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The Number and its Forms: the History of Polyhedrons from Plato to Poinsot, By Way of Luca Pacioli

Area:
Museum
Start:
16 March 2005
End:
9 October 2005
Description:
On the occasion of the 15th Week of Scientific Culture (March 14-20, 2005), the IMSS inaugurated a new run of the exhibition "Il numero e le sue forme", already shown at the Palazzo dei Priori in Fermo (July 30 – November 4, 2004). A captivating itinerary through the forms of numbers that unfolds along the paths of history. In antiquity, Plato entrusted the figuration of the Cosmos' structural order to the constituent particles of the elements identified in the five regular polyhedrons. Perfect, immutable bodies, by some even termed "divine," the regular polyhedrons were studied by Euclid as insuperable models of proportional harmony. In the 15th century, mathematicians and philosophers resumed their study as archetypes of perfection: Luca Pacioli dedicated an entire treatise to them (illustrated by none other than Leonardo da Vinci), artists and inlayers made them the most popular decorative motifs of the Renaissance, and Johann Kepler used them to form the tangible image of the harmony of the Cosmos. Exhibition curators Francesca and Romano Folicaldi recount this history of polyhedrons and proportional geometry with readings, interpretations, and three-dimensional models which they have masterfully realised with the collaboration of Giorgio Folicaldi.
Link:
 www.imss.fi.it/news/enumero.html

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