Gemstones’ drawing/design - Geometry. Models. Representations (Atena Editora)

Abstract

While reading this book, I was reminded of Leon Battista Alberti’s winged human eye. An eye that, as is well known, moves quickly, but also freely, between past, present, and future – specifically between analog and digital – precisely because it can recognize the reality of natural facts by overcoming the unreality of artificial fiction. And that, with its absolute disenchantment, is a prelude to Leonardo da Vinci’s eye when, in a famous passage of the Codex Arundel 263 (fol. 155 recto), he declares his «bramosa voglia» to «vedere la gran copia delle varie e strane forme fatte dalla artifiziosa natura» which pushes it to explore the depth of a «oscura spilonca» to «vedere se là entro fusse qualche miracolosa cosa.» confessing that mix of «paura e desiderio» in the face of the unknown that circularly re-proposes the rhetorical question – «Quid Tum» – with whom Alberti seals his winged human eye and which also transpires from the book co-authored by Nicola Pisacane, Pasquale Argenziano and Alessandra Avella, which locks Drawing, Geometry and Design in a Borromean knot capable of revealing the humanistic face of the Mineralogical Sciences, prefiguring new ideational potential in the field of Jewellery Design. But let's go in order.