4 Things Art Historian Francesca Fiorani Wants You to Know About Leonardo da Vinci
Reading an article about a famous computer-generated scene in the Hollywood film “The Matrix Reloaded,” University of Virginia art history professor Francesca Fiorani couldn’t stop thinking about Leonardo da Vinci. The article focused on a digitally created fight scene in the sci-fi film in which Keanu Reeves, as Neo, dodges a barrage of bullets. The artists and animators behind the 2003 film said the most difficult part of such scenes was realistically recreating the shadows on people’s faces in different, fast-changing positions. “That is the exact problem Leonardo da Vinci worked to solve, though of course, he worked with brushes and pigments instead of pixels,” Fiorani said.