Leonardo Da Vinci's Note-Books - Arranged and Rendered Into English

By Edward McCurdy

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kent Press
• Release date: Dec 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528760386

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PREFACE

THE manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci afford the chief existing proof of that extraordinary versatility with which he has been credited from the time of his earliest biographers downwards. They comprise the records and results of his studies in the theory of art and in various branches of mathematical and natural science, together with fragments of literary composition of a philosophical or imaginative character, and in addition much personal and biographical matter. The manuscripts in their present form consist of about twenty note-books and bound volumes or collections of loose sheets of various sizes, containing altogether more than four thousand pages. While on many of these there are only drawings or scientific diagrams with at most a few words of comment or explanation, others are covered with minute writing, which with the rarest exceptions is of the character known as ‘left-handed’ from the fact of its direction across the page being from right to left, and which is therefore most easily read by the use of a mirror. The contents of these manuscripts, with the exception of such parts as are contained in the compilation known as Leonardo’s Treatise on Painting, have up to the present time only been available to English readers in the edition selected and edited by Dr. Richter. The period of more than twenty years which has now elapsed since the appearance of that important work has witnessed the publication in extenso of all the manuscripts of Leonardo at Paris and Milan with facsimile reproductions and transcripts, whilst a part of those at Windsor which treat of anatomy and the small volume ‘on the flight of birds’ have also appeared in a similar form; of the remainder of the Windsor manuscripts photographic facsimiles have been published. The quantity of material thus placed within reach of the student is the justification for a work of the scope of the present one. The above-mentioned editions have served as my text for the passages which I have taken from the Codice Atlantico, the Codice Trivulziano, the manuscripts at Paris and Windsor, and the volume ‘on the flight of birds.’ In the case of the manuscript in the British Museum and those at South Kensington I have worked from the originals. In the passages from these and from the Windsor facsimiles I have added a footnote where I have ventured to adopt a reading somewhat different from that found in the text as printed by Dr. Richter. For seven passages taken from the manuscript in the possession of the Earl of Leicester, I have used the text given in Dr. Richter’s work, and also for some six lines that occur in the Windsor manuscripts which I have not been able to locate in the facsimiles; whilst for two passages from sheets in the Christ Church Library at Oxford I am indebted to the texts in Mr. Sidney Colvin’s Oxford Drawings.

My intention has been to present Leonardo as a writer, and to include in this work all passages from the note-books of philosophical, artistic, or literary interest. From the mass of the scientific writings I have drawn very sparingly, selecting only a few passages which either possess a more general interest or which may serve to illustrate his method of exposition. I have not included any of those passages which are simply the memoranda of scientific or mathematical processes, or those of which the importance is entirely biographical. These latter chiefly consist of notes of Leonardo’s movements and household expenses, details as to his various commissions, and fragments of letters relating to the same. I have also thought fit to exclude the passages purporting to be letters addressed to the Devatdar of Syria, as their actual character is a matter of some uncertainty, and their literary value slight, as compared with the importance of the biographical issue which they raise, and any adequate discussion of that issue would travel far beyond the purpose of the present work. I have not included any of the allegories about animals which are found in MS. H of the Paris manuscripts, because they are merely extracts made by Leonardo from early bestiaries with at most verbal alterations; so also I have omitted the notes on armour and on methods of warfare in MS. B, as being derived in like manner from the De re militari of Roberto Valturio. These facts may serve to suggest some of the difficulties of selection. The manuscripts were Leonardo’s note-books, and as such they contain much unoriginal matter—some of it no doubt still unidentified—taken from various books which he read.

In the work of translation, trying at times to avoid the Charybdis of a too literal interpretation, I may have grounded my barque on the hidden reefs of Scylla which lie in the outer seas; but for the most part I have kept to the shallows.

