1978: Arena: Art and Design - Henry Moore Meets Leonardo
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In this short item from the arts magazine series, Henry Moore explains why he loves Leonardo da Vinci's sketches and what sets them apart from straightforward medical anatomical drawings. Moore feels that Da Vinci's use of perspective and slight exaggeration of positioning add poetry and emotion to these anatomically correct images.
Leonardo da Vinci believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy for the workings of the universe. He wrote: "Man has been called by the ancients a lesser world, and indeed the name is well applied; because, as man is composed of earth, water, air, and fire, this body of the earth is similar."
He compared the human skeleton to rocks ("supports of the earth") and the expansion of the lungs while breathing to the ebb and flow of the oceans.
Includes anatomical images.
Originally broadcast on 18 January 1978.
