MY MAGICAL ATTIC: LEONARDO DA VINCI - THE MYSTERY OF CREATIVITY

LEONARDO DA VINCI - THE MYSTERY OF CREATIVITY
IT'S THE 500 th ANNIVERSARY OF THE HIS DEATH

VERROCCHIO’S APPRENTICE BY DR. MATTHEW LANDRUS

OXFORD UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF HISTORY

The biographer Giorgio Vasari ( 1511 – 1574 ) notes that Leonardo’s father Ser Piero, obtained an apprenticeship for the boy at the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio, which was arguably the most prestigious studio of its time in Florence and which received major commissions. Sometime between the ages of ten and 14, around 1461 - 1466 Leonardo entered the large studio.

With his father and stepmother, Leonardo would have travelled to Florence around 1462, after his father had obtained a position as notary to Cosimo de’ Medici. Sadly, Albiera, who had raised the boy since 1452, died while attempting to give birth to her first child in 1464, the year that Leonardo may have gone to live and work with Verrocchio. By the age of 12, it is possible that Leonardo had learned to read and write at home, but his education would not have been sufficient for him to contemplate university, so any artistic talent that he may have shown no doubt suggested to Ser Piero that the boy’s apprenticeship to Verrocchio’s studio would be an appropriate occupation.

Andrea del Verrocchio, whose real name was Andrea di Cione, had taken his professional nomenclature from his own master, which was not an unusual thing to do at that time. Verrocchio was a native of Florence and best known as a sculptor, but his studio produced all kinds of works and Leonardo would have found himself in the company of a promising group of fellow pupils that included Perugino, Lorenzo di Credi, Ghirlandaio and Botticelli.

As a studio assistant, Leonardo would not usually have touched a brush for some time. He would have had to sweep floors, learn to mix paints, polish marble, build scaffolding, prepare wooden panel surfaces with gesso ( a kind of gypsum ) and study various techniques such as metalpoint. Eventually, though, Leonardo would have been entrusted with the additions of naturalistic details in landscapes and the hair of figures of Verrocchio’s paintings.

Both artists shared the philosophy that sculpted and painted figures should activate or reach into the surrounding spaces and thereby engage the viewer in ways that a living figure would behave. An excellent example in this case is Verrocchio’s Putto with a Dolpin (c. 1465-1470 ), which has a sense of movement caused by a counter-balancing that would reappear in Leonardo’s later works, such as his Virgin of the Rocks and Virgin and Child with St Anne. A direct copy of master is obvious in Leonardo’s Profile of a Warrior Wearing an Elaborate Helmet and Cuirass, which is executed with exquisite freehand metalpoint lines on a cream-coloured surface. This mirrors similar warrior portraits in bas-relief marble by Verrocchio and his studio.

Leonardo also made drawings of mechanical equipment used by the studio. He drew, for example, the crane used tolift the gilt copper ball – the palla – atop the Duomo in Florence in 1471. This commission had been awarded to Verrocchio by the works department of the Duomo and was something which the cathedral’s original architect, Flippo Brunelleschi had been unable to see completed. The ball, measuring 2.36 m in diameter, was probably soldered into place with the help of a burning mirror. In fact, much of the work at the Verrocchio studio was the result of teamwork, such that Paolo di Matteo cast the cross above the ball, Giovanni di Bartolomeo and Bartolomeo di Fruosino cast the knob that would link the ball to the lantern, and Luca di Piero, Salvestro di Pagholo di Stefano and Giovanni di Tome hammered the ball into shape and attached it to the supporting internal armature.

Although Leonardo had been recognized as an independent master painter when he joined the Florentine goldsmiths’ guild in 1472, he seems to have remained in the Verrocchio studio as late as 1476, while working on his own paintings and the various projects of the studio. He spent approximately 12 years living and working at or near the Verrocchio studio, contributing to and competing with the work of colleagues who were some of the best in painting, sculpture, metalwork and engineering that Florence had to offer.

Oxford University Faculty of History Dr. Matthew Landrus

THE TREATISE ON PAINTING BY MATTHEW LANDRUS

OXFORD UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF HISTORY

The best known and most comprehensive survivor of Leonardo’s extensive treatise studies and plans is his ‘’ Treatise on Painting ‘’, compiled and edited after his death from thousand of notebook pages. The earliest plans were contained in a series of introductory paragraphs (each called a proemio), which were written around 1490 in the Codex Atlanticus (folio 327v/119va),and reveal some of Leonardo’s earliest approaches to his intended treatise audiences. One of the introduction claims, for example, that the painter / craftsman’s handiwork is nobler than the words from the mouth of a literary man. It states:

‘ Naturally, good men desire knowledge.

‘ I know that many will call this useless work; and they will be those of whom Demetrius declared that he took no more account of the wind that came out their mouth in words, than of that they expelled from their lower parts; men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom. ‘

This contains two key elements that support the Paragone, the first section of the treatise that discusses the superiority and status of painting among the liberal arts. First, the soul is associated with the mind, as was common practice among Florentine and Milanese neo-Platonist and Aristotelians. Second, words are associated with their origination in the mouth, or even the ‘ lower parts ‘, suggesting that a verbal argument can be no more than a bodily function. This proemio is part of an argument on the nobility of the eye, since it is a direct link between the outside world and the soul within the sensus communis.

The introductory section entitled ‘On the Eye’ (Dell’occhio) follows a paragraph entitled ‘ On the Members ‘ ( Delle Membra ). These sections were the basis for lessons on ‘inventing’ universal as well as unique characteristics in a painting. In this way, Leonardo offered an approach to seeing nature’s effects that natural philosophers as well as writers on art – including Cennino Cennini, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Pomponii Gauricus, and Leon Battista Alberti – previously neglected.

Leonardo’s argument about the need for an appraisal of the proportions of natural and universal forms is as follows: ‘ On the members: If nature had fixed a single rule for the relationships of the features, all the faces of men would resemble each other in such a way that it would not be possible to distinguish one from the other.

The master of experience would be ‘universal’ in the sense that he would master the universal rules of painting, as well as the ability to recreate realistic natural effects. The universal painter could employ the old rules of painting as well as the new Netherlandish realism, Florentine disegno (draughtsmanship), and Venetian colore (colour).

An early version of Leonardo’s ‘Treatise on Painting’ included a substantial portion on human movements, much of which is now lost. Before 1498, he referred to this combined work as ‘ a book on painting and human movements ‘ and, in the introduction to his 1498 De divina proportione, Luca Pacioli noted that Leonardo was producing’ … an inestimable work on local motion, percussion, weights and all the forces, that is, accidental weights, having already with great diligence finished a worthy book on painting and human movements’. So little remains of the second portion of this book that it has become known simply for its first portion, the ‘Treatise on Painting’, normally without reference to the possible exclusion of a large group of drawings on human movements.

Leonardo produced most of these studies between the times of his first treatise studies and illustrations around 1489 and the last of his Sforza equestrian statue studies around 1493. Examples of these lost drawings remain as copies in the late 16 th century manuscript, The Rules of Design, now known as the Codex Huygens. There is reliable and generally accepted stylistic and documentary evidence that Carlo Urbino copied Leonardo’s original drawings onto portions of this codex around 1570. To see an example of the content, style and quality of some of the originals Urbino was copying, one can look at Leonardo’s famous Vitruvian Man drawing. Surviving Leonardo drawings that are copied in the Codex Huygens include examples now at the Venice Academy and in the Royal Collection at Windsor:

With his ‘Treatise on Painting’, Leonardo’s primary objective was to explain the differences between universal rules of natural form and the observational realities of these natural forms. He had planned to address problems of pictorial, architectural, and observed human proportions, which would have been a departure from the universal guidelines of earlier painting, sculpture and architecture manuals. The painter would therefore be the disciple of experience rather than simply a scholar of books.

ATLANTIC CODEX ( CODEX ATLANTICUS )

F. 33 RECTO C. 1485

Drawing

Pen and Ink, Wash

ATLANTIC CODEX, F.149 RECTO C. 1485 - 1492

Design For a Giant Crossbow

Drawing

Black Chalk, Pen and Ink, Wash

ATLANTIC CODEX F 812 RECTO C. 1478

Drawing

Pen and Ink

THE PROPORTIONS OF THE HUMAN BODY IN THE MANNER OF

VITRUVIUS ( THE VITRUVIAN MAN ) C.1490

Pen and Brown Ink With Wash Over Metalpoint

Dimensions: 34.4 x 24.5 cm

Location: Galleria dell’Accademia

ATLANTIC CODEX F. 858 RECTO C. 1478 - 1480

Drawing

Pen and Ink

ATLANTIC CODEX F. 858 RECTO C. 1478 - 1480 (DETAIL)

PARIS MANUSCRIPT B 1480 - 1490

FOL 88 V - Design For a Flying Machine or Catapult

PARIS MANUSCRIPT B 1480 - 1490 (DETAIL)

ATLANTIC CODEX, F. 104 RECTO C. 1508

Drawing

Black Pencil, Pen and Ink

ATLANTIC CODEX, F. 1 RECTO C. 1500 - 1504 (DETAIL)

ATLANTIC CODEX, F. 1 RECTO C. 1500 - 1504

Drawing

Pen and Ink, Wash

ATLANTIC CODEX, F. 1 RECTO C. 1500 - 1504 (DETAIL)

CIVIL ENGINEER BY DR. MATTHEW LANDRUS

OXFORD UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF HISTORY

In the late 15 th. century, military and civil engineering, as well as painting and sculpting, were among the technical trades (artes techinae). These skills were less highly regarded than those of the liberal arts (arles liberales) of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic (artes triviales), and of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy (artes quadriviales), Nonetheless, during the course of the 14 th and 15 th centuries, masters of the technical trades were able to charge more for their work and, at the same time, educate themselves in the liberal arts. We now call these self-educated tradesmen of the time artist/engineers, a prestigious group of universal or renaissance men, who include Leonardo, Piero della Francesco, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Donato Bramante, Giuliano da Sangalo, Antonio Filarente, Leon Battista Alberti, Donatello, Andrea del Verrecchio, Niccolo di Buonaccorso, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, Giovanni Fontana, Mariano Taccola, Guido da Vigevano and others. Leonardo made himself part of this tradition of universal men – of great manual skill by day and intellectual literary and diagrammatic contributions to treatises by night. By 1482, Marsilio Ficino had referred to such a combinations of skills, to this level of noble accomplishment (virtu), as an individual’s ‘ power of artistic genius ‘ (artis ingenium).

As a civil engineer, Leonardo made contributions to architecture and city planning that would have been admired by Bramanté, his friend and architect colleague at the Sforza court. In responsa to a public outcry for solutions to the 1484 – 1485 plague in Milan, Leonardo – possibly at the request of Ludovico – produced new plans for the city, which can be seen in Manuscript B ( folios 14v-16v, 19v, and 36r-39r ) with wide porticos and streets, broad, integral canal systems, and rooftop arboretums and gardens.

The ambitious plans would have provided fresh air and a flowing sewage and transport system. In 1484 – 1485, the plague reportedly claimed a third of Milan’s population and much of the Sforza court was forced to reside for a few months at the Sforza palace in Pavia.

At Pavia, Leonardo and Bramante were in contact with Fazio Cardano (1444-1524), the Milanese lawyer, translator and university lecturer in arithmetic, geometry and physiology. He is the earliest known resource for Leanordo’s close studies of Euclid’s geometry and optics, John Peckham’s commentary on Witelo, entitled Perspectiva communis, and the astrology of Alkindi and Raymond Lull. During the 1480’s and 90’s, Cardano lived in Milan and Pavia, lecturing at the Piatti Foundation in Milan and at the University of Pavia. He had published an Italian translation of the Perspectiva communis in 1482, which appears to have been one of the books on proportion Leonardo tried to get, especially if he had been in Pavia in the mid 1480’s. Little is written about Fazio Cardano’s direct influence on Leonardo, but the coincidence of their similar interests at times when Leonardo had access to the royal library in Pavia, suggests that Leonardo studied with Fazio for long periods.

