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The extraordinary hands shown above are a detail from The Virgin ofthe Rocks (left) which Leonardo painted in 1483. Upper hand is thatof the Virgin Mary; below, an angel's finger points towards the infantJohn the Baptist. Leonardo was only thirty-one when he executed thismasterpiece of the Italian Quattrocento, which today hangs in the Louvre,Paris (see p. 26). The figures have the natural gracefulness of 15th-century Florentine art and harmonize perfectly with the natural settingand the precisely rendered flowers and leaves. Some 23 years later(about 1506), Leonardo painted a second version of The Virgin of theRocks. In this later version, which now hangs in the National Gallery,London, Leonardo made many changes: the angel no longer points hisfinger at the infant John the Baptist, and many of the details of rocks,vegetation and drapery are different from those in the 1483 painting.

CourierOCTOBER 1974 27TH YEAR

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Page

TWO REDISCOVERED MANUSCRIPTS

OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

5 THE STRANGE VICISSITUDESOF LEONARDO'S MANUSCRIPTS

By Paolo Galluzzi

8 THE MADRID NOTEBOOKS

By Anna Maria Brizio

11 THE ELEMENTS OF MACHINES

15 LEONARDO'S THEATRE IN THE ROUND

16 LEONARDO THE MUSICIANBy Emanuel Winternitz

19 SPECIAL 16-PAGE SUPPLEMENT

LEONARDO DA VINCIAS TOLD TO CHILDREN

By Bruno Nardini

37 THE STORY OF THE COLOSSAL HORSE

40 LEONARDO AND THE STRIFE-RIDDENRENAISSANCE

By Eugenio Garin

45 THE GLORY OF PAINTINGReflections on art ¡n the Madrid II Manuscript

By Carlo Pedretti

2 TREASURES OF WORLD ARTFlorentine gracefulness (Italy)

COVER

This is one of the most striking of thehundreds of drawings in two long-lostmanuscripts by Leonardo da Vinci redis¬covered recently in Madrid's NationalLibrary and now being published in fac¬simile for the first time. Drawing repre¬sents the head and neck sections of the

outer mould of a colossal bronze eques¬trian statue which Leonardo undertook

to execute (see full story page 37).Leonardo's mind was like a movingsearchlight, constantly probing into thedarkness, illuminating one subject, thenrapidly passing on to another. Crammedwith brief notes and sketches, done

with unfailing precision, the Madridnotebooks give us a deeper insight thanever before into Leonardo's work in

mechanics, military engineering, geome¬try, perspective, optics, casting, andmany other subjects.

Drawing © 1974. McGraw-Hill Book Co. (UK.)Limited, Maidenhead, England and TaurusEdiciones, S.A. Madrid, Spain

3

Superimposed on a self-portrait ofLeonardo from the Windsor Collection,

England, is Leonardo's signature.He wrote, sketched and* painted withhis left hand, and most entries inhis notebooks run from right to leftin a curious "mirror" writing, as doeshis signature "lo Lionardo", hererunning across double page.Above it, Leonardo's signature writtenin the conventional way, from left to right. -Á

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This issue is devoted to the work ofLeonardo da Vinci as revealed in two

long lost notebooks which werere-discovered in Madrid in 1965. Nowknown as The Madrid Codices I and II,

they constitute one of the greatmanuscript finds of the present century.This autumn a 5-volume facsimile edition

of The Madrid Codices is being published,by arrangement with the Spanishgovernment, by Taurus Ediciones of Spain,and McGraw Hill Book Company of theUnited States (1). The entire work wasconceived and edited by a brilliantVincian scholar, Ladislao Reti, whocompleted the transcriptions, translations(into modern Italian and English) andcommentaries just before his death lastOctober. Co-editions are being publishedin Italian, German, Japanese and Dutch.In the Foreword to The Madrid Codices,

Luis Sanchez Belda, Director Generalof Spain's National Archives andLibraries, in Madrid, emphasizes "thebroad spirit of international collaborationthat has presided over the publication ofthe manuscripts: financed and directed byan American Company, the reproductionof the illustrations has been made in

Switzerland, the composition in England,the editing in Italy and America, theprinting in Spain, and the binding in theFed. Rep. of Germany."At the same time, a lavishly illustrated320-page volume entitled The UnknownLeonardo (2), also edited by Ladislao Reti,is being published by McGraw-Hill andco-publishers in Spain, Italy, France,Fed. Rep. of Germany, Netherlandsand Japan. Part of a chapter fromthis book is published on page 16of this issue.

Another unique Leonardo manuscript, therecently restored Codex Atlanticus isnow also being published in a 12-volumefull-size facsimile edition by theFlorentine publishers Giunti-Barbera andthe Johnson Reprint Corporation (3).The Editors of the "Unesco Courier"

wish to express their thanks toMcGraw-Hill Book Company, TaurusEdiciones, and Giunti-Barbera for theirgenerous help in making this specialissue possible. All photographs, unlessotherwise specified, are copyright andreproduced from Codex Madrid I and II.

