Dal foglio allo schermo: la modellazione tridimensionale dei disegni di Leonardo

Compared to a two-dimensional photographic image, a digital three-dimensional model offers several advantages: it can describe the shape of a drawing and its media replicating its optical properties; it can efficiently document its state of conservation by highlighting the overlaps and changes occurred over time; and, finally, it can be displayed interactively from multiple points of view and under the correct lights showing even the finest details. In accordance with this working hypothesis, the drawings of Anatomia dei disegni [Reloaded] exhibition were reproduced three-dimensionally with the ambition of providing both visitors and scholars with a tool that recreates most of the features of the original drawings. The digital model thus narrates the drawing techniques and the complex contents that their author has transferred into them. Using the photometric stereo technique – a minimally invasive technology exploiting a limited number of photographic images captured with lights in the visible spectrum only – the models of the five drawings exposed were created with nLights, a software developed to generate the 3D shape and the bitmaps required to replicate the optical properties of the materials used by Leonardo da Vinci to trace his figures and texts.