{"id":62263,"date":"2019-12-16T16:43:55","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T21:43:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=62263"},"modified":"2025-09-30T10:29:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T14:29:04","slug":"carleton-wraps-cinquecento","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/carleton-wraps-cinquecento\/","title":{"rendered":"Carleton Wraps Up Cinquecento Celebration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Carleton Wraps Up Cinquecento Celebration\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

The organizers of Cinquecento had a vision: a year of events with international scholars and performers in celebration of Leonardo da Vinci, 500 years after his death, that would illuminate some of the lesser-known aspects of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They took a page from da Vinci’s book, said Angelo Mingarelli<\/a>, chair of Carleton University’s Leonardo 2019 committee. They just went for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s been an incredible year,” he said. “We now have more people interested in Leonardo, the community responded and Carleton did way more than I expected.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Prof. Angelo Mingarelli<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Cinquecento finale took place on Dec. 12, 2019 at the Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre<\/a>, with a video highlighting events on campus and across Ottawa that involved 16 speakers and the Gruppo Jobel<\/a> cultural performance organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a mission to raise awareness and engagement about social and environmental issues, Gruppo Jobel created a new style of theatre in 2018 called SmarTalk<\/a> blending performance art and education. Four performers alternately took on the roles of Leonardo, his inventions, and various animals and elements of nature key to his life’s work. There were also lectures from Mingarelli, a mathematics professor, and Azrieli School of Architecture Prof. H. Masud Taj<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Illuminating Leonardo’s Hopeful Messages to Future Generations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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In between interpretive dance and Italian-English performances, Taj explored various facets of Leonardo’s notes. He focused on Leonardo’s mirror writing (right to left) and the imagery of the divine intersecting with that of everyday life in his famous sketch The Vitruvian Man<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The finale’s performance hinged on the idea that Leonardo’s keen observations of the natural, mechanical and human worlds were multi-faceted gifts. His enduring notebooks and his unending curiousity were hopeful messages to future generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Leonardo believed that sight was mankind’s most important sense,” said a performer. “Knowing how to see was crucial to living all aspects of life fully. To develop a complete mind, Leonardo believed that you must study the science of art and also the art of science.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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