ahmedfromtunis 4 months ago

Wouldn't "by da Vinci" be more appropriate in the title?

  • Archelaos 4 months ago

    In his time, names in Italy were often differently structured than today, and they varried a lot. For example Leonardo's full name was Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci ("Leonardo, son of ser Piero from Vinci"). For Michelangelo it was Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. For Raphael it was Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino. They all are known and commonly referred to by their baptismal name (often translated it. Raffaello => engl. Raphael, germ. Raffael).

    However, there are other Italians contemporary to them, were we use other parts of their name as a shorthand, sometimes altered somewhat to adjust to our modern forename-surname system. For example: Filippo di ser Brunellesco di Lippo Lapi => Filippo Brunelleschi, or Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli => Niccolò Machiavelli.

    There are other special cases: Giovanni Pico dei conti della Mirandola e della Concordia is known as "Giovanni Pico della Mirandola" and can be reffered to as "Pico della Mirandola" or "Pico", but usally not as "della Mriandola".

    Galileo Galilei is also a special case, were both, "Galileo" and "Galilei", are acceptable (although I think "Galilei" is becoming more and more the standard).

    So there is no rule of thumb how to refer to famous Italians of the Renaissance. It differs from case to case. You simply have to follow the individual practices.

    • pinkmuffinere 4 months ago

      This is very informative!

      > It differs from case to case. You simply have to follow the individual practices.

      Surely in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, the “standard practice” in English is to say “da Vinci” or “ Leonardo da Vinci”, not _just_ “Leonardo”. Leonardo could be anyone for all I know

      • Archelaos 4 months ago

        Perhaps people mistook Dan Brown as authoritative on the matter. I browsed the read samples of some of the top listed books on Leonardo da Vinci on Amazon, and all use "Leonardo" in their introduction whenever they do not refer to him as "Leonardo da Vinci". I found no single isolated "da Vinci". See:

        https://www.amazon.com/-/en/dp/0715324535

        https://www.amazon.com/-/en/dp/B0DHFRBMF3

        https://www.amazon.com/-/en/dp/1501139169

        The standard way to avoid confusion is to introduce him as "Leonardo da Vinci" and later just say "Leonardo".

        • pinkmuffinere 4 months ago

          Ah, that makes sense. Your answers are really well researched, it raises the standard of the forum. Thanks!

      • mapt 4 months ago

        Yes, because we interpret "da Vinci" as a surname, which it isn't, at least not exactly.

        But in fact, the man your college friend-group calls "Johnny from the Bronx" in English would not be shortened to "from the Bronx".

      • tejohnso 4 months ago

        > Leonardo could be anyone for all I know

        If the topic is sketching and someone refers to Leonardo, you should know who it is.

        It's like referring to "Michael" when talking about basketball.

      • srean 4 months ago

        > Leonardo could be anyone for all I know

        Indeed. There was a famous Leonardo from Pisa. Son of Bonacci.

    • srean 4 months ago

      Historic Arabic names also have such rich context - father's name, son's name, place.

      Ibn, bin -- son of Abu -- father of

      Sometimes, if Abdul happened not to have a son, the placeholder would be filled by some other famous Abdul's son.

    • um1 4 months ago

      Di caprio?

    • metalman 4 months ago

      left out Bernini, but then he is always left out. Alexander the Macedonian? hey! Cervantes has been reduced to an adjective taken out of context but for a more contemporary example, Albert, not only knew of but approved of the term "Einstoon", as he did experience becoming a charactature in his own time.

      • filoeleven 4 months ago

        Huh, I thought it was Donatello that was missing from the list.

  • Tor3 4 months ago

    He was called "Leonardo" at the time, and if anyone asked "Which Leonardo?" then the reply could be "Leonardo from Vinci" (there are other combinations to identify someone, re sister comment).

    Think of it as "Leonardo from Chicago". The title wouldn't sound right with "by from Chicago".

