Inaugural Lecture - Professor Jill Burke

Central Italy, the 1470s, late spring. A wasp thrums its way to an oak tree. Flax flowers nod in the breeze. A goose races with her sisters to get to the scraps. A cat leans into a stroking hand. A young man watches.

Taking a sheet of sketches of a child and a cat by Leonardo da Vinci as its starting point, this lecture explores the entangled history of Renaissance ideation and argues that - rather than conceptualising this period as a succession of individual ‘geniuses’ - we should understand Renaissance art, literature and science as fragments of the more-than-human – a series of dependencies. Leonardo’s thought process was inseparable from the materials he used – pen, paper, iron gall ink - and the animal and human bodies that produced them. Because paper was cheap and quills were adaptable, this period saw a new focus on sketching, doodling and jotting down thoughts, all of which allowed for diverse types of idea formation - from shop-keepers making accounts, to servants refining domestic recipes, to natural philosophers recording observations. Using contemporary how-to books and recipes as a source, the audience will get a chance to experiment with quills and ink to gain insight into the material properties of early modern thinking.

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception.

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