The illustrations have been prepared from negatives specially taken for the purpose by Mr. Emery Walker. They have been chosen primarily with the intention of showing the degree of exactitude which characterised Leonardo’s study of natural phenomena. I am indebted to Dr. W. S. Handley for the description of such of them as are of an anatomical character; and for repeated help in the deciphering of various difficult passages of the text I have to thank Mr. J. A. Herbert, of the Manuscripts Department of the British Museum.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

LIST OF PLATES

INTRODUCTION

A RECORD OF THE MANUSCRIPTS

PROEM

BOOKI. LIFE

BOOKII. NATURE

BOOK III. ART—

1. PAINTING, POETRY, AND SCULPTURE

2. THE PRECEPTS OF THE PAINTER

3. PERSPECTIVE, AND LIGHT AND SHADE

4. LANDSCAPE

BOOK IV. FANTASY—

FABLES

PROPHECIES

LIST OF PLATES

(The originals with the exception of the frontispiece are all to be found in the Royal Library at Windsor)

LEONARDO DA VINCI, BY HIMSELF, Royal Library, Turin

  1. STUDY OF A SKULL IN SECTION, TO SHOW THE BONY CAVITIES OF THE FACE

This plate represents a skull sawn through in the median plane. The extreme front portion of the right half of the skull has been removed by a saw-cut at right angles to the median plane, so as to display the bony cavities or air spaces (frontal sinus, and maxillary antrum) which are present in the facial bones. The section also displays the nasal duct through which the tears pass down to the nasal cavity. On the left are seen typical teeth from the upper jaw: incisor, canine, bicuspid, and molar, with a full and accurate description appended. A transcript of the text is to be found in I Manoscritti di L. da V. Dell’ Anatomia, Fogli B, pp. 249-50.

  2. STUDIES OF THE DELTOID MUSCLE OF THE SHOULDER IN VARIOUS ASPECTS

This plate is concerned almost entirely with the deltoid muscle of the shoulder, which is represented from various aspects and in various positions of the arm. The little drawing in the centre below the middle of the page is not related to the one above it, and represents a dissection of the omo-hyoid muscle arising, as Leonardo believed, from the clavicle. The text contains the passages on the nature and number of the veins, which are to be found on pp. 79 and 80, also an account of the various movements of the neck, and explanations of the letters which occur on the smaller of the drawings. For transcript, see I Manoscritti di L. da V. Dell’ Anatomia, Fogli A, pp. 67-69.

  3. STUDIES IN THE ANATOMY OF THE NECK AND OF THE BONES OF THE FOOT

This plate illustrates the anatomy of (a) the bones of the left foot, seen from above and from below; (b) the muscular and other structures of the neck, seen from various aspects. In one of the passages of the text Leonardo gives the number of the bones of the foot as twenty-seven. For transcript, see I Manoscritti di L. da V. Dell’ Anatomia, Fogli A, pp. 75-6.

  4. STUDIES OF A SKULL IN MEDIAN SECTION

In the upper drawing half the vault of the skull has been removed in order to show the cranial cavity.

In the lower drawing the skull and the upper part of the spinal column are seen in a section through the mid-plane of the body. The spinal column appears to be unnaturally straight. The lines on the drawing are to show inter alia that the point about which the skull rotates is one third the vertical distance from the level of the chin to the level of the crown of the head. For transcript, see I Manoscritti di L. da V. Dell’ Anatomia, Fogli B, p. 243.

  5. LANDSCAPE WITH CLOUD EFFECT

  6. PAGE OF MS. ‘FOR THE SHRINE OF VENUS’ (Pel sito di Venere), TOGETHER WITH ARCHITECTURAL STUDIES AND SKETCH OF NEPTUNE WITH HIS HORSES

The heads and legs of horses seen at the base of the standing figure show its connection with the composition of Neptune in his chariot drawn by sea-horses, which, according to Vasari, Leonardo drew for Antonio Segni. The head of the horse on the right recalls the larger spirited study for the same composition at Windsor (Grosvenor Gallery Portfolio No. 48) From a note on the last-named drawing ‘abassi i cbavalli’ (make the horses lower), it may be inferred that the plate represents the later of the two versions. Leonardo was apparently dissatisfied with an arrangement in which the position of the figure suggests a charioteer quite as much as it does a deity, and altered it to represent the god in an erect position. The figure has a considerable similarity to that of the David of Michelangelo, but is not improbably of earlier date.