Leonardo knew from Bramante that architects had to take time away from work to study geometry, statics and dynamics. At this time, Leonardo also had a particular interest in designing the central plan churches now located in his Manuscript B. Years later, in the 1490’s, his work in civil engineering had improved to the extent that he designed with amazing precision machines like the clockworks, hoists, and pulleys that can be seen in Codex Madrid I.

Leonardo’s studies at Pavia and Milan were fundamental to this development as a civil engineer. Although self-taught, his notebooks show that he pursued and obtained the support and expertise of his close associates and friends. His civil engineering studies in the 1480’s and 1490’s gave him the background necessary to continue producing sophisticated designs as a professional engineer until the end of his life.

DESIGN SCYTHEC CHAIROT & A TANK 1485

Drawing

Dimensions: 17.3 x 24.5

ATLANTIC CODEX, F. 1006 VERSO C. 1490 - 1495 (DETAIL)

ATLANTIC CODEX, F. 1006 VERSO C. 1490 - 1495

Drawing

Pen and ink, Red Pencil

ATLANTIC CODEX, F. 307 VERSO C. 1517

Drawing

Pen and ink,Wash

ATLANTIC CODEX, F. 307 VERSO C. 1517 (DETAIL)

ATLANTIC CODEX, F. 851 RECTO C. 1487 - 1490

Drawing

Black Pencil, Pen and Ink

ATLANTIC CODEX F. 710 RECTO

Drawing

Black Pencil, Pen and Ink

ATLANTIC CODEX, F.4 RECTO C. 1503 - 1505

Drawing

Black Chalk, Pen and Ink

SALVATOR MUNDI C. 1500

Dimensions: 65.7 x 45.7 cm

SALVATOR MUNDI C. 1500 (DETAIL)

ST. JEROME PRAYING IN THE WILDERNESS C. 1480

Oil and Tempera on Wood Panel

Dimensions: 102.8 x 73.5 cm

Location: Pinacoteca Vaticana

PREPARATORY STUDY FOR THE BACKGROUND OF

THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI 1481

This meticulous perspective study relates to the architectural structure seen in the background of the Adoration of the Magi altar piece, which Leonardo left unfinished before leaving for Milan sometime in 1481 or 1482.

The drawing develops the idea for an architectural structure as sketched in an early compositional drawing now in the Louvre. However, in this careful and complex drawing, Leonardo works towards achieving an asymmetrical balance that prevents the eye from focusing on a central vanishing point, by placing the point at which the orthogonals converge to the right of the centre.

The perspective construction of the tiled floor is amongst the most rigorous of all Renaissance demonstrations of the method proposed by Leon Battista Alberti for single point perspective construction in his treatise On Painting, which appeared in Florence in 1535. Despite the laborious nature of this study, it did not represent the definitive solution for Leonardo. A comparison with the background of the Adoration painting shows that not only were details altered, but the relative proportions of major elements were also substantially adjusted in the final solution.

http://www.universalleonardo.org/work.php?id=454

ADORATION OF THE MAGI C. 1479 - 1481 (DETAIL)

PREPARATORY STUDY FOR THE BACKGROUND OF

THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI 1481

Medium Pen and Ink Over Metalpoint With

Brown Wash and Traces of White Heightening

Size 16.3 x 29 cm

Location Gabinetto dei Disegni e Delle Stampe Degli Uffizi

ADORATION OF THE MAGI C. 1479 - 1481

Medium Oil on Wood Panel

Dimensions: Size 24.3 x 24.6 cm

Location Galleria Degli Uffizi

MONA LISA 1503 - 1516 (DETAIL)

MONA LISA 1503 - 1516

Oil on Wood Panel

Dimensions: 77 x 53 cm

Musée du Louvre

MONA LISA 1503 - 1516 (DETAIL)

THE HEAD OF ST ANNE C. 1510 - 1515

Black Chalk, Wetted in Places

Dimensions: 18.8 x 13.0 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 912533

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. ANNE AND ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST

( BURLINGTON HOUSE CARTOON ) 1507 - 1508

Charcoal, Black and White Chalk on Tinted Paper

Dimensions: 141.5 x 104.6 cm

Location: National Gallery

THE HEAD OF ST ANNE C. 1510 - 1515 (DETAIL)

MADONNA, CHILD, ST ANNE AND A LAMB 1508 - 1517

Oil on Wood Panel

Dimensions: 168 x 130 cm

Location: Musée du Louvre

THE MADONNA AND CHILD WITH THE INFANT BAPTIST,

HEADS IN PROFILE C. 1478

Pen and Ink

Dimensions: 40.5 x 29.0 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 912276

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

MADONNA, CHILD, ST ANNE AND A LAMB 1508 - 1517 (DETAIL)

THE MADONNA AND CHILD WITH THE INFANT BAPTIST,

HEADS IN PROFILE C. 1478 (DETAIL)

MADONNA, CHILD, ST ANNE AND A LAMB 1508 - 1517 (DETAIL)

HEAD AND SHOULDERS OF A WOMAN ( LA SCAPIGLIATA ), 1500-1505

Oil, Earth, and White Lead Pigments on Poplar

Dimensions: 24.8 × 21 cm

"Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible" at The Met Breuer, New York

HEAD AND SHOULDERS OF A WOMAN ( LA SCAPIGLIATA ), 1500-1505 (DETAIL)

A MALE NUDE C. 1504 - 1505

Red Chalk

Dimensions: 27.0 x 16.0 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 912596

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

A SKULL SECTIONED 1489

Pen and Ink Over Light Charcoal

Dimensions: 19 x 13.7 cm

Location: The Royal Collection

A SKULL SECTIONED 1489 (DETAIL)

RECTO: THE VENTRICLES, PAPILLARY MUSCLES

AND TRICUSPID VALVE C. 1511 - 1513

Pen and Ink on Blue Paper

Dimensions: 28.8 x 41.3 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919073

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

THE FOETUS IN THE WOMB C. 1510 - 1512

Pen and Ink Over Red Chalk

Dimensions: 30.5 x 22 cm

Location: The Royal Collection

THE FETUS IN THE WOMB C. 1510 - 1512 (DETAIL)

VERSO: THE HEMI SECTION OF A MAN AND

WOMAN IN THE ACT OF COITION C. 1490 - 1492

Pen and Ink

Dimensions: 27.6 x 20.4 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919097

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

RECTO: HORSES AND SOLDIERS, MECHANICS, AND THE ANGEL OF THE ANNUNCIATION

VERSO: PRANCING HORSES, AND THE HEAD OF NERO C. 1503 - 1504

Pen and Ink, Black Chalk

Dimensions: 21.0 x 28.3 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 912328

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

Recto: drawings of machinery and geometric diagrams; studies of horses; studies of nude men, standing and in motion; heads in profile; a larger drawing of an angel. Verso: studies of prancing horses; a classical profile; a ratchet and two diagrams. The lower corners of the sheet are cut. Melzi's 53.

Leonardo’s most ambitious painting was the Battle of Anghiari, a huge mural commissioned by the Florentine government for the Great Council Chamber of the Palazzo della Signoria. It remained unfinished when Leonardo was called back to Milan in 1506, and was obliterated fifty years later. Here Leonardo sketches ideas for the composition – warriors standing or pole-vaulting across a gulley, and horses galloping, rearing and kicking. In the note at lower centre Leonardo jots down a memorandum to ‘make a small one in wax, one finger long’, strongly suggesting that he developed the complex mural by modelling small figures. The Angel of the Annunciation in black chalk is a pupil’s drawing, corrected by Leonardo with pen lines.

Text adapted from ‘’ Leonardo da Vinci: A life in drawing ‘’, London, 2018

https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/exhibitions/leonardo-da-vinci-a-life-in-drawing/leeds-art-gallery-leeds/recto-horses-and-soldiers-mechanics-and-the-angel-of-the-annunciation-verso-prancing-horses-and-the

RECTO: THE FETUS, AND THE MUSCLES ATTACHED TO THE PELVIS C. 1511

Recto: Red and Black Chalks, Pen and Ink, Wash

Dimensions: 30.4 x 21.3 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919101

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

VERSO: STUDIES OF THE FETUS, RELATED

INTERNAL ORGANS & THE ARM C. 1511

Verso: Pen and Ink

Dimensions: 30.4 x 21.3 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919101

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

VERSO: STUDIES OF THE FETUS, RELATED

INTERNAL ORGANS & THE ARM C. 1511 (DETAIL)

VERSO: THE ANATOMY OF THE MOUTH C. 1508

Traces of Black Chalk, Pen and Ink

Dimensions: 19.2 x 14.2 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919055

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

STUDIES OF AN INFANT C. 1506 - 1508

Black Chalk and Pen and Ink

Dimensions: 20.5 x 15.2 cm (sheet of paper)

RCIN 912562

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

THE PROPORTIONS OF THE HEAD, AND A STANDING NUDE C. 1490

Metalpoint, Pen and Ink, on Blue-Grey Prepared Paper

Dimensions: 21.3 x 15.3 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 912601

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

RECTO: THE CRANIUM SECTIONED 1489

Pen and Ink

Dimensions: 19.0 x 13.7 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919058

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

RECTO: THE CRANIUM SECTIONED 1489 (DETAIL)

VERSO: THE HEART & CORONARY VESSELS C. 1511 - 1513

Pen and Ink on Blue Paper

Dimensions: 28.8 x 41.3 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919073

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

SANTA MARIA DELLE GRAZIA MILAN

HEAD OF A YOUTH ( STUDY FOR ST. PHILIP, LAST SUPPER ) 1495

Black Chalk

Dimensions: 19 x 15 cm

Location: The Royal Collection

LAST SUPPER C. 1495 - 1498 (DETAIL)

VERSO: CALCULATIONS WITH ARCHITECTURAL,

ENGINEERING, AND GEOMETRIC SKETCHES C. 1494 (DETAIL)

LAST SUPPER C. 1495 - 1498

LAST SUPPER C. 1495 - 1498 (DETAIL)

VERSO: CALCULATIONS WITH ARCHITECTURAL,

ENGINEERING, AND GEOMETRIC SKETCHES C. 1494

Verso: Pen and Ink and Black Chalk

26.0 x 21.0 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 912542

LAST SUPPER C. 1495 - 1498

Oil and Tempera on Plaster

Dimensions: 460 x 880 cm

Location: Santa Maria delle Grazie

SANTA MARIA DELLE GRAZIA MILAN

A WOMAN IN A LANDSCAPE C. 1517 - 1518

Black Chalk

Dimensions: 21.0 x 13.5 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 912581

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

LEONARDO DA VINCI – POSSIBLE SELF PORTRAIT

Red Chalk ( Selectively Wetted ), Over Some

Traces of Stylus on Light Brown Paper

Dimensions: 333 x 213 mm

Biblioteca Reale, Turin 15571

An Extract From Manuscript D, Folios 2v-5r – Studies of Optics ( Folios 3v )

‘’ The Human Eye.