THE STRANGE

VICISSITUDES

OF LEONARDO'S

MANUSCRIPTS

J OR almost three centuries, Leon-«l^ardo da Vinci's mass of scientificI jottings and sketches languished} in obscurity. They were buried

in notebooks and scribbling padswhich were chaotically disorganizedand hard to read. That is why, until theend of the 18th century, Leonardo'sfame as an artist far surpassed hisreputation as a scientist and engineer.Then too, after Leonardo's death in1519, his manuscripts were firstneglected and later split up and dis¬persed. Many of them disappearedforever.

In his will Leonardo left all his manu¬

scripts to his faithful pupil FrancescoMelzi, who had accompanied him onhis travels and was present athis death-bed. Melzi transferred his

precious inheritance to his villa atVaprio d'Adda near Milan. AfterFrancesco's death in 1570, his son andheir, Orazio, failed to see the signifi¬cance of the Leonardo material and

simply dumped it in the attic.Thus it was an easy matter for Lelio

Gavardi, the tutor in the Melzi house¬hold, to get his hands on thirteenLeonardo manuscripts. Gavardi wentoff to Florence with his prize, hopingto sell it for a high price to Duke

m#H

by Paolo Galluzzi

Francesco de Mediéis. However, in¬

credible though it may seem, one ofthe Duke's counsellors advised his

master that "These are not things forYour Excellency to bother with," andthe sale did not go through.

Gavardi now abandoned his idea of

selling the manuscripts and asked hisfriend Ambrogio Mazzenta, who wasabout to leave for Milan, to take themback to Orazio Melzi. However, Orazio

did not want them and (according tothe account in Mazzenta's memoirs)"was amazed that I had gone to allthis trouble and made me a presentof the manuscripts."

At this point, Pompeo Leoni ofArezzo comes on to the scene, andhis role in the strange story ofLeonardo's manuscripts is extremelyimportant. Leoni, court sculptor toPhilip II of Spain, showed great interestin the Leonardo manuscripts preservedby Francesco Melzi's heirs and man¬aged to acquire many of them inexchange for promises of personalfavours and protection. Leoni alsogot hold of ten of the thirteen note¬books given to Mazzenta by OrazioMelzi. Thus, in the eight years between1582 and 1590, almost all Leonardo's ^papers passed to a new owner. r

(1) The Madrid Codices of Leonardo da Vlncl.5-vol. boxed edition Edited by Ladislao Reti, 1974,McGraw-Hill Book Co (UK.) Limited. Maidenhead,England, and Taurus Ediciones S A. Madrid. Spain.Slipcased, $500, Deluxe bound m red leather $750.

(2) The Unknown Leonardo. Edited by LadislaoReti, 1974. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York.Toronto. $34.95; In Great Britain, Hutchinson,London, £18 75.

(3) The Codex Atlanticus. 12 vol. 1974, Giunti-Barbera. Florence, and Johnson Reprint Corporation,New York Publishers. $8,700.

PAOLO GALLUZZI is the director of theLeonardo Museum and Library at Vinci, westof Florence. He is currently preparing forItaly's National Research Council a dictionaryof Galileo's philosophical and scientific ter¬minology. He has written many studies onthe history of Italian scientific thought in the16th and 17th centuries.

, Leoni wanted to present the docu¬ments in a more attractive package,and therefore decided to split upseveral of the notebooks and re¬

arrange them into large codices. Buthe was totally incompetent for thiskind of work, and the net effect ofhis bizarre attempt at "restoration"was to alter the whole arrangementof Leonardo's papers and to destroyvital evidence as to when they werecomposed, in what order, the originalnumber of notebooks, and so on. He

also paved the way for a new Odysseyof loss and dispersion.

There is no evidence that Leoni

carried out the intention which he

expressed to Orazio Melzi of handingthe Leonardo material over to Philip IIof Spain as a gift. It appears that heonly gave a sample of the documentsto his royal patron and kept the restfor himself, since many of the manu¬scripts came into the hands of PolidoroCaichi, Leoni's son-in-law and heir,who put them up for sale.

Around 1622 Caichi sold the largevolume compiled by Leoni and nowknown as the Codex Atlanticus toCount Galeazzo Arconati of Milan, and

in 1636 Arconati gave this Codex(together with other Leonardo manu¬scripts) to the Ambrosian Library inMilan.

Other Leonardo documents which

had been in Leoni's possession endedup in England. Thomas Howard, earlof Arundel, managed to acquire thesecond large volume of Leonardopapers compiled by Leoni. This is thecollection of drawings now known asthe Windsor Collection, since it ishoused in the Royal Library, Windsor.Another manuscript (the present CodexArundel 263) was also acquired byThomas Howard and subsequentlygiven by one of his heirs to the RoyalSociety. The earl of Arundel's acqui¬sitions date from 1630-1640.