  7. GENISTA TINCTORIA (Dyers’ Greenweed) AND ACORNS AND LEAVES OF THE STALKED OAK (Quercus Robur Pedunculata)

  8. STUDY OF DRAPERY OF KNEELING FIGURE

  9. BRAMBLE (Rubus Fruticosus)

10. GROVE OF SILVER BIRCHES

11. STUDY OF TREE

12. COLUMBINE (Aquilegia Vulgaris)

13. RANUNCULUS REPENS (Creeping Crowfoot), ORNITHOGALUM UMBELLIFERUM (Star of Bethlehem), ANEMONE NEMOROSA (Wood Anemone), EUPHORBIA ESULA (Leafy-Branched Spurge)

LEONARDO DA VINCI’S NOTE-BOOKS

INTRODUCTION

THE unknown author of Aetna at the outset of his song disclaims all sympathy with the fictions of poets who represent the mountain as the forge of Vulcan, the kilns of the Cyclops, or the mound beneath which lies the giant Enceladus breathing smoke and flame. Fables all! And the bards who utter them not content with earth as their province think to tell of the wars of the Gods, and the shapes which Jove assumes!

His work shall treat of Aetna itself, not the legends about it. His purpose is to trace the mighty workings of nature as revealed in the mountain’s hidden fires.

This he proceeded to do with scientific thoroughness; yet it would seem that the reservation pressed somewhat hardly upon the poetic instinct; so soon as ever his purpose was accomplished the muse led him back in apparent contentment to the scorned fables.

An analogy—at best a partial thing—may here serve to break the shore-ice of the sea of conjecture. The early biographers of Leonardo da Vinci cultivated the picturesque with an almost metrical licence. Their narratives, which together constitute what Pater has termed the légende, are as inadequate to reveal his work and personality, as the fables of Vulcan’s forge and the like are unsatisfying as an origin for Aetna’s fire. Moreover, in the different aspects which Aetna has assumed to the imagination, seeming at first a caprice of the Gods and a thing of rhapsody, and subsequently—as the tenor of thought changed—a field for the scientific study of the forces of nature, there is presented a contrast no less sharply defined, and in its main features somewhat closely corresponding to that presented by the personality of Leonardo as shown in the earliest biographies and in the light of modern research. For the capricious volatile prodigy of youthful genius which the légende has bequeathed, the latter has substituted a figure less romantic, less alluringly inexplicable, but of even more varied and astonishing gifts. His greatness as an artist has suffered no change, but modern research has revealed the ordered continuity of effort which preceded achievement. It has made manifest how he studied the structure of the human frame, of the horse, of rocks, and trees, in order the better to paint and make statues, in that his work would then be upon the things he knew, and no sinew or leaf would be conventional, but taken directly from the treasury of nature; since the artist should be ‘the son, not the grandson of nature.’

This habit of scientific investigation in inception subsidiary to the practice of his art so grew to dominate it as to gradually alienate him from its practice to the study of its laws, and then of those which govern all created nature. The fruits of these studies lay hidden in manuscripts, of which the contents have only become fully known within the last quarter of a century. So by a curibus appositeness he is associated in each age with the predominant current of its activity. His versatility in the arts caused him to seem an embodiment of the spirit of the Renaissance. Alike as painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and musician, he aroused the wonder and admiration of his contemporaries. But to them, the studies which traversed the whole domain of nature, prefiguring in their scope what the spirit of the Renaissance should afterwards become, were so imperfectly comprehended as to seem mere trifles, ‘ghiribizzi,’ to be mentioned apologetically, if at all, as showing the wayward inconstancy of genius, and with regret on account of the time thus wasted which might have been spent on painting. Modern savants have resolved these trifles, and in so doing have estimated the value of Leonardo’s discoveries and observations in the realms of exact science. They have acclaimed him as one of the greatest of savants: not in completed endeavour which of itself reached fruition, but in conjecture and prefigurement of what the progress of science has in course of centuries established. Such conjecture, moreover, was not grounded in fantasy, but was the harvest of a lifetime of study of natural phenomena, and of close analysis of their laws. Anatomist, mathematician, chemist, geologist, botanist, astronomer, geographer,—the application of each of these titles is fully justified by the contents of his manuscripts at Milan, Paris, Windsor, and London.

