Leonardo Da Vinci and the Arboreal Architecture of Life

Abstract: This essay considers aspects of Leonardo da Vinci's artistic output from the perspective of his study of the life of trees, observed and represented in a series of contexts, including in fresco painting and drawings collected in his notebooks. Although the artist is most famous for his portraits and altarpieces, trees were the focus of his attention in the late 1490s, as he created the frescoes in the Sala delle Asse (Room of the Boards) in Milan. This visualization of the complexity resulting from the growth of trees was created in the same years that he made key observations about the rules of proportion informing arboreal branching structures. In subsequent anatomical studies collected in his notebooks, Leonardo described and depicted the arboreal branching structures of biological systems, from the microcosm of an individual human organ to the macrocosm of the earth.