The way that experiences are made in the virtu visive ( visual faculty ) when it uses the instrument of the eye:

To make the experiences in the way that the visual faculty receives of the species ( perceived effects ) of objects from the eye’s instrument, if you build a giass ball with a diameter of five eights of a braccio ( arm - leight ), and if it is cut along much of the side so that you can put your face inside, you then place a box at the bottom, one third of a braccio wide, and with a hole in the middle so that this exact diameter is much more than a fourth of braccio, you then fill this with lukewarm water and you put your face in the water, look inside the ball and you will see that this instrument will send the species of the objects from the eye just like the eye sends them to the visual faculty. ‘’

LEONARDO DA VINCI

A SEATED OLD MAN AND FOUR STUDIES OF SWIRLING WATER 1513

Pen and Ink

Dimensions: 15.2 x 21.3 cm

Location: The Royal Collection

THE HEAD OF A YOUTH IN PROFILE C. 1510

Red and Black Chalks on Pale Red Prepared Paper

Dimensions: 21.7 x 15.3 cm (sheet of paper)

RCIN 912554

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

PORTRAIT DRAWING OF ISABELLA D’ESTE C. 1499

Charcoal, Black, Red and White Chalk and Yellow Pastel (?)

on Prepared Paper, Pricked For Transfer

Dimensions: 63 x 46 cm

Location: Musée du Louvre

Photo RMN - © Thierry Le Mage

VERSO: AN INSCRIPTION DESCRIBING EVIL MEN C. 1493

Pen and Ink

Dimensions: 26.0 x 20.5 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 912495

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

VERSO: AN INSCRIPTION DESCRIBING EVIL MEN C. 1493

STUDIES FOR THE TRIVULZIO MONUMENT C. 1508 - 1511

Pen and Ink on Light Tan Coloured Paper

Dimensions: 27.8 x 19.8 cm

Location: The Royal Collection

HEAD OF THE VIRGIN IN THREE QUARTER VIEW FACING TO THE RIGHT 1477

Soft Black and Red Chalk

Dimensions: 20.3 x 15.6

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1951

TWO GROTESQUE PROFILES C. 1485 - 1490

Pen and Ink, Wash

Dimensions: 16.3 x 14.3 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 912490

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

TWO GROTESQUE PROFILES C. 1485 - 1490 (DETAIL)

A SHEET OF PUZZLE WRITING, MAINLY IN

THE FORM OF PICTOGRAPHS C. 1495

Pen and Brown Ink on White Paper

Dimensions: 30 x 25.3 cm

Location: The Royal Collection

SKETCH FOR THE VIRGIN & CHILD, ST. ANNE AND ST JOHN THE BAPTIST: TECHNOLOGICAL DESIGNS 1506 - 1508

Pen and Ink, Wash, Heightened With White, Over Black Chalk

Dimensions: 26.6 x 20 cm

Location: British Museum

TWO BUSTS OF MEN FACING EACH OTHER C. 1495 - 1500

Red Chalk

Dimensions: 20.8 x 15 cm

Location: Gabinetto Dei Disegni e Delle Stampe Degli Uffizi

DIAGRAMMATIC DRAWING OF THE BRACHIAL PLEXUS BEFORE 1508

Pen and Ink

Dimensions: 19.1 x 13.7 cm

Location: The Royal Collection

HORSES, ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON, AND A LION C. 1517 - 1518

Pen and Ink

Dimensions: 29.8 x 21.0 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 912331

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

HORSES, ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON, AND A LION C. 1517 - 1518 (DETAIL)

PARIS MANUSCRIPT H 1493 - 1494

Fol 108 V - Two Types of Adjustable - Opening Compass.

Pen and Ink on Paper

Dimensions: 10.5 x 8 cm

Location: Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France

Photo RMN - © René-Gabriel Ojéda

THE FACIAL PROPORTIONS OF A MAN IN PROFILE:

STUDY OF SOLDIERS AND HORSES C. 1490-1495 / 1503

Pen and Ink Over Traces of Stylus, Black Chalk, or Charcoal, and Red Chalk

Dimensions: 28 x 24.4 cm

Location: Galleria dell’Accademia

CODEX URBINAS, FOLIOS 219 R – 220 V

Proportion Study of the Strengths of Light Rays Striking

Different Sections of a Profile, Pages 1-4

How one should know what part of the body ought to be more or less luminous than the rest.

If a is the light, and the head is the body illuminated by it, that part of the head which receives on it the ray between the most nearly equal angles be most illuminated; and that part which receives the rays between the angles less equal will be less luminous. This light acts like a blow; (219v) the blow which falls between equal angles has the greatest degree of power, and when the blow falls between the unequal angles, it will be as much less powerful than the first as the angles are more unequal. For example; if you throw a ball against a wall of which the extremities are equally distant from you, the blow will fall between equal angles, but if you throw the ball against that wall, standing at one of its extremities, the ball will fall between unequal angles, and the blow will not be effective.

Where the angles made by the direct lines are more nearly equal, there will be more light, and where they are more unequal, there will be more darkness.

After it has been proved that every light emanates from a single point, or seems to do so, the side illuminated by it will make that part more luminous on which the radial line between two equal angles falls, as is shown above along the lines a g , and also along a h, and similarly along l a, and that part of the illuminated side will be less luminous upon which the incidental line strikes between two more dissimilar angles, as appears in b c d. In this way also you can realize which parts are without light, as is shown at m and k.

How bodies accompanied by shadow and light always differentiate their contours from the colour and light of that which borders their surface outlines.

If you see a body whose illuminated part – (220r) falls and terminates on a dark field, the part of this light which will seem brightest is that which borders on the dark field at d; and if the illuminated part borders on a bright field, the contour of the illuminated body will seem less bright than at first, and its utmost brightness will appear between the contour of the side F and the shadow. The same thing happens with the shadow, for the contour of that part of the shadowed body which lies in a bright place at L, will seem much darker than the rest. If this shadow ends on a dark field, the contour of the shadow will seem brighter than at first, and its utmost density will be between that contour and the light, at point o.

Of the highest points of light which turn and change as the eye that sees the body changes.

Let us suppose that the body is this round one figured here in the centre, and that the light is the point a, and that the illuminated side of the body is b c, and the eye is at the point d. I say that when the eye is at the point d, the luster, because it is entirely on that side, will appear at the point c, and to the gegree that the eye changes from d to a, the luster will change from c to n.

The manner in which shadows made by objects should terminate. (220v) If the object is the mountain figured here, and the light is the point a, I say that from b to d, and likewise from c to f there will be no light except that of reflected rays, and this comes about because the luminous rays do not proceed except by straight lines, and so do secondary rays which are reflected.

Which part of the sphere is least illuminated.

That part of the shadowed body will be least illuminated which is exposed to the smallest part of the luminous body.

The proof I; Let a s q r be the shadowed body and the luminous body may be its hemisphere n c e f. I say that the part A and the part o, because they face the equal arcs b c e d and c e d f, are in view of equal quantities of light, and are for this reason equally illuminated by them.

But r faces the smaller arc e d f and receives less light, and p faces only d f, which is smaller than e d f, for this reason remains less luminous, and q remains still less luminous, for it faces only the extremity of the horizon f.

Which part of the sphere is more luminated.

That side of the spheres which is illuminated will be of most intense brightness, which is accompanied by the least number of images of shadow.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

TWO SKIRMISHES BETWEEN HORSES AND FOOT SOLDIERS 1503

Pen and Ink With Brown Wash Over Traces of Stylus

Dimensions: 14.7 x 15.4 cm

Location: Galleria dell’Accademia

PORTRAIT OF A LADY, CA. 1500

Oil on Panel Transferred to Hardboard

Dimensions: 18 5/8 × 13 1/2 in; 47.3 × 34.3 cm

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ( LA BELLE FERRONIERE ) C. 1496 - 1497

Inscribed on the Reverse M Hacquin (Paintings Restorer to the King of France);
Inscribed on the Reverse Georges Sortais
Oil on Canvas, Unframed
Dimensions: 21 5/8 by 17 1/8 in.; 55 by 43.5 cm.

Photo RMN - © Hervé Lewandowski

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ( LA BELLE FERRONIERE ) C. 1496 - 1497 (DETAIL)

VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS 1483 – C 1490

Oil on Wood Panel (Transferred to Canvas in 1806)

Dimensions: 197 x 120 cm

Location: Musée du Louvre

VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS ( NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON ) C. 1495 - 1508

Oil on Wood Panel

Dimensions: 189.5 x 120 cm

Location: National Gallery

VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS 1483 – C 1490 (DETAIL)

ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST 1508 - 1516

Oil on Wood Panel

Dimensions: 69 x 57 cm

Location: Musée du Louvre

Photo RMN - © Hervé Lewandowski

PORTRAIT OF CECILIA GALLERANI ( THE LADY WITH THE ERMINE ) 1490

Medium Oil on Wood Panel

Dimensions: Size 55 x 40.5 cm

Location Czartoryski Museum

NEPTUNE C. 1504 – 1505

Black Chalk

Dimensions: 25.1 x 39.2 cm (sheet of paper)

RCIN 912570

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

A drawing of Neptune, naked, seen from above the knees, holding a trident in his right hand. Around him are four sea-horses and tails of fishes. Above this is a note in Leonardo's handwriting: abassa ichavalli.

Leonardo spent most of the period 1500-08 in Florence. Among many other works, he executed a large finished drawing of the sea-god Neptune for his friend Antonio Segni, master of the papal mint. Giorgio Vasari described Leonardo's finished drawing as follows:

For his good friend Antonio Segni, [Leonardo] drew on a sheet of paper a Neptune, with such draughtsmanship and diligence that it seemed entirely alive. The sea could be seen churned up, and his chariot drawn by sea horses, with fantastic creatures, sea monsters and winds, and some beautiful heads of sea gods. The drawing was given by Fabio, his son, to Giovanni Gaddi, with this epigram:

’Pinxit Vergilius Neptunum: Pinxit Homerus

Dum maris undisoni per vada flectit equos.

Mente quidem vates illum conspexit uterque

Vincius ast oculis; jureque vincit eos.’

[Virgil and Homer both depicted Neptune driving his sea-horses through the rushing waves. The poets saw him in their imaginations, but Vinci with his own eyes, and so he rightly vanquished them.]

Antonio Segni had been appointed Master of the Papal Mint in 1497, though he did not reside permanently at the Vatican and travelled intermittently between Rome and his native Florence. He must have been an erudite collector, for Botticelli presented him with his Calumny of Apelles (Uffizi), and a friendship between Segni and Leonardo mentioned by Vasari would explain why the artist made such an exceptional drawing.

Segni’s Neptune is lost, and - strangely for a work that was famed during the sixteenth century - we have no certain record of it in a copy drawing or a print. A large drawing in the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo has been claimed as at least a partial copy of Leonardo’s design, and the upper part of Neptune and the horses to the right there are very similar to those here. But while the rough head of a dragon-like monster, of a type often drawn by Leonardo, is visible here at the centre left edge of the sheet, the Bergamo drawing does not include any of the sea creatures (other than Neptune’s horses) mentioned by Vasari.

This drawing, in which Neptune is seen from the thighs up, carries Leonardo’s rough note to himself to ‘lower the horses’. As has often been noted, an inspiration for Leonardo’s composition may have been a relief on a sarcophagus, then outside the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Rome (and now in the Vatican), that shows Neptune standing thigh-length in a low boat drawn by four sea-horses breasting the waves and placed symmetrically at either side. The drawing must date from around 1504, when Leonardo was working on (among other projects) the composition of the Battle of Anghiari, which involves a comparable interweaving of man and horse; it is likely that Leonardo had visited Rome around the time, for in April 1505 he was reimbursed for customs duty on a parcel of his clothes sent from Rome.