    Icelandic names today are almost the same - the "daughter/son" part is more like a "from" identifier than an actual name. Thus you address an Icelander by the "first" name. Or you'll end up doing the equivalent of calling someone "from Chicago".

    • joarv0249nw 4 months ago

      Rembrandt van Rijn is known as Rembrandt. Vincent van Gogh is known as van Gogh.

      • throw_pm23 4 months ago

        Yes, I guess in most of Europe the 200-250 years between Rembrandt and van Gogh is exactly when family names solidified from a simple description "the one from village X" or "son of Y" or "the one with a red hair" to become a hereditary name essentially detached from its meaning.

        • seszett 4 months ago

          Also, van Gogh's popularity came from France, the work he did in France, and in France by this time family names had been standard there for a long time already (since around the 16th century), much earlier than in the Netherlands.

        • saalweachter 4 months ago

          Specifically, in 1811 Napoleon made surnames mandatory for the Dutch.

          A number of Dutch, displeased with Napoleon and thinking the surname thing wouldn't last, took... unfortunate surnames.

      • xeonmc 4 months ago

        Where do Dick Van Dyke fit in all of this?

        • Quarrel 4 months ago

          He is far too alive for us to worry about that.

          (Luckily, these posts are explicitly datestamped .. !)

    • lxgr 4 months ago

      Yes, but this articles is written in our time, not his. So why not just "Leonardo da Vinci" as a compromise?

    • 3836293648 4 months ago

      That doesn't change how he's known today though

      • Tor3 4 months ago

        He's known today as "Leonardo" as well. It's just that there are some people who aren't familiar with this. Exactly as some will use the "last" name with people from Iceland, even though it's as meaningless as calling someone "from Chicago".

    • amelius 4 months ago

      Shouldn't Icelanders look more at last names, considering the inbreeding issues on that small island?

  • yapyap 4 months ago

    the turtle did this

  • etiam 4 months ago

    Not really no, and it isn't any shorter in characters.

  • msephton 4 months ago

    Cowabunga!

    • throw-qqqqq 4 months ago

      That’s Michelangelo! Leonardo says “Taste cold steel!” :D

HelloNurse 4 months ago

Tunnels following walls and moats are quite normal and not mysterious at all. They just tend to be abandoned and forgotten after a few centuries of peace, as urban castles become palaces and city walls become an encumbrance, even if they had not been designed as highly confidential secret passages in the first place as seems the case here.

ComputerGuru 4 months ago

No picture of the sketches.

  • Jtsummers 4 months ago

    The article (since it's a web page) links to this: https://www.rct.uk/collection/912552/the-head-of-st-james-an...

    Which is also the sketch included in the CNN page, here's a direct link: https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/2b18k97.jpg...

    • dhosek 4 months ago

      I think OP was expecting something a bit different, but nope, this is it.

      • kurthr 4 months ago

        So unsatisfying for "mysterious tunnels", that aren't really tunnels, are barely plural, if at all, and don't seem mysterious.

        • teruakohatu 4 months ago

          I had the same reaction when I saw this article on CNN a week ago. A little more exciting than "lost drain pipe discovered under Utah couples' home", but not by a whole lot!

          At least the title was descriptive and not "You won't believe what was discovered under Sforza Castle".

        • xg15 4 months ago

          The tunnels they found are definitely plural though, only the connection to the sketches seems a bit tenuous.

          > It features a well-known underground passageway that runs along the perimeter of the castle’s moat and is accessible to tourists. But to the researchers’ surprise, their survey revealed a second secret tunnel that experts had only hypothesized about for years.

          The second tunnel runs parallel to the first one, about 1 meter (3 feet) beneath the surface. [...]

          The researchers also uncovered other tunnels [...] including one that heads in the direction of the Basilica of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the resting place of the wife of Duke Ludovico Sforza.

        • grahamj 4 months ago

          From the title I wasn't sure if they were even found

kristopolous 4 months ago

so what impulse is there that the sketch has to correspond to reality?