“HOMAGE TO IPPASO DA METAPONTO” Edi Sanna

The work “Homage to Ippaso da Metaponto” is a sculpture composed from a bidimensional form in iron and a beam of light that projects the shadow of the form in iron. The form represented from the shadow, that it appears three-dimensional, reveals a Dodecahedron inscribed in a Sphere.
The choice is due to a study on the Pythagoreans, for which I have read that Ippaso from Metaponto determined to disclose to the people how to inscribe a Dodecahedron in a Sphere. For this reason the same Pythagoreans decided of tampering its boat so that he did not re-enter from the fishing, and Ippaso perished in sea.
In order to clear the importance of the action of Ippaso from Metaponto it follows a short recorded one:
Giamblico reports to us that the number was called “first paradigm of the creation” from the Acusmatici of the school of Ippaso and in order a lot was considered instrument of judgment of creator God. From the recent scientific studies, in particular those which use the frattal, it seems that the creations of the The Arithmetic, Geometry and the Harmonica (or subcontraria) were not fine to if same but closely connected with the universal acquaintance becose they derive from the number. To these doctrines of the acquaintance it could only reach an elite and was prohibited the spreading.
nature have a mathematical base that defines their structure.
The Platonic Solid ones are the so-called poliedri regular ones, that were calls also cosmic figures, near the Pythagoreans, that they attributed to the Dodecahedron a fundamental importance. They associated the 4 roots or elements by means of which the things are constituted all, to four poliedri regular: Earth - esaedro; Water - icosahedron; Air - octahedron; Fire – tetrahedron
At a not better specified ether which fifth element attributed the sphere of the universe, that the contains the other four “…dodecahedron, the poliedro that for the value caught up from the opening of its angles it is what is approached the perfection of the spherical surface”. The faces of the dodecahedron are pentagons that were a sacred figure to the Pythagoreans, tied to the gold section, the starred pentagon (distintiv figure of the school) and to its decomposition in thirty triangles. 
“A dodecahedron therefore “is constituted in its complex from 360 triangles and that is from a number legacy to geometric and astronomical considerations… a step of the Fedone seems to point out just to this greater adhesion, regarding all the others poliedri, to the sphere… the dodecahedron registered in a sphere encloses the registered others poliedri in the same sphere…” (“Polyhedra” of Wilma Di Palma, Rome 1994. And Argos)
“Iamblico: … (Ippaso) is sure the more important figure of the ancient Pitagorismo and only the insufficient documentation remained on he prevents to see it in all its relief.
An Ippaso Pythagorean who makes antiPythagorean, for wider and human feeling, in contrast with the aristocratic vision of the old test, considered principle and term of every knowledge.
Eraclito is associated to Ippaso for its sour controversy against Pitagora and also in the affirmation of an only, mobile and determined universe. Ippaso is associated also to Archita in harmonic having called that medietà that gives Pitagora was called subcontraria. With Archita it would have also in community the mysterious marine disappearance… "

Iamblico: " Of Ippaso one tells that it was of the Pythagoreans, but that in order to have disclosed for first the construction of the sphere of twelve pentagons, it perished in sea as an irreverent; and however the glory remained to him about it as inventor… he who for first disclosed the nature of the commensurable and immeasurable largenesses at the unworthy to participate to such cognitions… he perished, in fact, as an irreverent in sea he who revealed the form to inscribe in the sphere the icosahedron, that is the dodecahedron, one of the five said figures solid… "

Waerden in Hermes, 1943, thus reassumes the work of Ippaso: " Descovered of the dodecahedron in geometry. Of harmonic mean (6-8-12) in Arithmetic. Test experiences them with is gone of the sinfonic intervals in music. Doctrine of the cosmic periods in cosmology. Doctrine of the fire in metafisica". > >