Catalogue entry adapted from The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection: Renaissance and Baroque, London, 2007

https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/exhibitions/leonardo-da-vinci-a-life-in-drawing/derby-museum-and-art-gallery-derby/neptune

THE HEAD OF LEDA C. 1505 – 1508

Black Chalk, Pen and Ink

Dimensions: 17.7 x 14.7 cm (sheet of paper)

RCIN 912518

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

THE HEAD OF LEDA C. 1505 – 1508

Black Chalk, Pen and Ink

Dimensions: 17.7 x 14.7 cm (sheet of paper)

RCIN 912518

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

LEDA AND THE SWAN

Oil on Wood Panel

Dimensions: 69.5 x 73.7 cm

Location: Collection of the Earl of Pembroke

STUDIES FOR THE HEAD OF LEDA C. 1505 – 1506

Pen and Ink Over Black Chalk

Dimensions: 20.0 x 16.2 cm (sheet of paper)

RCIN 912516

Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

STUDY OF THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM C. 1506

Red Chalk, Reworked With Pen and Ink

Dimensions: 19.6 x 15.8 cm

Location: The Royal Collection

STUDIES FOR THE HEAD OF LEDA C. 1505 – 1506

Various sketches of the head of a woman: on the right is a sketch of the head turned to the left, looking down three quarters left, with the hair elaborately coiled and braided. Beneath this is a drawing of a head seen from the back. On the left are three quarter and rear views of the same subject. These are studies for the head of Leda in the lost painting of Leda and the Swan. The mythical Leda was seduced by Jupiter in the form of a swan. Leonardo worked on two compositions of the subject, finally executing a painting that was destroyed in the eighteenth century. In the four surviving studies of Leda's head, Leonardo expended little effort on her expression, simply adopting the usual downward glance; in the central two drawings he may even have left the face blank, for the faces there are of poor quality and may have been 'filled in' by a pupil. Instead Leonardo devoted all his attention to the most complicated of hairstyles, with dense whorls and woven plaits, even studying the head from the back - quite unnecessarily for a painted image.

https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/exhibitions/leonardo-da-vinci-a-life-in-drawing/derby-museum-and-art-gallery-derby/studies-for-the-head-of-leda

Description

A drawing of the head of a woman turned three quarters to the left, looking down. The hair is fastened in elaborate braids, and arranged in coils over the ears. This is a study for the head of Leda in the lost painting of Leda and the Swan. Melzi's number 12.
In classical mythology, Leda, queen of Sparta, was seduced by Jupiter in the form of a swan and bore two eggs, from each of which hatched twins. Leonardo worked on two versions of a composition of Leda and the swan, one in which Leda kneels, the other in which she stands, eventually executing a painting of the standing version (destroyed around 1700). Here Leonardo expended little effort on her demure downward glance, devoting his attention instead to the most complicated of hairstyles. Parallel plaits run over the top of her head, with a pattern of interlacing at the temples. See also RCIN 912516.
Text adapted from Leonardo da Vinci: A life in drawing, London, 2018

Provenance

Bequeathed to Francesco Melzi; from whose heirs purchased by Pompeo Leoni, c.1582-90; Thomas Howard, 14th Earl of Arundel, by 1630; probably acquired by Charles II; Royal Collection by 1690

https://www.rct.uk/collection/912516/the-head-of-leda

BACCHUS 1513 - 1516

Tempera and Oil on Panel (Transferred to Canvas)

Dimensions: 177 x 115 cm

Location: Musée du Louvre

VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH A CAT 1480

Pen and Ink and Wash Over Stylus

Dimensions: 13.2 x 14.9 cm

Location: British Museum

ANNUNCIATION 1472 - 1474

Tempera on Panel

Dimensions: 16 x 60 cm

Location: Galleria degli Uffizi

RECTO: THE SUPERFICIAL ANATOMY OF

THE SHOULDER AND NECK C. 1510 – 1511

Pen and Ink With Wash, Over Black Chalk

Dimensions: 29.2 x 19.8 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919003

RECTO: THE BONES OF THE FOOT C. 1510 – 1511

Pen and Ink With Wash, Over Black Chalk

Dimensions: 29.3 x 20.1 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919000

VERSO: THE MUSCLES OF THE FACE AND ARM, AND

THE NERVES AND VEINS OF THE HAND C. 1510 - 1511

Black Chalk, Pen and Ink, Wash

Dimensions: 28.8 x 20.0 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919012

RECTO: THE THROAT, AND THE MUSCLE OF THE LEG C. 1510 - 1511

Black Chalk, Pen and Ink, Wash

Dimensions: 29.0 x 19.6 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919002

RECTO: THE SKELETON C. 1510 - 1511

Black Chalk, Pen and Ink, Wash

Dimensions: 28.8 x 20.0 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919012

RECTO: THE SKELETON C. 1510 - 1511 (DETAIL)

RECTO: THE SKULL SECTIONED

Traces of Black Chalk, Pen and Ink

Dimensions: 18.8 x 13.4 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919057

RECTO: THE SKULL SECTIONED (DETAIL)

VERSO: THE BONES AND MUSCLES OF THE ARM C. 1510 – 1511

Pen and Ink With Wash, Over Black Chalk

Dimensions: 29.3 x 20.1 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919000

RECTO: THE BLADDER C. 1508

Black Chalk, Pen and Ink

Dimensions: 19.4 x 14.2 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919054

LEONARDO DA VINCI'S INFLUENCE ON RENAISSANCE ANATOMY

BY KENNETH D. KEELE

Leonardo Da Vinci has been described as the man who awoke too early in the darkness, while all the others were still asleep. His gigantic efforts in the realm of what we now call science tragically failed to disturb his fellows from their slumbers. Only by his painting did he rouse them to their senses.

The dominant pattern of his life shows Leonardo, through his own isolated mental exertions, tracing out the, path from art through the experimental observation of nature to the new outlook of science. As one follows him through the sequence of his notebooks one is struck by the early date of his efforts to analyse the phenomena of perspective. When Leonardo defined perspective as 'a function of the eye' he set himself the task of systematic observation of matters ranging from the distant stars and their transmitted light to the terminations of the optic nerve in the brain. In this way were born his extensive studies of the properties of light, optics and the anatomy of the eye, as well as his early interest in the anatomy of the brain.

A second line of approach to anatomy arising from Leonardo's artistic vision lay inherent in his definition of the purpose of art; this is to paint 'man and the intention of his soul' in terms of the 'attitudes and movements of the limbs'. The pursuit of this goal led him to analyse the postures and gestures of men's bodies in terms of their mathematical and mechanical laws. It led him also to make his first examinations of the mechanical instruments responsible for those gestures and attitudes; and so he dissected the human body, not only to reveal the forms of its muscles but to trace the source of their forces back to the spinal cord and brain. Such work was well under way during his first long sojourn in Milan (1482-99) when his notebooks already contain studies of the brain and cranial nerves, and his experiments on the spinal cord of the frog. In this period, too, he summarized his knowledge into a Treatise on Painting and the Human Figure, the one fragment of his work which was destined eventually to break through the shadows into publication.

There can be little doubt that these preliminary anatomical ventures opened to Leonardo's view the challenge of fresh worlds to conquer such as the vascular system and the abdomino-thoracic viscera. These parts of the body as well as detailed explorations of the muscles, bones and nerves occupied him during the second phase of his anatomical work in Florence in the years I500-6. This period coincides with the shift of his interest from anatomy as subservient to art, to anatomy as the expression of a scientific urge. During these years he united both forms of his striving into the greatest of his visions, the one of the destruction of life, the Battle of Anghiari, the other of its creation, the Mona Lisa.

Leonardo now entered the third phase of his study of the human body in which he attempted an analysis of its forces, its physiology. During this period, once more in Milan (I506-12) he joined his efforts with those ofa professional anatomist, Marcantonio della Torre. During these years he sought to develop his favourite analogy between the forces of the macrocosm of the universe and the microcosm of man. It was too early for him to distinguish the truth from the falsity in this ancient comparison, and in its pursuit Leonardo missed the simpler mechanical truth, central to all human physiology, the circulation of the blood. Yet it was typical of his vision that he saw the lines of movement of the blood in the aorta as similar to those of the water in rivers, and that he confirmed these by the same experimental methods, so introducing the marker principle into experimental physiology. Here, as in all his physiological experiments (with but one exception), he made a model of the conditions he wished to investigate, and the aorta was only a particular example of fluid movement through a pipe. Marking the movement of the fluid by grains of panic grass, he observed its eddies and drew them with an accuracy which it remains for twentieth-century physiologists to confirm.'

There is no doubt that Leonardo intended to produce a Treatise on Anatomy. Apart from the orderly arrangement of certain sections we have his own word for it in the Treatise on Painting. It would appear, too, that he had this in mind when working with Marc Antonio della Torre during the winter of I510 when he 'looked to finish all this anatomy'.

Marc Antonio della Torre is one of those through whom Leonardo's anatomical work might have exerted some contemporary influence. He himself was an anatomist of high repute. Vasari describes him as 'one of the first as I have heard say, who began to apply the doctrines of Galen to the elucidation of medical science, and to throw true light on anatomy which up to that time had been plunged in the almost total darkness of ignorance. In this,' he continues, 'he was wonderfully aided by the talent and labour of Leonardo, who made a book drawn with red chalk and annotated with the pen of the subjects which he dissected with his own hand and drew with the greatest diligence.'2 Leonardo continued working with della Torre until the young man died in I51 i. Both Vasari and Paolo Giovio refer to della Torre as having written anatomical works, but none has come down to us. One wonders how much these contained of Leonardo's labours; and what kind of influence had this work exerted that della Torre should have been so well spoken of to Vasari nearly fifty years after his death.

Another gifted contemporary of Leonardo who was in a position to vouch for some of his anatomical achievement was Luca Pacioli. These two worked together for some years in Milan before the downfall of the Duke, Ludovico Sforza. At this time Leonardo drew some sixty figures for Pacioli's work, De Divina Proportione, a treatise devoted to geometry in relation to architecture. In this work he illustrated the proportions of the human body by the Vitruvian figure of a man inscribed in both a square and a circle. It was with Pacioli that Leonardo began his geometrical researches, and from him he learnt how to manipulate mathematical roots; and it is to Pacioli that we owe the information that by I498 Leonardo had completed a book on The Human Figure. However, on human proportion there is relatively little in the Treatise on Painting.

In October I5I8 towards the end of his life in Amboise, Leonardo showed some of his anatomical manuscripts to Cardinal Luis of Aragon.

‘ This gentleman [wrote the cardinal's secretary] has written of anatomy with such detail showing by illustrations the limbs, muscles, nerves, veins, ligaments, intestines, and whatever else there is to discuss in the bodies of men and women, in a way that has never yet been done by anyone else. All this we have seen with our own eyes. He has also written of other matters, which he has set down in an infinite number of volumes all in the vulgar tongue, which if they should be published will be profitable and very enjoyable. ‘ 3

At this time Leonardo was paralysed in the right hand as a result of a stroke. It was obvious that he could never himself complete the labour of publication, and that this task would fall to Leonardo's favourite pupil, the young Francesco Melzi, then some twenty-six years old. When Leonardo died in I519, Melzi became his heir, and so brought back those precious volumes to his villa at Vaprio near Milan. There he worked on them for the rest of his life endeavouring to compile a worthy Treatise on Painting out of the mass of scattered notes, well over 5000 sheets of them. Thus these volumes were treasured by Melzi until his own death in I568, by which time he had not been able to complete his own task, many chapters of his compilation remaining uncompleted. During these years, however, Leonardo's notebooks were not kept from those capable of appreciating them; these (a very limited company of men) Melzi invited to inspect them.

The fact that these notes were not published during Melzi's lifetime must have depended on various factors, of which their incomprehensibility was the chief. This would lie at three levels; first that of reading the script. As is well known, Leonardo wrote left-handed, from right to left of the page. This in itself would not raise insuperable difficulties. But it was only one of Leonardo's oddities as a writer. Richter, who succeeded in transliterating and translating so many of Leonardo's notes for the first time in I883, was under no illusions with regard to the difficulty of the enterprise. In his preface he writes: 'That, notwithstanding this eagerness to possess the Manuscripts, their many contents remained a mystery, can only be accounted for by the many and great difficulties attending the task of deciphering them.'4 Not only did Leonardo shape many letters of the alphabet in his own fashion, he fused words together, and divided them up equally arbitrarily; and his writings are devoid of punctuation of any sort. In addition he built up a set of his own short-hand terms. One has only to try to decipher short passages to appreciate the formidable nature of the task.

A second level of incomprehensibility lay in the intellectual nature of the content of the manuscripts, assuming their successful decipherment. For over a century now we have been helped by the fact that many of Leonardo's basic ideas were 'modern' and are thus easily comprehensible to us. This was, of course, far from being the case to Melzi and his companions. On the contrary, during the sixteenth century, many of Leonardo's repetitive tentative gropings towards mechanical solutions of cosmic and human problems must have appeared not only incomprehensible, but if penetrated, outrageous. It cannot have been far from the thoughts of good citizens like Melzi and his friends that such speculations were of so blasphemous a nature as to raise the literal truth of the cry, 'publish and be damned'. Vasari's reference to Leonardo as heretical, and more a philosopher than a Christian shows how real this danger was in I550.