In the 18th century new "movements"of Leonardo manuscripts took place.Around 1715 Lord Leicester acquired

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Above, a drawing from Codex Madrid I,one of many in which Leonardoanalyzes the basic elements of machines.This Is a device for the transmission

of power and motion through screwsand wheels, a subject -to whichLeonardo continually returned.

Above, capital letters of Leonardo's .alphabet as he wrote them, backwards,mirror-fashion. They are enlarged fromvarious pages in Codex Madrid I.Not all Leonardo's handwriting is aselegant as this, however. He oftenscrawled his thoughts haphazardlyin the margins of his notebooks.Capital letters at the beginning ofeach article are reversed forms ofabove "mirror-writing" alphabet.

The big treadmill-powered machinedepicted at right in a drawingfrom the Codex Atlanticus was devised

by Leonardo for lifting andtransporting excavated materials inthe construction of a canal. In

Leonardo's time, parts of the River Amobetween Florence and the sea were not

navigable because of tortuous bendsand sudden changes in level.Leonardo had an abiding interest Inchanging the river's course Intoa canal in order to create a greatwaterway between Florence and the se«

Drawings <9 1974 Giunti-Barbera, Florence,Johnson Reprint Corporation, New York

and took back to England the Codexwhich now bears his name. Another

manuscript, the so-called Codex Tri-vulzianus (notable for the long listsof words recorded in it by Leonardo)was back in the Ambrosian Libraryaround the year 1750 Arconati haddonated it to the Library and laterremoved it.

At the end of the 18th century eventhose notebooks which seemed to have

found a permanent home started tomove around again. During the Italiancampaign in 1796-1797, Napoleon wasordered by the French government ofthat time, the Directory, to confiscateItalian art treasures and send them toParis. The Codex Atlanticus and the

manuscripts housed in the AmbrosianLibrary were among the major workswhich thus found their way to theFrench capital.

The Codex Atlanticus was depositedin the Bibliothèque Nationale, and the

manuscript material was handed overto the Institut de France. Then at the

end of the Napoleonic Wars theforeign governments involved managedto obtain the restitution of many ofthe art treasures which had beenremoved from their countries. TheCodex Atlanticus was returned toMilan, but the Institut de France heldon to the other Leonardo manuscripts.

In the 19th century English librariesenjoyed a new influx of Leonardodocuments. In 1876, for example, JohnForster gave the South KensingtonMuseum (now the Victoria and AlbertMuseum) the three Leonardo note¬books which are today known as theForster Codices. However, after thisgenerous gesture another extremelyalarming episode occurred. CountGuglielmo Libri, a bibliophile and a pio¬neer of modern scientific historiogra¬phy, became interested in Leonardo,and even thought of bringing out an

CONTINUED PAGE 50

Drawinq © 1974. Giunti-Barbera, Florence andJohnson Reprint Corporation. New York

The two drawings on this page arefrom the Codex Atlanticus, amanuscript which has recently beenmagnificently restored by the monksof Grottaferrata convent near Rome.

It is now being published in a 12-volumefacsimile edition. Drawing abovedepicts a cord machine with fifteenspindles. Drawing below showsa machine for cutting a canal.It lifts the earth and then depositsIt on the canal bank.

IB W^^^^B

THE MADRID

For Leonardo, drawing was a kind oflanguage In Images more Immediate andtelling than words. Drawing below, fromCodex Madrid I, is one of several lie madeto demonstrate the impossibility of

perpetual motion. As "The Unknown

Leonardo" states. Leonardo was scornfulof the seekers after perpetual motion andlikened them to the alchemists who tried

to convert base metals to gold.

Drawing © 1974, McGraw-Hill Book Co (UK)Limited, Maidenhead. England and Taurus Edicio¬nes. Madrid, Spain.

.1-, r. J» »

NOTEBOOKSby Anna Maria Brizio New aspects of

Leonardo's genius emerge from hisrediscovered manuscripts

HE recent discovery of twolarge manuscripts of Leo¬nardo da Vinci, containingdrawings and notes long

thought to be lost, has opened upa new, exciting chapter on the workand thought of Leonardo, the UniversalMan.

The new manuscripts form part ofthe extraordinary collection of notesand drawings into which Leonardopoured a lifetime of research, exper¬iment and reflection on art and "natu¬

ral philosophy" (science), on mecha¬nics, geometry, anatomy, hydraulics,the motion of air and the mechanics

of flight.The two notebooks have added no

less than 700 pages to the former totalof 6,000 pages of Leonardo manu¬scripts. The Madrid Codices are richin new information which now helpsto clarify issues which have long beendiscussed by Leonardo scholars andleft unsolved because of insufficient

or fragmentary evidence.Together, the new notebooks cover

the fifteen-year period between 1491and 1505 when Leonardo was at the

peak of his creative activity. How¬ever, the two manuscripts differ

ANNA MARIA BRIZIO Is the president ofthe Ente Raccolta Vlnclana (the famous Centrefor the collection of Leonardo da Vinci's

works) at Vinci, where Leonardo was born.She is a member of the Commissions Vinciana

(Committee of Vinci studies) and the HigherCouncil of Fine Arts of Italy's Llncel NationalAcademy. Professor of art history at theUniversity of Milan, she is the author of manyimportant studies on Leonardo da Vinci.

from each other in subject-matter:Codex Madrid I presents an exception¬ally uniform range of material anddeals principally with mechanics,whereas Madrid II covers a wide

variety of subjects, most of which havesome connexion with art.