To estimate aright the value of his researches in the various domains of science would require an almost encyclopaedic width of knowledge. In respect to these Leonardo himself in his manuscripts must be accounted his own best biographer, in spite of what may appear the enigmatic brevity of some of his statements and inferences. It is not possible to claim for him originality in discovery in all the points wherein his researches anticipated principles which were subsequently established. So incomplete is the record of the intellectual life of Milan under the Sforzas, which has survived the storms of invasion that subsequently broke upon the city, as to cause positive statement on this point to be wellnigh impossible; something, however, should be allowed for the results of his intercourse with those who were occupied in the same fields of research. We are told that at a later period he was the friend of Marc Antonio della Torre who held the Chair of Anatomy in the University of Pavia, and that they mutually assisted each other’s studies. He was also the friend of Fra Luca Pacioli the mathematician, and drew the diagrams for his De Divina Proportione, and the two were companions for some time in the autumn and winter of 1499, after leaving Milan together at the time of the French invasion. Numerous references and notes which occur throughout the manuscripts show that he was indefatigable in seeking to acquire knowledge from every possible source, either by obtaining the loan of books or treatises, or by application to those interested in the same studies. From the astrologers then to be found at Ludovic’s court—Ambrogio da Rosate and the others—he learnt nothing. He rated their wisdom on a par with that of the alchemists and the seekers after perpetual motion. His study of the heavens differed from theirs as much in method as in purpose. His instruments were scientific, and even at times suggestively modern. The line in the Codice Atlantico ‘construct glasses to see the moon large’ (fa occhiali da vedere la luna grande) refers, however, only to the use of magnifying glasses; the invention of the telescope is to be assigned to the century following.

At the commencement of the sixteenth century, the Ptolemaic theory of the Universe was still held in universal acceptance. Leonardo at first accepted it, and in his earlier writings the earth is represented as fixed, with the sun and moon revolving round it. He ended at some stage further on in the path of modern discovery. On a page of mathematical notes at Windsor he has written in large letters, ‘the sun does not move’ (il sole no si muove).

He has been spoken of as the forerunner of Bacon, of James Watt, of Sir Isaac Newton, of William Harvey. He cannot be said to have anticipated the discoveries with which their names are associated. It may, however, be claimed that he anticipated the methods of investigation which, when pursued to their logical issue, could not but lead to these discoveries.

The great anatomist Vesalius, after having given up his Chair of Anatomy in 1561 in order to become the court physician at Madrid, spoke of himself as still looking forward to studying ‘that true bible as we count it of the human body and of the nature of man.’ Sir Michael Foster takes these words as the keynote of the life-work of Vesalius:—‘the true bible to read is nature itself, things as they are, not the printed pages of Galen or another; science comes by observation not by authority.’ In method Leonardo was the forerunner of Vesalius, and consequently of William Harvey, whose great work was the outcome of Vesalius’s teaching. No passage in his writings constitutes an anticipation of Harvey’s discovery. He knew that the blood moved just as he also knew that the sun did not move, but the law of the circulation of the blood was as far beyond the stage at which his deductions had arrived as was the discovery of Copernicus. It was his work to establish, even before the birth of Vesalius, that ‘science comes by observation not by authority.’ Yet he was no mere empiric. He knew the authorities. He quotes in his manuscripts from Mundinus’s Anatomia, and he must have known the work of Galen to which Mundinus served as an introduction. At a time when the Church ‘taught the sacredness of the human corpse, and was ready to punish as a sacrilege the use of the anatomist’s scalpel,’ Leonardo practised dissection; and he suffered in consequence of his temerity, since it was subsequent to the malicious laying of information concerning these experiments that the withdrawal of the papal favour brought about his departure from Rome in 1515. Of such temerity the anatomical drawings are a rich harvest. The pall of authority was thrown aside; the primary need was for actual investigation, and of this they are a record. He would agree, he says, as to it being better for the student to watch a demonstration in anatomy than to see his drawings ‘if only it were possible to observe all the details shown in these drawings in a single figure; in which, with all your ability, you will not see nor acquire a knowledge of more than some few veins, while, in order to obtain an exact and complete knowledge of these, I have dissected more than ten human bodies, destroying all the various members and removing even the very smallest particles of the flesh which surrounded these veins, without causing any effusion of blood other than the imperceptible bleeding of the capillary veins.’