A third level of difficulty in interpretation lay in Leonardo's strongest claim to originality-in his power of visualizing his problems, thinking and expressing his thoughts in drawings rather than words. Whole sheets of his thoughts consist of wordless picture-sequences which like his words were arranged from right to left.

Of all subjects, it is true, these obstacles would apply least to anatomy. But when one realizes that here Leonardo was as concerned as much with the function of organs as with their structure, one can see that even the anatomical drawings, and those of his last years in particular, would be incomprehensible to almost anyone except possibly another anatomist of the calibre of Vesalius.

Thus when Melzi invited those capable of appreciating them to inspect Leonardo's notes, it was a small band indeed who were qualified to do so. Certain persons we do know, obtained direct or indirect access to Leonardo's notes. It is relevant to the subject of his influence on Renaissance anatomy to see how far these men overcame these obstacles and disseminated his views. Of these men Francesco Melzi himself must be mentioned first.

Melzi, more than any man then living, was best placed for the task of editing Leonardo's cryptic notes. He had been Leonardo's constant and trusted companion for over ten years before his death. He had assisted Leonardo during those years when he was hoping to complete his anatomical work in Milan; he had accompanied him to Rome, and there seen Leonardo's frustration and prohibition from anatomical work. He had witnessed Leonardo's evident concern for publication of his anatomy whilst living at Amboise. Yet he achieved nothing in this regard. Why?

The answer to our question emerges from a consideration of what Melzi did accomplish in this way during his life. There is no doubt that he did appreciate his particular responsibility with regard to Leonardo's manuscripts; nor is there any doubt that he set out to fulfil his task with devoted single-mindedness. As an artist he concentrated his energies on the Treatise on Painting, endeavouring to make this the point of departure from which to include all the various aspects of Leonardo's work. However, Melzi was overwhelmed by the mass of material which came to light. Apart from the difficulties of comprehension already mentioned, Melzi evidently found himself floundering in a sea of facts, figures and fancies which he was never able to master. Considering that he had some eighteen volumes of notes to deal with, this is perhaps excusable. By the end of his life, in I568, after some forty years of struggle, he had compiled a huge series of 944 short chapters selected from Leonardo's works. These were still in confusion, incomplete, and unpublished.

In order to achieve even this, Melzi had employed at least two assistants. These three persons must have systematically explored many of Leonardo's sheets; for their purpose went beyond that of a practical Treatise on Painting, to include Leonardo's work on optics, geology, botany-but not apparently anatomy.

Another artist known to have had access to Leonardo's manuscripts was Albrecht Durer. In 1505 Durer went to Venice to find out what the Italians could teach him on the subjects of perspective and human proportion. His search seems to have led him to Luca Pacioli, Leonardo's friend, whom he found at Bologna. It is possible that Durer met Leonardo there. Whether this were so or not, Leonardo's influence on Durer is revealed by the discovery of several sheets containing copies of Leonardo's notes on dragons, horses, and anatomy:5 these last consist of drawings of the bones and contours of the arm of a monkey and a human being. Several of Durer's notes suggest too an acquaintance with Leonardo's Treatise on Painting. Leonardo's influence on Durer's studies in human proportion has been substantiated by Panofsky.6

If such evidence of contact should raise hopes of finding a dissemination of Leonardo's anatomical advances through Durer they fail to fulfil their promise. In spite of his enthusiastic studies on the proportions of the human body, Durer performed little, if any, scientific anatomy. Once he does produce an anatomical drawing amongst his notes; a skeleton of primitive crudity.7 The well-known drawing, Memento Mei, showing Death as a skeleton on horseback also reveals his crude anatomical knowledge. Neither drawing reaches the standard of the early Leonardo study of the arm, of which he had made a copy.

The University of Pavia played a large part in Leonardo's life. Here he associated with professors of mathematics, anatomy and medicine; for such were Pacioli, Fazio Cardano, Marcantonio della Torre, and Girolamo Cardano. Fazio Cardano had in 1482 translated John Peckham's Perspectiva Communis, a work on optics which in Leonardo's hands gave origin to a lifetime's research. Fazio is mentioned several times in Leonardo's notes. To these he must have had access both during Leonardo's lifetime and afterwards, for Fazio survived him by five years.

Though there is no evidence that the elder Cardan utilized Leonardo's notes other than by personal contact with his colleagues in Pavia this opinion does not apply to Fazio's illegitimate son Jerome Cardan. Born in I50I, Jerome led a tempestuous life which, on its upward curve reached the professorial chair of medicine at Pavia in 1547, and the publication of his De Subtilitate Rerum in I55I. It is difficult to believe that so gifted a man, one who moreover had known Leonardo from his childhood, should fail to show an interest in those volumes in Melzi's devoted care at near-by Vaprio. And there is much evidence that he did know of them. In his descriptions of the camera obscura, in his interpretation of fossil formation, and in his account of the vacuum produced by the condensation of the atmosphere to form clouds and rain, Cardan betrays so close a relationship to Leonardo's thoughts that it is accepted by many that his contact with them was direct. Even the universal joint and the 'Cardan shaft' are to be found in Leonardo's notebooks. But Jerome Cardan was interested in the applications of mathematics to natural phenomena, an interest that included astrology and medicine; he seems to have been little concerned with anatomy, whether that of his personal acquaintance Leonardo or of the brilliant foreigner Vesalius. Cardan's attitude towards both these great anatomists is revealed in his allusion to them in the chapter on painting in his De Subtilitate. Here his comparison of the arts reflects that of Leonardo in his Treatise on Painting:

Painting [writes Cardan] is the most subtile of all mechanical arts, and the most noble. Painting creates more admirable things than poetry or sculpture; the painter adds shadows and colours and joins to these a speculative discipline. It is necessary for the painter to have a knowledge of everything because everything is of interest to him. The painter is a scientific philosopher, an architect, and a skilled dissector. The excellence of his representation of all the parts of the human body depends on this. This was begun some time ago by Leonardo da Vinci, the Florentine, and all but perfected by him. But this work never had such a craftsman, such an investigator of the natural parts, as Vesalius.'

One other contact of significance with Leonardo's notes is related by Vasari, who tells us that some writings of Leonardo, 'written with the left hand backwards, which treat of painting', were in the hands of a certain painter who visited him in Florence. Vasari tells how this man was taking the manuscript to Rome to get it printed. What happened to it after that no one knows. The story proves that some of Melzi's visitors were not content merely to examine Leonardo's manuscripts. How many disappeared from Melzi's villa even before he died?

Perhaps the most important of those who availed themselves of access to Leonardo's notes was the artist-writer, Giorgio Vasari. He, in his short Life of Leonardo, did more for the preservation of his name as an anatomist than any. It is obvious that Vasari could not appreciate the scientific value of the sheets of anatomical drawings which he saw; he had neither the time nor the knowledge to do so. But he was intelligent enough to sense their importance: 'Whoever succeeds in reading these notes of Leonardo', he wrote, 'will be amazed to find how well that divine spirit has reasoned of the arts, the muscles, the nerves and veins, with the greatest diligence in all things.'

The impression gained by Paolo Giovio was very similar; he seems to have been the only contemporary physician to write appreciatively of Leonardo's anatomical work. As a pupil of Marcantonio della Torre during the years when he was collaborating with Leonardo, Giovio would be in a good position to judge of Leonardo's methods. In 1527 Giovio wrote of Leonardo:

‘ In order that he might be able to paint the variousjoints and muscles as they bend and extend according to the laws of nature, he dissected in medical schools the corpses of criminals, indifferent to this inhuman and nauseating work. He then tabulated with extreme accuracy all the different parts down to the smallest veins and the composition of the bones, in order that this work, on which he had spent so many years, should be published from copper engravings for the benefit of art. ‘ 9

Even the physician Giovio, though he may well be recalling work done at Pavia with della Torre, makes no reference to the scientific nature ofLeonardo's anatomy; he notes only its artistic value. This undoubtedly reflects contemporary opinion in general.

With all the vectors pointing towards Leonardo's influence in the field of artistic anatomy we are stimulated to examine the more closely Leonardo's one publication, the Treatise on Painting.

This Treatise is first mentioned by Luca Pacioli in a letter written to the Duke of Milan in I498. 'Leonardo', writes Pacioli, 'with all diligence has finished his praise-worthy Book on Painting and Human Motion.' What happened to this, the most personal version of the Treatise on Painting? Was it completely lost, or did some manuscript copies circulate alongside the massive but still incomplete compilation of Melzi and his assistants? Whatever happened, the long version of the Treatise was not published until I8I 7, whilst the short version appeared in Paris in I651.

Meanwhile, in 1542, Benvenuto Cellini, ardent among other enthusiasms in his admiration of Leonardo, whilst he was employed in Paris bought a manuscript in Leonardo's distinctive script from a poor gentleman. He describes it as containing sections on sculpture, painting and architecture, and he specially praises that on perspective. He does not, however, mention anatomy. It may be that the section on painting to which Cellini refers was the Treatise on Painting. If so, it was here combined with other parts of Leonardo's notes.

Some time before 1584 the artist Lomazzo describes a version of the Treatise on Painting in Leonardo's peculiar handwriting, and Ambrosio Mazenta, from his description, seems to have seen the Treatise some time before I631.

In the Elmer Belt Library of Vinciania in Los Angeles there are twenty-three copies of manuscripts of the short version of the Treatise. As Steinitz remarks, 'each manuscript is important as a carrier and disseminator of Leonardo's message'.10 These circulated in Rome, Urbino, Milan, Padua, Florence, Venice, Bologna, Cortona and Paris, during the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries. Enclosed in such copies of the Treatise were Leonardo's observations on anatomy.

The anatomical chapters of Leonardo's Treatise on Painting have received little attention. This is quite understandable since they are so over shadowed by his far greater and later, anatomical achievements. Nevertheless, it has to be remembered that these anatomical observations, modest as they are, reveal a concept of the human body as revolutionary for the time as any of Leonardo's productions. One has only to compare them with the traditional anatomy of Mondino to see this. Moreover, these anatomical chapters circulated widely in northern Italy in the decades following Leonardo's death. That they continued to exert considerable influence is demonstrated by their eventual publication, I32 years later, in i65I.

Chapters dealing with anatomical matters are scattered widely throughout the Treatise. They may be grouped under four headings: Attitudes and Gestures; Equilibrium and Movement; Proportons of the Human Body; and Descriptive Anatomy. They total about 120 out of 355 chapters in the first English edition of the Treatise on Painting (from which all quotations are taken)."1

The outlook of these chapters is, perhaps, best summarized in Leonardo's own words: 'When you understand the make of a human body, its members, Jonctures, and the several positions these are capable of, apply yourself to the study of motion.' Attitudes are discussed in relation to the prominence of muscles . . . 'A painter will look with contempt on the manner of some ignorant painters who in all sorts of attitudes do always make the same muscles appear, in the arms, back, stomach, and other parts.' Again, attitudes are analysed in relation to the expression of emotions:

‘ All the figures in a painting ought to be in an attitude suitable to the subject they represent; so that in viewing them one may easily know what they think and what they would say. To assist your imagination in this suiting the attitudes to the figures, consider attentively the gestures of mutes, who express the thoughts and conceptions of their mind by the motions of their eyes, hands, and whole body.... ‘

The relation of attitudes to age is described:

‘ To represent an old man standing, you must give him a dull, indolent attitude, with slow motions, his knees a little bent, his feet straddling, his back crooked, his head stooping forwards, and his arms rather folded than spread too wide. ‘

These descriptions are of exemplary clinical brevity and accuracy. The movements of the shoulders, hips, and neck are described as 'more variable than any other Jonctures of the body; their motions being more numerous and diversified than those of any other part. But of these I propose a particular Treatise.' Here, as on several other occasions in the Treatise, Leonardo promises further studies which we know him to have carried out.

