Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci ( pronunciation (help·info)) (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination".^[1] He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.^[2] According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote".^[1] Marco Rosci points out, however, that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.^[3]
Born out of wedlock to a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by Francis I.
Leonardo was and is renowned^[2] primarily as a painter. Among his works, the Mona Lisa is the most famous and most parodied portrait and The Last Supper the most reproduced religious painting of all time, with their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam.^[1] Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon,^[4] being reproduced on everything from the euro to text books to t-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination.^{[nb 2]} Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.

Leonardo is revered^[2] for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator,^[5] the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime,^{[nb 3]} but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded.^{[nb 4]} He made important discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics, but he did not publish his findings and they had no direct influence on later science.^[6]

Architectural perspective

Perspective in drawing is an approximate representation on a flat surface of an image as it is perceived by the eye. The key concepts here are:

• Perspective is the view from a particular fixed viewpoint.
• Horizontal and vertical edges in the object are represented by horizontals and verticals in the drawing.
• Lines leading away into the distance appear to converge at a vanishing point.
• All horizontals converge to a point on the horizon, which is a horizontal line at eye level.
• Verticals converge to a point either above or below the horizon.

The basic categorization of artificial perspective is by the number of vanishing points:

• One-point perspective where objects facing the viewer are orthogonal, and receding lines converge to a single vanishing point.
• Two-point perspective reduces distortion by viewing objects at an angle, with all the horizontal lines receding to one of two vanishing points, both located on the horizon.
• Three-point perspective introduces additional realism by making the verticals recede to a third vanishing point, which is above or below depending upon whether the view is seen from above or below.

The normal convention is architectural perspective is to use two-point perspective, with all the verticals drawn as verticals on the page.
Three-point perspective gives a casual, photographic snapshot effect. In professional architectural photography, conversely, a view camera or a perspective control lens is used to eliminate the third vanishing point, so that all the verticals are vertical on the photograph, as with the perspective convention. This can also be done by digital manipulation of a photograph taken with a normal camera.
Aerial perspective is a technique in painting, for indicating distance by approximating the effect of the atmosphere on distant objects. In daylight, as an ordinary object gets further from the eye, its contrast with the background is reduced, its colour saturation is reduced, and its colour becomes more blue. Not to be confused with aerial view or bird's eye view, which is the view as seen (or imagined) from a high vantage point. In J M Gandy's perspective (see illustration above) of the Bank of England, Gandy portrayed the building as a picturesque ruin in order to show the internal plan arrangement, a precursor of the cutaway view.^[19]
A montage image is produced by superimposing a perspective image of a building on to a photographic background. Care is needed to record the position from which the photograph was taken, and to generate the perspective using the same viewpoint. This technique is popular in computer visualisation, where the building can be photorealistically rendered, and the final image is intended to be almost indistinguishable from a photograph.

uitm

UiTM berjaya diperkasa melalui iltizam dan kesungguhan pelbagai peringkat warga, baik warga akademia, pentadbiran mahupun sokongan, dan juga barisan Ahli Lembaga Pengarah Universiti.  Kini UiTM telah pun bersedia untuk memacu peranan yang lebih besar dalam mendepani bidang penyelidikan dan pendidikan kebangsaan.  Sememangnya UiTM layak diiktiraf sebagai sebuah universiti yang hebat, yang berupaya membina asas kukuh demi kesinambungan bangsa. Dengan memupuk semangat kerja sebagai satu pasukan, kita mampu menjadikan UiTM sebagai tauladan citra pengharapan, peluang dan wadah ilmu untuk seluruh pelusuk tanah air.

Saya berasa terharu dan gembira dipilih untuk menerajui UiTM, dan tentunya amat menghargai peluang untuk kembali menabur bakti kepada universiti tercinta ini.

Bagi saya, logo UiTM melambangkan: intipati kecemerlangan institusi; universiti yang merentas buana, unik dan berdaya saing; pendidikan dan penyelidikan yang berkualiti tinggi; kematangan institusi pengajian tinggi; kepimpinan melangkaui sempadan universiti.  Kita mempunyai pelbagai kemudahan, perkhidmatan, dan dasar-dasar yang menjana persekitaran yang sesuai untuk pembelajaran dan perkembangan, dan kesemuanya ini perlu perlu digilap agar lebih mantap. Sebagai langkah untuk meningkatkan keberkesanan, kita akan mengkaji semula dan memperkemas fungsi Universiti. Dengan mengkaji kecemerlangan masa lampau, selain menerokai pemahaman baru dalam bidang-bidang pengajian dan juga hasil penyelidikan yang hebat, kita dapat menambah pengetahuan, seterusnya memperoleh sokongan daripada pelbagai bidang di luar lingkungan Universiti.

Seharusnya kita wujud sebagai sebahagian daripada pertumbuhan dan perkembangan ekonomi negara, di samping menceburi acara-acara kebudayaan yang kaya dengan peradaban.  Kita juga harus bersikap terbuka dan sedia menjalin usaha sama dengan mereka yang tegar mendukung kecemerlangan dalam bidang pendidikan, golongan penyelidik lain di peringkat kebangsaan dan antarabangsa, dan juga institusi-institusi yang beriltizam mendepani dan mengatasi permasalahan ekonomi, sosial dan alam sekitar.

Tersirat di sebalik wawasan kita sebagai sebuah institusi yang unik ialah ikrar bahawasanya di tapak di mana terbinanya UiTM, setiap individu mampu menggapai sepenuhnya potensi diri, di samping mencurah bakti untuk universiti dan masyarakat. UiTM memerlukan agar kita semua – setiap warga dan pelajar – berusaha ke arah matlamat kita, memperakui cara yang lebih baik untuk mencapai matlamat tersebut, menyokong usaha membina kelompok masyarakat unik yang membudayakan pembelajaran.

Saya menyeru kepada warga alumni, akademia, kakitangan pentadbiran dan sokongan, para pelajar dan ahli Lembaga, serta rakan seperjuangan UiTM, untuk berganding bahu, bergerak seiring saya berusaha ke arah yang sama. Insya Allah, Universiti ini akan terus berkembang maju, lantaran kita mampu menjadikan bumi subur ini sebuah Universiti yang bernilai tinggi, berwadahkan ilmu utama, yang amat diperlukan demi kebaikan bersama.

Dato' Prof. Ir. Dr. Sahol Hamid Abu Bakar, FASc
Naib Canselor,
Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)