Leonardo Da Vinci (9 page)

LEONARDO’S NOTEBOOKS AND WHERE THEY ARE NOW

LEONARDO’S MANUSCRIPTS TODAY are nothing like the way they appeared and were grouped together during his lifetime. Although many pages are permanently lost, a chance still exists that priceless pages could turn up—anywhere in the world. Be on the lookout.

Today the notebooks are divided into ten different assortments, as follows.

CODEX ARUNDEL

The name comes from Lord Arundel, an English collector who pounced on Leonardo’s work for King Charles I as well as for himself. In this notebook—really just an assortment of pages—Leonardo designs a complete new city for King Francis I of France. “Let us have fountains on every piazza,” he remarks. Besides architecture, these pages deal with geometry, weights, sound, and light. The pages, some 238 of them, have been sliced from other manuscripts and bound in leather. You can find them at the British Library in London. But if you go to Turning the Pages at The British Library,
http://www.bl.uk/collections/treasures/digitisation.html#leo
, you can come close to the sensation of physically turning the pages of this Leonardo notebook yourself.

CODEX ATLANTICUS

This notebook is the work of Pompeo Leoni, a sixteenth-century sculptor with nerve. Taking original Leonardo manuscripts from 1480 to 1518, Leoni used his own judgment in separating the scientific sketches from one, concerned with nature, anatomy, and the human figure. In this codex, made up of what he thought of as scientific materials, are some 1,119 sheets on astronomy, botany, zoology, geometry, and military engineering. Leoni titled his creation “Drawings of Machines, the Secret Arts, and Other Things by Leonardo da Vinci, collected by Pompeo Leoni.” It has since been renamed the Atlanticus, and today the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan is home to its twelve leather-bound volumes. Many (but not all) of what Leoni deemed to be the more artistic pages ended up in England, in the Royal Windsor collection.

CODEX TRIVULZIANUS

These pages detail Leonardo’s ongoing efforts to educate himself in literature, architecture, and other areas. The name comes from the codex’s home—the Biblioteca Trivulziana at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. At least seven out of the original sixty-two sheets are missing.

CODEX “ON THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS”

Held in the Biblioteca Reale of Turin, Italy, this collection from 1505 includes seventeen sheets of the original eighteen. It covers Leonardo’s studies of birds, the mechanics of flight, air resistance, winds, and currents.

CODEX ASHBURNHAM

General Napoleon Bonaparte, in his expansion of French rule, made a point of amassing as much of Leonardo’s work as he could; he later returned some of it to the original owners, but not this collection. Dating from about 1489-1492, these assorted drawings, bound in cardboard, remain in the Institut de France, in Paris.

CODICES OF THE INSTITUT DE FRANCE

Also at the Institut de France in Paris, these papers are bound together in various ways—by parchment, leather, or cardboard. Each of the twelve manuscripts is called by a letter of the alphabet, from A to M. The topics relate to Leonardo’s usual interests—the flight of birds, hydraulics, optics, geometry, and military matters.

CODEX FORSTER

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London houses these manuscripts, bound in parchment, which focus on geometry and hydraulic machines.

CODEX LEICESTER

This codex was lost until 1690, when it was discovered in a sculptor’s trunk. The Earl of Leicester bought it, and eventually it was purchased—for $30 million—by Bill Gates of Microsoft, at a 1995 auction. Its seventy-two linen sheets, bound in leather, detail all aspects of water and its movement; included is an illustration of what looks like a toilet. More information and pages to view are at
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/codex/
.

ROYAL WINDSOR FOLIOS

This notebook lives on in the Royal Collection of England’s Windsor Castle. It includes the artistic drawings pulled by Italian sculptor Pompeo Leoni—some six hundred studies in human anatomy, horse anatomy, geography, and many other topics.

THE MADRID CODICES

These are the most recent discovery. At some point after their creation between 1503 and 1505, they were in the possession of Pompeo Leoni, and were then lost. Only in 1966 were they found once more, in the National Library of Madrid, Spain. The two manuscripts, bound in red leather, were named Madrid I (mostly on mechanics) and Madrid II (geometry).

A POSTSCRIPT

To better explain Leonardo da Vinci’s contributions to science, this book has left out many details of his fabulous career as an artist. Visit your library for other books about him and his place in art history.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS

(* books especially for young readers)

Bambach, Carmen C., ed
. Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman
. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003.

Bortolon, Liana.
The Life, Times, and Art of Leonardo
. New York: Crescent, 1965.

Bramly, Serge.
Leonardo: The Artist and the Man.
New York: Penguin, 1994. [For an assortment of reasons, writers have put a lot of imagination into telling the story of Leonardo da Vinci. I believe the most reliable facts are reported here.]