Equilibrium and Movement receive over seventy chapters in the Treatise. They also form the subject of seventeen illustrations in the book. All Leonardo's discussion of these subjects is governed by his great general principle: 'All motion proceeds from the loss of equilibrium, that is of equality of balance. This must always cease e'er motion can commence; and ever the further anybody is removed from the equilibrium the quicker and more violent is its motion.' This observation leads him on to an analysis of the movements of the body in terms of a shifting centre of gravity: 'The stretching out of an arm drives the equilibrium of the body into that foot which sustains the whole weight; as is seen in those who, with arms outstretched, can walk upon a rope.'

His particular interest in the movements of the arms led him to make the further comment on their relation to balance:

‘ A figure standing firm on its feet makes an equilibrium of all its members around the central line on which it is sustained. A figure therefore thus steady and thus balanced, stretching one of its arms out from the body, must at the same time shift so much of its weight to the opposite side as is equal to that of the extended arm. This must be understood of every part in general, sallying out beyond ordinary from its whole. ‘

Leonardo was treating the human body as an instrument of movement, governed, even in the expression of its deepest emotions, by mechanical laws. Such a mechanistic concept of human movement brought an entirely 'new look' to human anatomy and physiology. It was as revolutionary an outlook on the problems of the human microcosm as was Copernicus' new view of the solar macrocosm. Shorn even of the vast range of his anatomical discoveries Leonardo here shows something of his creative anatomical genius.

The third group of anatomical observations, those on the Proportions of the Human Body is surprisingly small, some ten chapters only. It is difficult to account for this except by the suggestion that Leonardo already planned an independent treatise on this subject. This possibility is endorsed by his comment at the end of the chapter on the different proportions in the body of a man and a child: 'For the rest we shall treat of them when we come to consider the Proportions of all the Parts of a Human Body.'

That Leonardo had indeed finished a detailed study of human proportions by I498 is consistent with the dating of those many drawings on the subject now at Windsor. It is confirmed by the young man, Guericus, who published an account of Leonardo's own particular system of human proportions in 1504. This, it would appear, was just one more example of Leonardo's influence being demonstrated by the utilization of his unpublished work by another.

Of descriptive anatomy the Treatise on Painting contains relatively little, some twenty-two chapters only. These are almost entirely devoted to descriptions of bones, muscles and joints. The points made are for the most part simple, referring to the shape of joints in flexion and extension, the prominences caused by muscle tendons or bellies, etc. Some, however, deal with specific problems such as the movements of the hip or shoulder joint, the flexion and extension of the elbow joint as it affects the 'adjutorium and the two fucils', i.e. the humerus and the radius and ulna. This and the movements of the ankle are illustrated. There is a description of the sesamoid bones of the body, numbering eight; 'in each shoulder one, as many in each knee, and two in each foot, under the first Joncture of the great toe, towards the heel. And let it be observed that these bones always grow extremely hard as the person draws near to old age.' The muscles of the abdomen are interestingly but vaguely described; and there is a curiously detailed description of the pronator quadratus which 'rises in the middle of one of the fucils of the arm and terminates in the middle of the other fucil; its form is square, its breadth three inches and its thickness one and a half....' These specific anatomical descriptions are inevitably marred by lack of comprehension on the part of the copyist.

Of all joints, Leonardo was most interested in the shoulder, ending his description with the assurance that the matter will be further explained 'in my Treatise on Anatomy'. Here in this Treatise he describes the movements of the shoulder as

‘ mostly simple; that is the arm, directed by them is usually carried either upwards or downwards, backwards or forwards. Though these motions may be said to be infinite, yet in effect does the arm in describing a circle on the wall show all the motions it is capable of. For every continued quantity being divisible in infinity, and this circle being a continued quantity produced by the motion of the arm around its circumference, it follows, of course, that the motions of the shoulder are infinite. ‘

This concept of infinite circular movements Leonardo applied to other joints, to the wrists, fingers, toes, and above all to the spine. From such concepts of joint movement it becomes geometrically possible to construct a complex of bodily movements consisting of one circular movement upon another, the whole pattern building up to that of cycle on epicycle of infinite variety yet of fixed order. This corresponds to the Ptolemaic conception of the movements of the celestial bodies. Of this Leonardo was well aware, and later claims that he will show the body 'in the same order as was used by Ptolemy before me in his Cosmography ... in so far as it has local movement by means of its parts'.12

Though Leonardo himself did not fully develop this concept, a Milanese artist who came across his treatise did, logically and systematically drawing its results in a set of extraordinary figures. These are to be seen in the Codex Huygens, a work written about 1570 by a Milanese artist, possibly Aurelio Luini, son of one of Leonardo's most notable students Bernardino Luini. This Codex also contains drawings of skeletons, studies of human proportions, and a series on the proportions of the horse which are certainly copied from lost manuscripts of Leonardo. In Panofsky's opinion it contains at least thirty-two copies of Leonardo's drawings, sixteen of which are otherwise lost.'3

The Codex came to light in i69o, being then bought from the wife of a Dutch artist by Constantine Huygens, secretary to King William III. It once more illustrates the existence of the widespread influence of Leonardo's anatomy amongst the artists of the sixteenth century.

We divided Leonardo's anatomical studies into three stages: early artistic exploration of the muscles, bones and joints, and their movements; topographical exploration and discovery; and that of physiological inquiry. It is clear that the last two scientific stages of his work withered away in the intellectual vacuum around them. Their traces gave birth to no more than the legend of Leonardo the Anatomist, the factual basis for which was hidden away, either in Melzi's villa in Italy, in Pompeo Leoni's scrapbooks in Spain, or in a castle in England. Only about 1780, when William Hunter had seen the sheets at Windsor, did this legend regain its factual foundation.

Leonardo's first phase of artistic anatomy did not suffer so cruel a fate. It was as an artist that he successfully spread the roots of his anatomy into the studios of his fellows, where it lived on until it reached publication in I651, after which its influence soared. Its usefulness to artists was due to the science it brought into their art. Anatomy could not come into existence as a science without adequate techniques for recording its observations; these it needed as much as any other science; these the Treatise on Painting stressed, revealing itself in spite of its title as a scientific study of a mechanical and psychological instrument, the human body.

It was as an artist that Leonardo attempted the fusion of anatomy with medical science through della Torre. This attempt was itself a great peak reached from those first modest beginnings of anatomy in the botegas of Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio. The renaissance of anatomy could never have occurred without those long, distasteful hours of adventurous dissection and patient drawing. Without this artistic surge for knowledge the medical professors of anatomy, droning their prosings from a tainted Galenic text, could never have found a way of recording Galenic anatomical errors, let alone their corrections.

Leonardo was known throughout northern Italy as the artist-anatomist who had created the new science; he was the spearhead of the new creative anatomy. Death barred his experiment with della Torre from success. But the movement went on, particularly in Florence. Through Andrea del Sarto, Leonardo's anatomy reached his pupil Rosso Fiorentino, who himself planned an anatomical treatise; and Rosso, with Perino del Vaga, found himself drawn into the unhappy textbook of anatomy compiled by Estienne and Rivi&e." Once more the fusion arose in the projected work on anatomy in which Michelangelo contemplated collaboration with Realdo Colombo.

These examples reveal how Leonardo had broken the hard ground of bigotry and prejudice which had buried anatomy for so many centuries; how he had stimulated the fusion of art and science in anatomical representation; and how he had prepared the tilth to receive the masterpiece of Vesalius and Calcar. In I543, when this was published, it was neither lost nor damned.
RESOURCE:
Cambridge University Medical History - Kenneth D. Keele
Cambridge University Journal, Volume 8, Issue 4, October 1964 - pp 360 - 370
Published Date: August 16, 2012

VERSO: THE VERTEBRAL COLUMN C. 1510 - 1511

VERSO: THE VERTEBRAL COLUMN C. 1510 - 1511 (DETAIL)

THE CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM AND PRINCIPAL

ORGANS OF A WOMAN C. 1509 - 1510

Black and Red Chalk, Ink, Yellow Wash, Finely Pricked Through

Dimensions: 47.6 x 33.2 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 912281

VERSO: THE MUSCLE OF THE SHOULDER C. 1510 – 1511

Pen and Ink With Wash, Over Black Chalk

Dimensions: 29.2 x 19.8 cm (sheet of paper)

RCIN 919003

VERSO: THE CRANIUM 1489

Traces of Black Chalk, Pen and Ink

Dimensions: 18.8 x 13.4 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919057

VERSO: THE BONES OF THE FOOT, AND THE MUSCLE OF

THE NECK C. 1510 – 1511

Pen and Ink With Wash Over Black Chalk

Dimensions: 29.0 x 19.6 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919002

VERSO: THE VESSELS OF LIVER, SPLEEN AND KIDNEYS C. 1508

Pen and Ink Over Black Chalk

Dimensions: 19.2 x 14.0 cm (Sheet of Paper)

RCIN 919028

RECTO: THE UTERUS OF A GRAVID COW. C. 1508

Traces of Black Chalk, Pen and Ink

Black Chalk, Pen and Ink

Measurements

Dimensions: 19.2 x 14.2 cm (sheet of paper)

RECTO: THE UTERUS OF A GRAVID COW. C. 1508 (DETAIL)

THE CODEX LEICESTER BY PROF. CLAIRE FARAGO

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER ART & ART HISTORY

The Codex Leicester is the product of Leonardo da Vinci’s mature activities as a writer who worked by combining the visual and verbal registers into a single, syntactic model of exposition. The present exhibition displays eight double-sided pages from the disassembled Codex Leicester (cat. No. 114). As a text, the codex offers a significant example of what Italio Calvino once described as Leonardo’s ‘’ battle with language to capture something that evaded his powers of expression. ‘’(1) It is a preliminary draft for a treatise in the most advanced state of any surviving treatise in Leonardo’s corpus – on the dynamics of water , compiled when he was in his mid – fifties. The manuscript deals with the forces of nature on a cosmological scale. It documents Leonardo’s observations and attendant the or etical considerations about the movement of water in rivers and canals and, conversely, about the non-movement of water in the standing waves of the sea. The text records numerous controlled experiments, including some that are classics in a textual heritage established since antiquity, and describes many additional imagined thought experiments of Leonardo’s own devising. Without duplicating his procedures in an actual laboratory setting, scholars may find it difficult to distinguish between drawing that are thought experiments and ones that document actual trials, although some distinctions have been made in recent years through experiments. The discussion of specific cases in the codex shows Leonardo’s testing on inherited theories using models, thought experiments, and direct observation of natural phenomena. The manuscript also offers numerous practical solutions to real-life engineering problems that arose during his employment as a consultant engineer. It is clear throughout that Leonardo’s intention is not just observation and explanation pf phenomena but also a quest for an understanding of nature’s basic principles in order to apply that knowledge to the needs of the world.

Leonardo’s dual occupation as an artist and engineer may seem strange today, but the combination was not uncommon among his contemporaries. During most of his adult life, Leonardo worked successfully a consulting water engineer for a ‘superhighway’ canal system in an emerging capitalist economy. The graphic techniques essential to his artistic training enhanced his scientific expertise. Judging from the systematic compilation of nearly a lifetime’s worth of notes on the movements of water in the Codex Leicester, Leonardo planned to publish an illustrated book for an emerging market geared to practitioners. If this is the case, the large format of the codex suggests that he envisioned a publication on an extravagantly large scale, comparable to Giorgio Valla’s folio-size encyclopedia, De fugiendis et expetendis rebus (Venice, 1501). Leonardo framed his studies on the movement of rivers and seas in a lofty theoretical framework sanctioned not only by his expertise as an engineer but also by a philosophical tradition institutionalized in medieval universities and the scientific literature associated with them. At the same time, the printing revolution, especially the new technology that made it increasingly possible to combine text with sophisticated illustrations on a single page, opened the possibility for a new class of treatise writers (such as Leonardo) to work outside the context of the university.