For example, Madrid II containssubtle notes relating to painting anddeals with colour and colour effects.Extracts from some of these notes in

fact appear in Leonardo's Treatise onPainting (compiled after his death).An entire section of the Codex is

devoted to plans for casting the GreatHorse of Milan, the equestrian statueof Francesco Sforza which Leonardo

worked on for many years but whichwas never actually cast (see page 37).The Codex also includes a series ofarchitectural sketches of fortifications.

When we are dealing with Leonardo,however, any distinction betweenartistic and non-artistic drawings ismeaningless and indeed unjustifiedfor he conceived of no such distinction

in his work. His artistic and scien¬

tific activities always sprang from asingle source, so that the conclusionsreached in an artistic venture affected

the development of a scientific projectand vice versa.

Furthermore, Leonardo's drawingsare always a living language endowedwith extraordinary creative force andpossessing the same clarity andelegance, whatever their subject-matter. The airy red chalk drawingsof mountains in the Madrid folios aremodern in their luminous and im¬

pressionistic depiction of landscape.It is interesting to note that they werein fact executed as part of a series ofmaps of the Arno river valley.

Again, the drawings of machines inMadrid I are so lucid and compellingthat they suggest not only the surfaceappearance of the objects but also thedynamic force which makes them work.We get the same impression fromLeonardo's anatomical drawings.

Of all the Leonardo notebooks

which have come down to us, Madrid Iis one of the most systematic (if sucha word can ever properly be appliedto Leonardo), perhaps because it isalmost entirely devoted to a singlesubject mechanics. In appearance tooit is one of the most orderly, and manyof its pages give the impression ofbeing a definitive copy. On manypages the drawings are so neatly andcarefully sketched and shaded, andthe accompanying texts so impeccablylaid out, that one wonders whether he

was actually preparing them forpublication.

The earliest and latest datesmentioned in Codex Madrid I are

1493 and 1497. However, I am

personally inclined to place the workas a whole nearer to the earlier of

the two dates, because of the nume¬rous parallels with other Leonardomanuscripts from the early 1490s.

This was the crucial period ofLeonardo's work in Lombardy, whenhe was applying himself with growingdetermination and success to both the

theoretical and practical aspectsof mechanics. His theoretical work

centred on the definition of the

"powers" (Leonardo uses the word"potenzie") which move the universe:weight, force, motion and impact. Hispractical work consisted in the appli¬cation of these principles to the con- *struction of mechanical devices. r

Leonardo's drawing of a windlass to beused for hoisting heavy loads (right), is soprecise as to be the envy of a modemdraftsman. The assembled mechanism Is

sketched at left; at right, an exploded viewof its wheels, discs and gears. HereLeonardo brilliantly resolved the problemof translating rotary to reciprocating motion.

Drawing © 1974 Giunti-Barbera, Florence, andJohnson Reprint Corporation. New York.

Some of Leonardo's most exquisitedrawings in Codex Madrid I deal with thetransmission of motion and power bymeans of toothed wheels, screws andlevers. Mechanism shown above is an

example of his constant efforts to designimproved devices. Leonardo's diagram,above right, illustrates his explanation ofthe nature of accidental and natural motion.

To demonstrate his theory he used as anexample the pendulum effect producedwhen a weight suspended from a cord Isallowed to fall and swing freely.

k Leonardo set forth his ideas on the

link between theory and practice Intwo famous maxims: "The book about

the science of machines precedes thebook of applications"; and "Mechanicsis the paradise of the science ofmathematics, because through it onereaches the fruit of mathematics."

The most spectacular section ofLeonardo's Madrid I manuscript is thepart devoted to a detailed analysisand depiction of machinery, or moreprecisely, the components of variousmachines. This manuscript consti¬tutes a kind of handbook of mechanics

and gained immediate fame for thebeauty and elegance of its drawings.

Ladislao Reti was the first Leo¬nardo scholar to examine the Madrid

notebooks at first hand. He spentyears of passionate study on them,and drew special attention to the largenumber of Innovations and ingenioussolutions to mechanical engineeringquestions found in Codex I. Many ofthese are based on principles andtechniques which are astonishingly inadvance of his time foreshadowingdevelopments made many decades oreven centuries later.

From amongst the mass of obser¬vations on mechanical engineeringcontained in Madrid I, Reti underlines

two themes which, he says, are worthyof exceptional interest because of theiroriginality and the extensive treatmentgiven them by Leonardo, namely, themotion of projectiles and the motionof the pendulum.

