic effect. Tee and Beret illuminate the main display case, while Xenia Wall, inserted inside the supporting parallelepiped at the base of the display walls, is the true highlight of Linea Light Group products. A linear profile with high luminosity and flexibility with an orientation, directed towards the wall thanks to a riser at the base of the body, that allows zero glaring, supporting a fruition free from visual discomfort and glare.
At the end of the path, the containing dodecahedron is scenographically supported by a lighting dialogue with LED strips embedded in the structure and facing inwards. Inside the refertorio, in the garden of the cloister of Santa Maria Novella, are the illuminated polyhedra of Periskop RGBW projectors.