This is a three-dimensional cardboard model, made by Emanuela Ughi, professor of Geometry at the University of Perugia, based on an original drawing by Leonardo, which represents the ancestral model of the modern soccer ball.
The truncated icosahedron, as it is defined with modern terminology, is a polyhedron delimited by 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons, the same ones which, colored in the two-tone white – for the hexagons – and black – for the pentagons – recall in the collective imagination the image of the ball.
The Icosahedron will be displayed above the De Divina Proportione by Luca Pacioli open to the page of the corresponding drawing by Leonardo.
The Ycocedron is one of the 13 Archimedean polyhedrons, already known, but never painted before the work of Pacioli. So, when he arrives in Milan, he takes advantage of Leonardo's genius to ask him to paint those "hidden" figures with "the ineffable left hand". And the figures still enchant.
LEONARDO DA VINCI'S YCOCEDRON ABSCISUS
Milan, Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Piazza Pio XI, 2)
From July 23 2015
Hours: every day, from 10.00 to 18.00; Tuesday, from 10.00 to 22.00 (from 19 May to 31 October 2015)
Information: tel. 02.806921
