[HN Gopher] Mysterious tunnels sketched by Leonardo may have bee...
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Mysterious tunnels sketched by Leonardo may have been found
Author : simonebrunozzi
Score : 128 points
Date : 2025-03-07 12:55 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| No picture of the sketches.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I think OP was expecting something a bit different, but nope,
| this is it.
| kurthr wrote:
| So unsatisfying for "mysterious tunnels", that aren't
| really tunnels, are barely plural, if at all, and don't
| seem mysterious.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| 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".
| grahamj wrote:
| From the title I wasn't sure if they were even found
| xg15 wrote:
| 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._
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| Wouldn't "by da Vinci" be more appropriate in the title?
| msephton wrote:
| Cowabunga!
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| That's Michelangelo! Leonardo says "Taste cold steel!" :D
| Archelaos wrote:
| 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 Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli => Niccolo
| 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.
| metalman wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Huh, I thought it was Donatello that was missing from the
| list.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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".
| lxgr wrote:
| I definitely thought of the aerospace/defense company
| before the polymath.
| tejohnso wrote:
| > 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.
| mapt wrote:
| 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".
| srean wrote:
| > Leonardo could be anyone for all I know
|
| Indeed. There was a famous Leonardo from Pisa. Son of
| Bonacci.
| srean wrote:
| 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.
| Tor3 wrote:
| 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".
| 3836293648 wrote:
| That doesn't change how he's known today though
| Tor3 wrote:
| 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".
| joarv0249nw wrote:
| Rembrandt van Rijn is known as Rembrandt. Vincent van Gogh is
| known as van Gogh.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Where do Dick Van Dyke fit in all of this?
| Quarrel wrote:
| He is far too alive for us to worry about that.
|
| (Luckily, these posts are explicitly datestamped .. !)
| amelius wrote:
| Shouldn't Icelanders look more at last names, considering the
| inbreeding issues on that small island?
| werdnapk wrote:
| Apparently they have an app that citizens can check to make
| sure they're not dating a relative.
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/kissing-cousins-
| icelandic-a...
| Tor3 wrote:
| There's not much point looking at last names, because they
| change for every generation. There aren't any "family
| names" as such.
| lxgr wrote:
| Yes, but this articles is written in our time, not his. So
| why not just "Leonardo da Vinci" as a compromise?
| yapyap wrote:
| the turtle did this
| etiam wrote:
| Not really no, and it isn't any shorter in characters.
| kristopolous wrote:
| so what impulse is there that the sketch has to correspond to
| reality?
| HelloNurse wrote:
| 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.
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