Carlo Pedretti has suggested that Leonardo was preparing the material gathered in the codex as a treatise for publication with copperplate engravings, a luxurious and technically sophisticated method of printing that may help explain the consistent format of a body of text combined with marginal illustrations, seen frequently in printed texts of the time.(3) Leonardo also developed a simple but effective technique to aid the busy reader: each new ‘case’ begins with a highly visible capital letter in the text, another device he borrowed from manuscripts and printed texts. In the Codex Leicester, Leonardo transmitted practical information on the best method of harnessing the power of water in rivers and canals, together with an analysis of the causes of observed effects. Inclusion of theoretical information encouraged readers to develop their own applications. Had it been published at the time it was written, such a text would have far exceeded the scope of any existing technical manual directed to a professional class of artisans and applied engineers. In addition to serving this specialist audience, the treatise, with its wide theoretical compass, might have appealed to a highly educated leisure class, as did perspective treatises and handbooks of geometry of the time. (4)

The practical purpose that Leonardo may have intended the next to serve to serve is a significant factor to bear in mind in studying the interplay of the visual and the verbal register. This purpose is visually documented in the traces of Leonardo’s thought process on the page. The Codex Leicester contains approximately 360 small sketches and visual diagrams, most of which serve as components of the arguments and investigations recorded in words. Typically, Leonardo employed a range of graphic strategies to express a sequence of thoughts. For example, on Sheet 3 (fol. 34v), Leonardo begins in the top right margin with a geometric diagram representing the crust of the earth in cross section. Below this are two geometric sketches showing in elevation and plan the transformation in shape of a drop of water as it incorporates bits of solid matter, which he observes in order to model the action of water on the scale of the body of the earth. Elsewhere on this page is a series of beakers sketched in pen and ink that show a variety of configurations of siphons. These drawings accompany his further considerations of a received theory concerning the circulation of water throughout the earth’s ‘body’ ( see cat. No. 114, Sheet 3A, fol. 3r, for further discussion ). In other instances, however, Leonardo drew one idea directly on top of another, nearly to the point of illegibility. For example on Sheet 9, in a sketch at the bottom of folio 28 verso, in a consideration of the complex action of waves rebounding against the banks of a river, he simulates this action via an experiment conducted in a glass tank.

Although text predominates over image to a greater degree than in any other notebook surviving from Leonardo’s own hand, the range of notational means employed in the Codex Leicester offers the remarkable testimony of more than four decades of experimentation in a variety of graphic media. The sheer diversity of representational strategies provides an invaluable resource for understanding his graphic techniques at the time the codex was compiled, about 1508 to 1510. For example, Leonardo’s use of parallel hatching is conventionally associated with his early work, but his utilization of this device in many pen-and-ink sketches in the codex demonstrates that the technique continued to serve him in certain contexts. In the case of the codex illustrations, parallel hatching provides an economical means for rendering volume that can be readily transposed to the medium of line engraving.

The codex consists of eighteen large sheets of paper, folded in half to form a quire written on all four sides, and bound in a single signature whose pages are numbered 1 to 36 by an unknown sixteenth-century hand. Figure 104 offers a reconstruction of the nestling of the original folios of the codex, based on a diagram published by Gerolamo Calvi. In addition, Leonardo numbered ‘cases, ’ ‘proportions,’ ‘conclusions,’ and ‘concetti’ (ideas) at the top of many of the folios. At the point when Leonardo counted these examples, the bifolded sheets were already written and perhaps stacked in a certain order. This is corroborated by archeological evidence. A series of paleographical indications permit the solid conclusion that the individual sheets were folded, and in one case stacked, while the ink and other writing materials, such as red chalk, were not fully dry. When the notebook was first rediscovered, it was stacked and numbered in the way just described and sewn into cardboard covers of a kind used by Leonardo that are reinforced at the center seam with tape. The binding is exactly in the manner of Paris Ms. C, from about 1490. (6) The individuality of the binding technique, is, however, difficult to gauge.

There is insufficient evidence to determine the exact provenance of the manuscript before 1625, when it was in Rome in the possession of heirs of the Milanese sculptor Guglielmo della Porta (d. 1577). (7) Pedretti hypothesizes that della Porta may have acquired the manuscript from Leonardo’s artistic heir and pupil Francesco Melzi, But it is just as likely that it was passed from one generation of Milanese artists to another, beginning with one directly associated with Leanorda. Evidence for this consists of a notice of 1689 in the Milanese archives placing the notebook in the possession of Giuseppe Ghezzi (1634 -1721), who found it, perhaps already bound in brown leather, or perhaps not, in a trunk containing the books, manuscripts, and drawings of della Porta. Guglielmo della Porta was trained by his uncle Giacomo della Porta, who was trained by the sculptor and architect Cristoforo Solari, an associate of Leonardo’s documented in Milan around 1510, when Leonardo may have still been working on the treatise. (See further discussion in the entry to Sheet 13.)

The manuscript left the Italian peninsula in 1717, when Ghezzi sold it to the erudite English collector Thomas Coke, later the first earl of Leicester, who commissioned three copies and had brown leather-bound manuscript bound additionally in red Moroccan leather stamped in gold with the earl’s impresa of an ostrich grasping the proverbial worm with its beak. Coke’s descendants still owned the manuscript when it was first exhibited in 1952, at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, to celebrate the five hundredth anniversary of Leonardo’s birth. In 1980, the Leicester manuscript was sold at auction to Dr. Armand Hammer, who lent it to the Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana, University of California at Los Angeles. The following year, when the manuscript was renamed in Hammer’s honor, Carlo Pedretti recommended unbinding the notebook, which emphasized the autonomy of the individual folios at the expense of the coherence of the manuscript as a whole. This act also enables the pages of the codex to be exhibited. In 1994, the manuscript in its disassembled state was sold at auction to its present owner, Bill Gates, who restored the work’s former name.

The Codex Leicester is neither a finished treatise with a beginning, middle, and end nor a catchall journal, like some of the small pocket notebooks such as Paris Mss. K or H in which Leonardo recorded daily memoranda. The Codex Leicester is a work in progress. The manner in which Leonardo compiled his draft for a treatise on water, as well as the range of his ideas about the origins of rivers and occasional concrete references to rivers, bridges, places, and the like, securely dates the manuscript to about 1508*10. The dating is corroborated by the circumstances of Leonardo’s life. A note written in Florence about 1508 to one of his French patrons in Milan describes instruments and experiments Leonardo planned to perform on the Naviglio Grande, the great canal linked to Milan that was donated to him for this purpose by the French king Louis XII. (8) This opportunity to experiment provides an important context for the theoretical and empirical work on the main subject of the manuscript, namely, the most effective construction of canals and navigable rivers for transporting goods. Maintenance of canals for the transportation of goods was the primary application for Leonardo’s studies of hydraulics, alongside irrigation and fortification projects.

The eighteen sheets composing the codex also preserve the process by which Leonardo reassessed the analogy between the macrocosm of the world and the microcosm of the human body that had been fundamental to his thinking since the early 1490s. Leonardo regularly questioned inherited theories about the circulation of water in the earth, which were based on a long – standing analogy between the circulation of water through the planet earth and the circulation of blood in the human body. Ultimately, Leonardo came to understand that there exists no adequate explanation for the manner in which the planet behaves like a living body. The Codex Leicester documents his significant, gradually emerging, realization that no known type of siphonic action – the leading theory and the one Leonardo considered the most promising – accounts for the internal circulation of water from the seas to the tops of mountains. The unfolding story in the codex tells of his diminishing confidence in traditional analogies between the body of the earth and the human body and his formulation of a more complex, more modern, and more original view of the world.

Aside from the treatise on painting (the libro di pittura that was compiled posthumously from his surviving notes), published in abridge form in 1651, Leonardo’s study of water is the only subject among his extensive writings that was systematically studied by his immediate successors and printed before the end of the nineteenth century, when facsimiles of his notebooks and anthologies culled from his manuscripts began to appear. But long before technological advances in printing enabled this modern revival of interest in Leonardo, there were attempts to acknowledge the scientific importance of his writings on water to the history of hydraulics. In 1717, the same year that the notebook went to England, Tommaso Buonaventuri, the scholar of Galileo, contemplated publishing a selection, but he did not have access to a manuscript. Notes on water derived from original manuscripts of Leonardo then in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, similar to those contained in the Codex Leicester, were the first of his writings on the subject ever set in print. Del moto e misura dell’ acqua ( On the motion and measure of water ) consists of 566 passages edited as nine chapters by F. Luigi Maria Arconati (published in Bologna by Francesco Cardinali in 1826 ), based on a copy of other autograph writings made for Cardinal Francesco Barberini in Rome in the early seventeenth century. (9)

The first scholarly study of the codex was published by Mario Baratta in 1903, who studied one of the copies commissioned by Lord Leicester. (10) Some Leonardo manuscript experts find no rhyme or reason to the bewildering diversity of entries typical in Leonardo’s notes. Yet knowledge of Leonardo’s compilation habits has been growing over several generations of scholarship, yielding evidence of various kinds of order in Leonardo’s literary remains. Credit for a change of attitude belongs above all, to Gerolamo Calvi, Who established his scholarly reputation with a facsimile edition of the Codex Leicester that was published in 1909. Calvi recognized that Leonardo developed a system of canceling notes when he transferred them from one manuscript to another. From Leonardo’s system of striking through passages and from other discoveries about his compilation habits, we know that he transferred ideas to the Codex Leicester that had been recorded as early as Paris Ms. C., about 1490, and that he copied specific passages from at least five surviving manuscripts: Paris Ms. H, 1493 – 1494; Codex Madrid I, 1497 – 1500; Codex Madrid II, about 1504; Codex Arundel, dated March 1508 in Florence; and Paris Ms. F, dated September 1508 in Milan. Early testimony, references by Leonardo himself, and dismembered sheets surviving from lost notebooks tell us that other writings were integrated in the Codex Leicester compilation. Leonardo completed at least one other treatise devoted to the subject of water, the lost Libro M.

From the surviving evidence, it is difficult to say whether Leonardo ‘’ was more interested in the process of inquiry than in the completion of a text for publication, ‘’ as Calvino and most scholars today maintain. (11) Like his other projects for treatises on specific subjects, the Codex Leicester demonstrates that Leonardo was experimenting with organizational techniques. In this case, Leonardo’s major challenge was to integrate notes recorded over many years on a variety of interrelated subjects. Scholars hold a variety of opinions about the order in which Leonardo compiled the Codex Leicester and how he intended it to be read. Calvi hypothesized that Leonardo filled each folio of the codex as if it were an autonomous document. He concluded that the folios that record Leonardo’s rejection of the analogy between the circulation of water and blood were the last to be written because the arguments are the most advanced. Therefore, Leonardo must have begun with the folios at the centerfold in its bound form and ended with the pages at the beginning and end of the codex that reject this analogy. Pedretti follows Calvi’s argument that the folios are autonomous units but, because the discussions at the centerfold include nothing to signify a beginning, disagrees with Calvi’s hypothesis about the order of compilation. Pedretti hypothesizes that the exterior folios are the earliest, and the centerfold is the latest stage of the compilation.

Yet there are other alternatives. Scholars have long labored over questions of sequence and order without reaching definitive conclusions. The linear format of a bound book does not provide the best representation of Leonardo’s working habits. Nor is the order in which Leonardo compiled the manuscript necessarily the order he meant his intended readers to follow. The advantage of loose-leaf folios in an era when paper was sold by stationers as unbound quires is precisely that Leonardo did not have to determine the order of his ideas or the amount of space for any subsection in advance. The Codex Leicester, like the somewhat earlier Codex Madrid II, of about 1504, brings together an enormous range of notes in a way that allowed the maximum amount of flexibility for adding new notes while keeping track of existing ones. (12) In the case of the Codex Leicester, the compilation defines a subject that Leonardo largely invented in its current form. The practice of making each folio autonomous turned Leonardo’s long-standing, nonlinear habits of compilation into an advantage. The author, anticipating his own habitual thought processes, gave himself as much flexibility as possible in this manner.