Leonardo divides motion into "natur

al motion" and "accidental motion",and analyzes their characteristics andthe laws which govern them. Naturalmotion, in Leonardo's sense of the

term, is dependent on the force ofgravity: "All weights desire to falltowards the centre of the earth by theshortest possible path", writes Leo¬nardo in his typical style in which heoften personified things and eventsIn Nature.

"Accidental motion", on the otherhand, is caused by a force (Leonardouses the word potenzia, or "power"),which opposes the object's "desire"to get as near to the centre of theworld as possible. And "accidental"motion will be violent, says Leonardo.On the recto side of folio 147 of Ma¬

drid I, Leonardo analyzes the laws andbehaviour of natural and accidentalmotion.

"We shall propose as example", hewrites, "a round weight suspended froma cord, and let this weight be a (above,letters reversed). And it shall be liftedas high as the point of suspension ofthe cord. This point will be f ... I affirmthus, that if you let this weight fall, allthe motion made from a to n will be

Right, Leonardo's drawing of flywheelsequipped with a crank, for regulating thespeed of a machine. Many of Leonardo'smachines had built-in errors, according toLord Ritchie Calder in his book "Leonardo

and the Age of the Eye." Ritchie Calderrecalls a newspaper article which pointedout that a tank devised by Leonardo wouldnot have worked because Leonardo had

arranged the crank in such a way that thefront wheels would have rotated one wayand the rear wheels the opposite way."This was no error," says Ritchie Calder."It was a deliberate mistake, typical ofLeonardo's sardonic habit of puttinga 'spanner in the works'. Was it mischief,or was it Leonardo's way of 'patenting' hisideas so that only he could make them?"Conducting research into Leonardo'stechnical work, Luigi Boldettl, a lecturer ata polytechnic in Milan, consistently found,working from Leonardo's diagrams, thatthere was frequently "something" whichprevented the machine from working anextra cog-wheel, a misplaced crank, or anunnecessary ratchet When he had"debugged" it, the machine would work.

Drawings © 1974 by McGraw-Hill Book Co. (UK) Limited, Maidenhead.England and Taurus Ediciones. S A. Madrid, Spain

10

Chart 1974, McGraw-Hill Book Co. (UK) Limited, Maidenhead, England

1. Screws

2. Keys

3. Rivets

4. Bearings and plummerblocks

5. Pins, axles, shafts

6. Couplings

7. Ropes, belts and chains

8. Friction wheels

9. Toothed wheels

10. Flywheels

11. Levers and connecting rods

12. Click wheels and gears

13. Ratchets

14. Brakes

15. Engaging and disengaginggears

16. Pipes

17. Pump cylinders andpistons

18. Valves

19. Springs

20. Cranks and rods

21. Cams

22. Pulleys

The elements

of machines

In the Madrid Codices, Leonardofor thefirst time in the history of technologydevelops a systematic analysis of theconcepts and elements of machines. Ina chapter of the forthcoming volume,"The Unknown Leonardo", entitled"Elements of Machines", Ladislao Retistates that "Codex Madrid I proves beyonddoubt that in this work Leonardo attemptedto compose a true treatise on the

composition and work of machines ingeneral." Leonardo's understanding ofindividual mechanical elements as distinct

from whole machines set him apart fromother technologists of his time and frommany who came after him. Previouslyscholars have held that It was not until the

1870s that Franz Reuleaux, in his classic

work, "The Kinematic of Machinery",founded the modern theory of mechanisms.

Codex Madrid I now establishes, in

conjunction with a note found in the CodexAtlanticus on pump cylinders and pistons,that all the 22 elements of machines listed

by Reuleaux were analyzed and studied byLeonardo, with the exception of rivets(which he purposely excluded). Chartabove, reproduced from "The UnknownLeonardo", shows Leonardo's drawingsin each case.

^called natural, because it moves in^order to approximate itself as near to

the centre of the world as possible.After reaching the desired site, thatis, n, another motion takes place, whichwe will call accidental, because it goesagainst its desire."

Leonardo next asserts that "Such

accidental motion will always be lessthan the natural . . ." and "Conse¬

quently, natural motion, the more itapproaches its end (from "a" to "n"as in the diagram) increases its veloc¬ity. Accidental motion (from "n" to"m") does the contrary."

In the same passage, Leonardo alsoanalyzes the motion of a projectilelaunched in the air: "But if such

motions are made towards the sky, asstones thrown in an arc, then themotion made by accident will begreater than the one we call natu¬ral . . ." and (in its return towards theground after it has reached the zenithof Its upwards motion) "the stone willcease to follow in the air the shape ofthe arc it began, but, due to the greatdesire to go back down, it describes aline of much greater curvature andshorter than when it went upwards."

Almost a century later Galileo stillbelieved that the line traced by themotion of projectiles in the air was aperfect parabola. With his sharp eye,Leonardo had "seen", both literallyand metaphorically, the real trajectoryof projectiles and correctly depictedthe curve in his drawings.

