Concinnitas is the title of a portfolio of fine art prints, published by Bob Feldman of Parasol Press in collaboration with the Yale University Art Gallery and Bernard Jacobson Gallery and curated by Dan Rockmore; executed by the fine print printshop Harlan & Weaver, Inc. It is a collection of ten aquatints produced from the contributions of ten mathematicians and physicists in response to the prompt to transcribe their "most beautiful mathematical expression." The portfolio draws its name from a word famously used by the Renaissance scholar, artist, architect, and philosopher Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) to connote the balance of number, outline, and position (in essence, number geometry, and topology) that he believed characterize a beautiful work of art.

Here are two of the Concinnitas prints:

 
Simon Donaldson, Ampere's Law, 2014.
Printed by Harlan and Weaver, Inc., New York. Courtesy of Parasol Press.
  David Mumford, Thirteen??, 2014.
Printed by Harlan and Weaver, Inc., New York. Courtesy of Parasol Press

The Concinnitas artists are Michael Atiyah, Enrico Bombieri, Simon Donaldson, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, Richard Karp, Peter Lax, David Mumford, Stephen Smale, and Steven Weinberg. The Concinnitas Portfolio lets you view photos of the prints along with the artists' statements.

The Concinnitas Portfolio

The portfolio has been shown at several galleries around the world, each time giving new life to the question of "what is beautiful mathematics?"

In the Concinnitas Studio we give you the ability to make your own contribution to a virtual gallery of "beautiful mathematics" in which you upload your own "most beautiful mathematical expression" as well as a short statement that explains your choice. Taken as a whole, we hope this body of work will give the world some idea of what it means to say that a piece of mathematics is "beautiful."

The Concinnitas Studio