What lies within?
Every culture places the heart at the centre of personhood. It beats independently of our volition and when it stops we are dead. But if it were no more than a muscular pump it would hardly feature so widely in our visual imagery and iconography.
The human heart, Robin Choudhury tells us, has been “…the dwelling place of the soul, the source of life, a furnace or fermentor providing the heat of living bodies, the source of semen and a repository of deeds. It has become the seat of love and desire.” It has fascinated the greatest minds in history and exercised the genius of the finest artists.
The Beating Heart is an odyssey through the history of apprehending the organ culturally and physiologically, with Leonardo da Vinci providing the perfect point of convergence. Professor Choudhury’s particular insight is that this is the same narrative in different guises.
Robin Choudhury – Head Of Zeus – £35
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