Leading Edge
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The Dark Master Caravaggio rebelled against dogma and received wisdom. Is that why we like him so much? , Michelangelo held sway as the darling of the academic art world. No artist from the early modern era had been the subject of more books, catalogues and scholarly papers than the man who painted the Sistine Chapel and sculpted the iconic David. But according to research by Philip Sohm, a U of T art history professor, Michelangelo was knocked from his perch atop the Italian art charts in the 1980s. The challenger: the rebellious genius Caravaggio. Caravaggio, a realist painter who lived at the end of the 16th century, is known for his intensely dramatic works featuring violent struggles, torture and death. In life, he was a notorious brawler who once killed a man, possibly by accident, and spent a good amount of time fleeing authorities. Sohm speculates that Caravaggio’s growing popularity reflects a shift in contemporary views about religion, diversity and authority. “Caravaggio embraced humanity in all of its facets, including its more degraded ones,” says Sohm. “He rebelled against dogma and received wisdom.” Michelangelo’s relative decline is more difficult to explain. Sohm suggests that scholars may simply have exhausted topics about the artist, who was once called “divine” and was equally accomplished in painting, sculpture and architecture. “Any art historian who wants to work on Michelangelo faces a wall of books and articles that must be read before advancing one’s own views,” he says. “The effort is formidable.” In a secular era in which feminism has challenged gender biases, and environmental concerns are ascendant, Michelangelo – who painted for the pope and rejected nature – may simply have fallen out of favour. “After 1968, more people began to question ideas of progress, authority and institutionalized religions,” says Sohm. “Michelangelo no longer seems as divine as he once did.” – Scott Anderson For much of the 20th century
PHOTO: © Araldo de Luca/CORBIS
their brain damage gleaned from scans and plugged into the virtual brain. Then, with luck, a recovery plan could be worked out. The virtual brain will essentially be an electronic atlas of all the functional networks in the human brain, says McIntosh, who is also vicepresident of research at the Baycrest health sciences centre. Someday, it will allow doctors to model not only what is injured and causing knock-on effects in other areas of the brain, but also what is left unharmed − and what options for recovery are still available. In other words, if you can’t get from point A to point B the usual way, what back roads could be used? “It’s a laboratory to test for possible ways of getting the brain to rewire itself,” says McIntosh. Stroke is only the beginning. McIntosh is interested in better understanding the brain’s functions in order to ameliorate the effects of everything from Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s to schizophrenia and memory problems. The human brain is a hugely complex organ, so building a virtual facsimile is no small task. McIntosh expects it will take the consortium about 10 years and close to $20 million before the job is done. They are in year five. The team started by sketching regions and connections within the brain using existing data, mostly from human brain scans. Then they used functional MRI, which shows the brain in action, to verify that areas worked together the way they thought. The MRI scans all came from healthy people of various ages. It took three years just to model a human brain at rest. Then last year, the team published a paper that showed how they could use the virtual brain to model damage from strokes and other trauma. Like the Human Genome Project, the virtual brain database will contain structural and functional information that can be used by all. But rather than simply cataloguing the brain, McIntosh wants to really understand human brain dynamics. “Having a virtual brain that grows old, gets damaged and tries to recover really changes the focus from the bad things that come from aging and brain damage to how we can maximize the good parts,” he says. – Alison Motluk