It was after his examination of these drawings that the great anatomist Dr. William Hunter wrote that he was fully of opinion that ‘Leonardo was the best Anatomist at that time in the world.’

Coleridge called Shakespeare ‘myriad-minded.’ If the Baconian contention were established the result would afford a parallel to the myriad-mindedness of Leonardo. Morelli speaks of him as ‘perhaps the most richly gifted by nature among all the sons of men.’ Equally emphatic is the tribute of Francis I. recorded by Benvenuto Cellini: ‘He did not believe that any other man had come into the world who had attained so great knowledge as Leonardo, and that not only as sculptor, painter, and architect, for beyond that he was a profound philosopher.’

In regard to this undefined, ungarnered knowledge the prevalent note of the early biographers is frankly the marvellous. To us his personality seems to outspan the confines of his age, to project itself by the inherent force of its vitality down into modern times and so to take its due place among the intuitive influences of modern thought. To them on the other hand his personality projecting beyond the limits of his own age seemed to stretch back into the age of legend, to gather something of its insouciance and its mystery. The figure—never sufficiently to be extolled for beauty of person—wandering through princes’ courts improvising songs, bearing a lute as a gift from one patron to another, and playing upon it in such skilled fashion that that alone out of all the arts of which he had knowledge would suffice as ‘open sesame’ to win him welcome, seems indeed rather to have its habitation in Provence at the close of the twelfth century than to be that of a contemporary and fellow-citizen of Macchiavelli and Savonarola. In lieu of any such period of toilsome apprenticeship as Vasari’s biographies lead us customarily to expect, there seems almost a Pallas-like maturity at birth. The angel painted by him when an apprentice causes his master to abandon the use of the brush, in chagrin that a mere child had surpassed him; and so, in like manner, we are told that a monster which he painted on a shield filled his own father with dismay. Unsatisfied with this mastery of the arts he sought to discern the arcana of nature; and whither the quest had led him it was not for a mere biographer to say. But each will help you to conjecture, with hints more expressive than words, and less rebuttable. Leonardo’s scornful references to the pretended wisdom of alchemists, astrologers, and necromancers lay hidden meanwhile in the manuscripts, not available to contravene such suppositions.

The personality as represented in the early biographies is substantially that which is expressed in the phrase of Michelet ‘Léonard, ce frère italien de Faust.’ It tells of him that he chose rather to know than to be, and that curiosity led him within the forbidden portals! It represents in fact the popular mediaeval conception of scientific study. Much of the modern aesthetic appreciation is in its essential conception a more temperate re-statement of the same point of view. Errors—or at any rate some of them!—are corrected in the light of the results of critical research from Amoretti downwards: the outlook nevertheless remains that of Vasari and the Anonimo Fiorentino! Ruskin’s dictum, that ‘he debased his finer instincts by caricature and remained to the end of his days the slave of an archaic smile,’ is at one with the opinion of the folk of Wittenberg who lamented Faust’s use of the unhallowed arts which had made him Helen’s lover. The true analogy lies not with Faust but with Goethe, between whom and Leonardo there is perhaps as great a psychological resemblance as ever has existed between two men of supreme genius. In each the purely artistic and creative faculties became subordinate, mastered by the sanity of the philosophical faculties.

In each alike the restless workings of the human spirit desiring to know,