Leonardo had also correctly observ¬ed the motion of the pendulum. He hadseen that when a pendulum swings,the arc of its upwards motion isshorter than its descending arc, andthat this ascending arc becomes

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Galileo in 1582 and Huygens years later areusually credited with the invention ofa pendulum clock. However, CodexMadrid I contains notations and drawingswhich show that Leonardo had the

completely original idea of applying thependulum to clocks, thus anticipatingGalileo by nearly a century. Leonardo'sdrawings include a number of pendularescapements (the escapement is the devicefor regulating the motion of the wheelworkin a clock) and on one page (folio 157verso) he drew the complete clockmechanism shown here (on left) witha counterweight using a cord wound rounda drum wheel, a series of cog wheels, a camand a fan escapement, assembling theelements here into an ideal mechanism.

Other drawings on this double pageillustrate Leonardo's lifelong research intotime-keeping devices and the ingenuityhe displayed in devising more efficientmechanisms for them.

All the parts of a mechanical timepiece Ware described by Leonardo in Codex 'Madrid I. However, he does not depict ordescribe complete clockworks except forthe one drawing shown at right, depictingthe general set-up of a weight-drivenclockwork provided with strikingmechanism. Many important parts arenevertheless missing.

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I The spring as a power source for clocks' was still only a few decades old whenLeonardo devised a spring-making machineand devoted several pages of CodexMadrid I to the production and use ofsprings, especially clockwork. In drawings,above, he illustrates several types of _springs and shows how a clock spring iswound under tension with a key (bottomrow). Left, another example of Leonardo'sresearch on clockwork mechanisms:

sketches for a pinwheel escapement.Leonardo does not Indicate the purposeof his escapement, but Galileo made useof the same device with a pendulum, and24 years after his death a clock with suchan escapement was installed in Florence.

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Leonardo drew these sketches in Codex

Madrid I to illustrate the working of toothedwheels and pinions. His notations, startingfrom the top, read as follows: "Here thewheel is unable to move the pinion butthe pinion can move the wheel." "Thesame as above." "Again the same asabove but only in part." "Here the pinionwill move the wheel." "Here one movesthe other."

Drawing © 1974 by McGraw-Hill Book Co. (UK)Limited, Maidenhead, England and Taurus Edicio¬nes, S.A., Madrid. Spain

, shorter as the oscillations of the pen¬dulum become slower. Leonardo also

realized that the smaller the arc

becomes, the more uniform becomethe pendulum's oscillations.

We know about Leonardo's research

into the possible application of pen¬dular mechanisms to drive saws,

pumps, and especially mill-wheels.But did he ever think of applying thependulum to clocks? This questionhas been much debated, but neverfully resolved.

In many pages of the Madrid I Co¬dex, however, Ladislao Reti found asignificant number of notations anddrawings by Leonardo which he care¬fully analyzed and found to be studiesfor the adaptation of the pendulum toa clock escapement. Reti's argumentswere sufficiently impressive to con¬vince Silvio Bedini, one of the world'sgreat experts on clockwork. The twoscholars have written an entire chapteron the subject for the book The Un¬known Leonardo amply illustrated withreproductions from Leonardo's CodexMadrid I.

Leonardo was always interested intime-keeping devices. He shows aclear knowledge and deep curiosity inthe large clocks and planétariums thatexisted in Lombardy at that time. Hewas particularly interested in the clockIn the tower of the Abbey of Chiara-valle near Milan, and the astronomicalclock (or astrarium) by Giovanni de'Dondi in the ducal library of the Vis¬conti Castle at Pavia, and made manysketches of their highly complicatedparts.

Bedini and Reti point out that cer¬tain pages of the Madrid I Codex (folio9 recto, folio 61 verso, and above allfolio 157 verso) contain conclusiveevidence that Leonardo had the com¬

pletely original idea of applying the pen¬dulum to clocks, thus anticipating theresearch of Galileo in this domain (1).

On folio 9 recto, Leonardo draws acrown-wheel connected to a horizontal

rod, driven by a drum with cord andweight. On folio 61 verso there aresome exceptionally clear-cut drawingsof two different kinds of pendularescapement, one with a horizontaltooth-wheel, the other with a verticaltooth-wheel.

Finally, on folio 157 verso there isa rapidly drawn sketch, but it depictsa complete mechanism with a counter¬weight using a cord wound round adrum-wheel, a series of cog-wheels,a cam with sinusoidal track, and a fanescapement. All these componentsrecur repeatedly in various folios ofCodex Madrid I, but here they areapparently assembled into an idealmechanism..

Yet nowhere in Codex Madrid I did

Leonardo actually draw a completeclock with a pendulum mechanism; onfolio 157 verso, for example, there isno indication as to the motor requiredto drive the device.