Brucker, Gene.
Florence, the Golden Age, 1138-1737
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

*Byrd, Robert
.
Leonardo: Beautiful Dreamer
. New York: Dutton, 2003.

Desmond, Michael, and Carlo Pedretti.
Leonardo da Vinci: The Codex Leicester—Notebook of a Genius
. Sydney, Australia: Powerhouse Publishing, 2000.

Fairbrother, Trevor, and Chiyo Ishikawa.
Leonardo Lives: The Codex Leicester and Leonardo da Vinci’s Legacy of Art and Science
. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1997.

Freud, Sigmund,
Leonardo da Vinci: A Study in Psychosexuality
. New York: Random House, 1947.

Gelb, Michael J.
How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day.
New York: Random House, 1998.

Grant, Edward.
The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional, and Intellectual Contexts
. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

*Langley, Andrew.
Leonardo and His Times
. New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2000.

Leonardo da Vinci.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
, compiled and edited from the original manuscripts by Jean Paul Richter (an unabridged edition of
The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci,
1883), in two volumes. New York: Dover Publications, 1970.

Leonardo da Vinci.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
, compiled and edited by Edward MacCurdy. Old Saybrook, Connecticut: Konecky & Konecky, 1939.

Lindberg, David C
.
The Beginnings of Western Science
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Lindberg, David C
.
Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.

Manchester, William.
A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age
. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993.

Nuland, Sherwin B.
Leonardo da Vinci: A Penguin Life
. New York: Viking, 2000.

Rocke, Michael.
Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Siraisi, Nancy G.
Medieval & Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

White, Michael.
Leonardo: The First Scientist
. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000.

WEB SITES

(Verified May 2008)

“Leonardo and the Engineers of the Renaissance,
”
Institute and Museum of the History of Science, Florence, Italy:
http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/ingrin
(includes his robots and flying machines, pages from Codex Atlanticus and several other Notebooks)

“Leonardo da Vinci: A Man of Both Worlds”:
http://library.thinkquest.org/3044/index.html
(includes 42 scientific drawings)

“Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman,” exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, 2003:
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/Leonardo_Master_Draftsman/draftsman_tour.htm

“Leonardo da Vinci Notebook—Turning the Pages at the British Library”:
http://www.bl.uk/collections/treasures/digitisation.html#leo
(pages from Codex Arundel)

“Leonardo da Vinci—Scientist—Inventor—Artist,” Museum of Science, Boston:
http://www.mos.org/leonardo/
(has classroom activities)

“Leonardo’s Codex Leicester: A Masterpiece of Science,” exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, 1997:
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/codex/

“The Leonardo Museum in Vinci”:
http://www.leonet.it/comuni/vincimus/invinmus.html

“Leonardo”: National Museum of Science and Technology, Milan:
http://www.museoscienza.org/english/leonardo/
(includes one hundred drawings of inventions and machines)

INDEX

abacus

Adoration of the Magi
(painting)

aerodynamics

Alberti, Leon Battista

alchemy

algebra

Alhazen

anatomy,

artists’ knowledge of,

Leonardo’s study of

see also
dissection

animals

anonymous accusations

anti-Semitism

apprentices

Arabic numbers

Arabic scholars

Archimedes

architecture

Aristotelian logic

Aristotle

army, career in

Arno River

art, career in

arteriosclerosis

artistic training,

Leonardo’s

arthritis

astrology

astronomy

autopsies

Bacon, Roger

Belvedere Palace

Bible

bicycle, invention of

birds

Black Death

epidemic of

cause

blood

Bonaparte, Napoleon

book publishing

books

censorship and

printed

Borgia, Cesare

botany

brain structure

Bramante, Donato

British Museum

bronze horse, statue

Brunelleschi, Filippo

bubonic plague,
see
Black Death

buchi della Verità

Cardan, Fazio

Caterina (mother of Leonardo)

censorship

chemistry in artists’ studios

China

Church, Catholic

circulation of the blood

cities, conditions

city planning

city-states

classical learning

Clos Lucé

Codex Arundel

Codex Ashburnham

Codex Atlanticus

Codex Forster

Codex Leicester

Codex “On the Flight of Birds,”

Codex Trivulzianus

Codices of the Institut de France

Columbus, Christopher

comets

contagion

Copernicus, Nicolaus

da Vinci, Francesco

da Vinci, Leonardo

appearance

arrested

childhood

collections

curiosity of

death of

early biographies of

household of

isolation

lack of focus

need for privacy

old age

personality

secretiveness

sex life of

da Vinci, Piero

deformity, fascination with

depression

diet

digestive process

disease

dissection

methods of

Divina Proportione

doctors

drawings