It is reasonable to infer on the basis of the physical evidence that the sheets were all loos during the compilation process. Leonardo was thus able to organize the subject matter on the folded sheets as he was recopying information from other sources. Many sheets of the manuscript attest to this procedure: they are devoted to the same or related subjects, though not necessarily in a single unified argument. Moreover, some pages derive from more than one source in Leoardo’s autograph notes ( for example, fol. 13r on Sheet 13 A, discussed below ). The famous statement on folio 2 recto of the codex makes sense if one considers that he was drafting a treatise from earlier notes: ‘’ My concern now is to find subjects and inventions, gathering them as they occur to me; then I will get them in order. ‘’ Other sheets do not appear planned out completely in advance and contain original observations not found in any of the surviving notes used to compile the codex. Sheet 3 is an excellent example of the improvisatory aspect of Leonardo’s compilation process that records his ongoing thoughts on specific problems.

Anatomical Ms. A (Windsor, RL 19000 – 19017), which postdates the Codex Leicester by a few years and is widely considered a project that Leonardo intended for publication, indicates that its method of compilation is a refinement of the same procedure. Leonardo again adopted the four-sided, folded – folio format, and recopied earlier notes carefully and neatly. The subject of each folio is autonomous to an even greater degree.

In addition to procedural aspects of the compilation process, Leonardo left clues about his conceptual framework internal to the manuscript. His knowledge of hydraulics was extensive, informed by such classical texts as Pliny the Elder’s Natural History and Heron of Alexander’s treatise on water, and by Scholastic literature, including commentaries on Aristotle by Albertus Magnus, Albert of Saxony, and others. Yet Leonardo, whose knowledge of Latin was rudimentary at best, relied on a limited range of direct sources, notably on the compendium of theories about the composition of the earth written in Italian by Ristoro d’Arezzo in 1282 ( entitled Composizione del mondo ). (1) In 1277, Church authorities in Paris condemned the view that the cosmos ii a living creature, along with many other unorthodox ideas. Perhaps contrary to the effect intended by theologians, this clash between science and religion encouraged the scientific study of the heavens.

The Codex Leicester contains crucial evidence of Leonardo’s changing views of the world. These changes were precipitated by his intensive study of the body of the earth, but before the establishment of the geological sciences as such. According to notes preserved in Paris Ms. A, folios 55 to 58, about 1490 – 1492, Leonardo initially planned to organize his writings on the science of water around the analogy between the macrocosm of the world and the microcosm of the human body. By the time of he Codex Leicester, he had moved away from this literal analogy, questioning ancient authority on the basis of his ongoing study of geological formations ( see, further, cat. No. 114, Sheet 3 ). His most articulate statements postdate the codex, but the reasons for his disenchantment with the older view are already clear there: Leonardo came tp believe that the rivers of the earth originated as vaporized water, that is, as clouds. The renewal of rivers is not, in other words, due to the continuous circulation of subterranean rivers, as is the case with the human body, with its analogous veins and internal ‘’ lake of blood. ’’ In notes of slightly later date, such as RL 1900 recto (Windsor, Anatomical Ms. A, fl. 4r), cited by Pedretti and dated by him after 1510, Leonardo maintained that ‘’ the origin of the sea is contrary to the origin of the blood because the sea receives unto itself all the rivers, which are caused solely by the aqueous vapors raised up to the air. But the sea of blood is caused by all the veins. ‘’ Similar statements to the effect that clouds are the origin of rivers (Paris Ms. G, fol. 48 v, about 1510 – 1515, for example ) are preserved among Leonardo’s writings to the end of his life.

Besides the macrocosm/microcosm analogy, Leonardo considered three other modes of organization for his newly invented science of water. The codex contains notes on water and the moon copied from the first thirty pages of the heterogeneous compilation known as the Codex Arundel ( British Library, London ), begun in Florence on March 22, 1508. On pages of the Codex Arundel studied by Anna Maria Brizio, who dated them after the Codex Leicester, Leonardo drafted definitions from which to begin the science of the movement of water on deductive principles, along the lines of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry. (14) On Sheet 15 B ( fol. 15v ) of the Codex Leicester, in keeping with this deductive approach, Leonardo recorded an extensive list of chapters he called ‘’ books ‘’ for his projected treatise. He proposed beginning with chapters on the general nature of water itself, on the sea, on veins (i. e., subterranean rivers and springs ), on rivers, on the bottoms of rivers, and so on, culminating with details such as ‘’ things worn away by water, ‘’ the title of his last projected chapter. Yet he was evidently not entirely committed to this approach, for he also drafted introductions in the form of literary descriptions praising the beauty of the earth, preserved in both the Codex Arundel and the Codex Leicester (Sheet 3, for example). In the contemporary Paris Ms. F and in the same section of the Codex Arundel ( fols. 1-30 ), Leonardo also contemplated an alternative, empirical mode of organization that simply lists the numerous effects of water. This approach is also recorded on several pages of the Codex Leicester, including folio 15 verso ( see further discussion in cat. No. 114, Sheet 15 ).

In the Codex Leicester, all four conceptual frameworks described above are present, but Leonardo went beyond simply combining their individual characteristics and instead appealed to the Aristotelian science of cosmology. Sheets 1, 2, and 3, containing some of his most sophisticated thinking about the circulation of water through siphonic action and the composition of the body of the earth, are also the most significant folios with respect to Leonardo’s ongoing thoughts on both organizational and conceptual matters. These three outermost sheets, forming the front and back of the notebook in its nested and bound form, are unique in that the halves of the sheets located at the front of the bound codex differ in subject from those portions of the same sheets located at the end. In the front, on Sheets 1 and 2 (fols. 1r-2v ), Leonardo treats a classic problem in the science of lunar cosmology, the composition of the moon, which is discussed in terms of the moon’s appearance when the moon is viewed from the earth. On the halves of the same Sheets 1 and 2 (fols. 35r – 36v) located at the end of the codex in its nested, bound format, Leonardo instead discusses the composition of the body of the earth, the subject of the back half of Sheet 3 ( located on fol. 34 r and v ), that is, on the adjacent page when the folios were nested and stacked as a single signature.

No other folias in the Codex Leicester exhibit such a clear division of subject matter, with the left-hand side of the sheet (i. e., the recto and verso at the beginning of the signature) devoted to one set of ideas, while the right-hand side (the recto and verso at the end of the signature) is devoted to a different subject. In most other cases, the same subject ranges over the entire sheet. Significant inferences about Leonardo’s planned treatise can be drawn from this physical evidence. Traditionally, treatises on cosmology follow the order established by Aristotle in De caelo et mundo ( On the heavens and the earth ). By beginning with a discussion of the lunary sphere and proceeding to a discussion of the sublunary sphere of the earth, to which the rest of the codex is devoted, Leonardo followed Aristotle’s order of exposition, thus situating his newly invented science of the movement of water among the theoretical sciences, as part of, (subalternate to) the science of cosmology. With this strategy, Leonardo seems to have been well on his way to resolving the long-standing question of how to present his investigations of the dynamics of water. The solution glimpsed on the opening three sheets of the Codex Leicester combines a deductive method of investigation, which proceeds from first principles or known causes, with a method of investigation that proceeds in the opposite direction, from observation of effects in nature to their causes.

Leonardo conceived the science of pictoral perspective in the same way, that is, as a Scientia media, a mixture of theory and experience. In his study of perspective and of water, he bestowed new theoretical status on what had been merely one of the mechanical arts in Hugh of St. Victor’s classification of knowledge, which was widely diffused in Scholastic writings. In this respect, Leonardo participated in current trends for reclassifications of the productive sciences were proposed by humanist such as Giorgio Valla, whose encyclopedia (mentioned above) Leonardo owned by 1504. In Valla’s scheme, theoretical sciences ordered to practical use replaced the seven mechanical arts that were traditional throughout the later Middle Ages and made them equal to the practical liberal arts. In constructing the science of water along these lines, Leonardo participated in current trends for reclassifying the practical sciences while still understanding the term ‘’ Scientia ‘’ in its medieval sense, as a field intellectual endeavor in which true causal explanations could be discovered. (15)

It is probable that Leonardo developed this organizational scheme and innovative conceptualization of the science of the movement of water during the process of gathering his research for the Codex Leicester. Closely related notes from 1508 preserved in the Codex Arundel and Paris Ms. F suggest that he also developed his ideas about the moon in the context of thinking about the composition of the earth. In his writings both moon and earth are concerned with the behavior of water, but beyond his study of water the subjects are related in the Aristotelian cosmology, which treats the elements and the spheres of the planets, stars, and other heavenly bodies. In this connection, Leonardo offered an original answer to the ancient questions concerning the composition of the moon, a topic that arose in the context of explaining why some parts of the moon’s surface were brighter than others. By the end of the fifteenth century, there was broad consensus that the moon did not have a light of its own. His energies in the Codex Leicester are largely directed to explaining the particular luminosity of the moon. Arguing against contemporary explanations – primarily in order to contest the position that the moon has a smooth reflective surface that behaves according to the same principle as a mirror – Leonardo postulated, on the basis of his extensive knowledge of optics, that the uneven brightness of the moon’s surface is due to the corrugated surface of the watery sphere that envelops the moon’s core.

The historical importance of the Codex Leicester is currently incompletely understood. As the codex especially demonstrates, Leonardo maintained that the moon, like the earth, has standing waves and its own center of gravity. The solution that he proposed in this connection to explain the source of the moon’s light was similar to the definitive answer given by Falileo a century later. In her 1997 study of Galileo, Eileen Reeves investigated continuities between art and science and the compatibility of religious and scientific knowledge during the opening decades of the seventeenth century. (16) She described Galileo’s contact with Paolo Sarpi, the Servite friar and historian of the Council of Trent who had suggested twenty years before the publication if Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius ( the book placed on the Index in 1616 that partly brought about the great astronomer’s arrest and trial by the Inquisition ) that the ashen or bluish surface barely visible between the horns of the moon in its crescent phase might be due to sunlight reflected from the earth’s atmosphere. Since the understanding of the moon’s composition was inherited from ancient sources, the similarities among authors are most likely due to shared sources. Nonetheless, Reeves emphasized that resonances between Galileo’s and Sarpi’s discussions of lunar substance suggest that they had direct knowledge of Leonardo’s empirical observations about reflected light and color and shadow. According to Reeves, the sequence of argumentation and missteps in Sarpi’s thinking, as well as his correct conjectures, suggest such a direct transmission of ideas. In the Codex Leicester, which contains Leonardo’s most extensive and mature notes on the subject of the moon’s light (though Reeves does not discuss this manuscript), the artist hypothesized correctly that the light of the sun reflecting from the uneven surface of the moon accounts for the moon’s unusual, soft luminescence. The artist also correctly hypothesized that the pale ashen light visible between the horns of the moon its crescent phase is due to sunlight reflecting onto the moon from the earth’s own uneven surface, one covered by seas and land masses. While the exact location of the Codex Leicester at the time that Galileo and Sarpi developed their own similar theories is unknown, the manuscript could easily have been among Lenardo’s writings that circulated in artistic, humanist, and scientific circles. If so, the Codex Leicester is one of the rare instances in which Leonardo’s writings had an effect on the future of scientific discovery. Unlike Galileo, neither Leonardo nor Sarpi considered the moon’s ashen light as possible evidence of the Copernican world system, but the transmission and attendant transformation of ideas leading to this historic, paradigm – shifting theory deserve further investigation and comment.

Essay quoted by book of ‘’ Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman ‘’ The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

PROF. CLAIRE FARAGO

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER ART & ART HISTORY