However, It is characteristic ofCodex Madrid I that Leonardo gener¬ally tends to sketch the individualcomponent parts of a mechanism, inorder to gain a clearer picture of itsstructure and the way it works, ratherthan to make a final drawing of thefully assembled model. In the draw¬ing on folio 157 verso we are fullyentitled, according to Bedini and Reti,to see the first ever project for a pen¬dulum clock almost a century beforeGalileo!

All kinds of other mechanisms are

analyzed by Leonardo in Codex Ma¬drid I: springs for driving time-keeping

CONTINUED PAGE 36

(1) Editor's note: Professor Joseph Need-ham, in Volume IV, Part II of Science andCivilisation in China, devotes over 100 pagesto an account of China's six centuries of

mechanical clockwork which preceded theclocks of the 14th century in Europe. Heparticularly points out that the key inventionin clockwork, the escapement, was devisedas early as 1088 for an astronomical clockbuilt by a Chinese scholar and civil servant,Su Sung.

14

Leonardo's

theatre

in the round

Leonardo was a brilliant and enthusiastic

organizer of shows and spectacles ofvarious kinds. The lavish entertainments

he arranged at the court of Lodovico II Moroin Milan (see page 25) were legendary,and in later life, when living at Amboise,he is known to have staged at least onespectacular show for King Francis I.He designed scenery and theatricalcostumes as well a,s a revolutionary kindof theatre and the machinery to work it.Leonardo's theatre consisted of two

semicircular amphitheatres which rotatedaround a pivot and then closed to forma complete circle. He took the idea fromPliny's Natural History, which says thata theatre of this kind existed in ancient

Rome but does not describe how it worked.

Leonardo worked out his own solution to

the problem. He closed the twosemicircular halves of his theatre into

a circle using what he calls "chainsof beams."

Bottom right, we show the diagrams ofthis ingenious system as Leonardo depictedit in Codex Madrid I. When open thetheatre consists of two semicircles joined

together in the form of a rounded X(drawing no. 1). The audience takes itsseats, and when the theatre is full the

chains at the back of each amphitheatre

(see drawing no. 3) are hauled until thetwo amphitheatres are side by side (drawingno. 2). The walls then continue to movearound the pivot until they meet to forma complete circle (drawing no. 4). Thisinvention is not impracticable. An engineernamed James E. McCabe has In fact

constructed a model of this theatre in the

round from Leonardo's instructions, thus

proving that the mechanical principles onwhich it is based are correct. Top centreand centre, model of theatre shown in

various positions. The same principle Isalso found in the toy held by child (topright) in painting by Bernardino Luini(1475-1532). Perhaps Leonardo took theidea of the chains which manipulate histheatre from a children's toy, just as hemay have done for the helicopter(see page 30).

J A study of the proportions of the eye andeye-lid. Detail from a manuscript in theRoyal Library, Turin.

Photo © Royal Library. Turin

m

B3

Photos 0 1974 from 'Leonardo da Vinci" a collective work published by Giunti-Barbera. Florence.

Drawing 0 1974 McGraw-Hi

SA. Madrid, Spam

Book Co (UK) Limited, Maidenhead. England and Taur

LEONARDO

THE MUSICIAN

by Emanuel Winternitz

Text © CopyrightReproduction prohibited

rdT:

\LTHOUGH Leonardo has alwaysbeen extolled as "the universal

genius", his musical thoughtand his musical activities have

received little serious attention and

have never been treated systematically.It is characteristic that the standard

works of Leonardo, even in our

considerable number of ingeniousmusical instruments and made im¬

provements on existing ones. He alsohad some highly original ideas aboutthe philosophy of music that wereintimately connected with his philo¬sophy of painting.

Vasari records that "after Lodovico

>-v

EMANUEL WINTERNITZ is curator ofmusical Instruments at the New York Metro¬

politan Museum of Art and is also visitingprofessor of music at City University ofNew York. This article Is a condensation of

a chapter entitled 'Leonardo and Music",which will appear in the volume 'The UnknownLeonardo", to be published this autumn byMcGraw-Hill Book Company.

century, do not mention music atall, or content themselves with

quoting remarks by Vasari, theauthor of the famous Lives of thePainters.

Leonardo was, in fact, profoundlyoccupied with music. He was aperformer and teacher of music; hewas deeply interested in acoustics andmade many experiments in this fieldthat had immediate bearing on music;he wrestled with the concept ofmusical time; and he invented a

Sforza became the Duke of Milan,Leonardo, already famous, was broughtto the duke to play for him, since theduke had a great liking for the soundof the lira; and Leonardo broughtthere the instrument which he had

built with his own hands, made largelyof silver but in the shape of a horseskull a bizarre, new thing so thatthe sound (I'armonia) would havegreater sonority; with this, he sur¬passed all the musicians who metthere to play. In addition, he was the

16

best improviser of rhymes of his time."A number of later historians also

extolled his musical ability, notablythe Milanese painter Giovanni PaoloLomazzo, who in his Trattato dell'artedelta pittura of 1584, and Idea deltempio delta pittura of 1590, names"Leonardo Vinci painter" as one ofthe outstanding masters of the lira.

