At the beginning of the 16th century, Leonardo da Vinci returned to Florence after nearly two decades in the service of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. When Leonardo approached the age of fifty, he was already known for his scientific genius and His artistic achievementsparticularly the innovative catapult design around 1485 and the creation of the fresco Last Supper (1495-98). By combining practical application and observation, Leonardo applied a principle keep it up (know how to see, in Latin) in all areas that a person can encounter.
Caesar Borgia, the ambitious son of Pope Alexander VI, became Leonardo's patron in 1502. One of Leonardo's first tasks was to create a map of the city of Imola, near Bologna. Borgia had captured the city three years earlier, in 1499. This raised and fortified city was a major conquest for the charismatic young leader. To control the city, he needed to understand its geography and landmarks, and Borgia wanted a map created by Leonardo's brilliant mind to do so.
In the sixteenth century, city plans were generally symbolic, exaggerating the scale of religious buildings. Leonardo da Vinci's “Plan of the City of Imola” radically broke with this tradition, aiming to reflect reality on the ground and provide a more practical map.
Leonardo applied the cartographic technique developed by the Florentine humanist Leon Battista Alberti, who proposed that a map of the city could be drawn using polar coordinates. Leonardo adapted Alberti's technique to more accurately evaluate the distances, proportions, and relationships between each element.