The lira mentioned in these sources

was the lira da braccio, the most nobleand subtle polyphonic bowed instru¬ment of Leonardo's day a fiddle withseven strings.

Leonardo inquired into the origin ofsound ("What is sound produced by ablow?") and examined the sonorousimpact of bodies upon bodies, ex¬panding age-old Pythagorean notions.He investigated the phenomenon ofvibration and sympathetic vibration, ofhow the percussion of a body makesit oscillate and communicate its oscil¬

lation to the surrounding air or to

liquid or solid matter, for example.He studied the propagation of sound

waves as differentiated from lightwaves, the reflection and refractionof sound waves and the phenomenonof echo, the speed of sound and thefactors that determine degrees ofloudness, investigating the laws thatgovern the fading of sound by varyingthe distance between its source and

the ear.

Especially characteristic of hisapproach in this context is his estab¬lishment of what can be called a

perspective of sound, parallel to thelaws of optical and pictorial perspec¬tive so important to him as a painter.

Also, as a musician he was naturallyoccupied with the factors that deter¬mine musical pitch, and he experi¬mented with vases of different shapesand varying apertures. Of musicalimportance, though Leonardo couldnot foresee Its implication, was another

of his observations: when he struck

a table with a hammer, small heaps ofdust formed on its surface; hereLeonardo anticipated by three cen¬turies the German physicist E.F.F.Chladni's discovery of the geometricsand figures produced by setting theedge of a plate in vibration with afiddle bow.

Leonardo's notes and designsdealing with musical instruments arescattered in many of his manuscripts.Cryptic as many of these notes anddrawings appear to be if studiedin isolation, methodical comparisonreveals that they are not merelydiverting devices for performing magictricks, but that they serve systematicefforts by Leonardo to realize somebasic aims.

The most important of these aimsare the following: automation ofcertain instruments and facilitation of.

playing technique through new kinds V

<$*-

ï

Leonardo was a highly proficient musician.He invented some new musical instruments

and improved others. He was deeplyinterested in the construction of drums and

sketched many different kinds in hisnotebooks. He wanted to extend the

musical possibilities of drums and alsomake them easier to play through variousmethods of automation. This drawing(opposite page) of a mechanized militarydrum in the Codex Atlanticus with Ha

battery of drumsticks looks like part ofa street musician's one-man band. The axle

of the carriage wheel drives a centralcogwheel which then turns other cogswhich activate the five drumsticks on each

side of the cylindrical drum.

5 ,

i

©

KtV-^In his work in art and science, Leonardo

gave much attention to studies in anatomy,such as the drawing above of thelarynx and trachea (now in the WindsorCollection). This probably inspired in himthe idea for the two musical pipes, aboveleft, in a drawing from the Codex Atlanticus.Leonardo wrote that the pipes changedtheir tone "in the manner of the human

voice", and there Is a close resemblancebetween upper opening of the larynx shownhere and that of a recorder.

17

L of keyboards; increasing the speed ofplaying; extension of tonal range tomake it possible, for instance, to playmelodies on drums; overcoming thequick fading of the sound of pluckedstrings, by giving the instruments anendless bow; enriching comparativelysimple instruments to make themcapable of polyphony or a wide rangeof successive tones; and even havinga polyphony of the sounds of bowedstrings at the control of a keyboard.

Leonardo was greatly interested inthe construction of drums. He not

only tried to make them easier to playbut also expanded their musicalpossibilities, such as tonal range, farbeyond the limitations of the con¬ventional instruments of his time.

Leonardo endeavours to enrich the

traditional function of drums by makingthem capable of producing chords andscales. For this he tries two differentmethods. One is the combination of

several drums or skins of different

pitch into one single instrument. Theother consists of devices to make one

skin produce tones of different pitchin rapid succession.

This aim is realized in various ways:either through the introduction of sideholes, or through the use of scissorlevers or screw devices to change thetension of the skin while it is beaten,or through slides that open and closea large hole in the resonating body,or, finally, through mechanisms thatdetach the skin cover from the bodyof a pot drum.

Among the many musical instru¬ments contrived by Leonardo, the violaorganista is by far the most com¬plicated. No less than six differentpages in the notebooks containsketches for it.

The drawings are all concerned withthe idea of a stringed instrument withkeyboard, in which the strings are set

The ingenious drum design shown belowin detail of a page from the Codex Arundelis of outstanding importance because itallowed the drum's pitch to be changedwhile it was actually being played. Bymoving the scissor-like levers at either sideof the square drumhead the player couldtighten or slacken the drumskin. A drumwhose pitch can be changed duringperformance did not appear in the Westuntil the close of the 19th century.

Codex Arundel © British Museum, London

The most complicated of the new musicalinstruments contrived by Leonardo was theviola organista, a string instrument witha keyboard. We do not know how nearLeonardo came to constructing it. Thestrings were to be set into vibrationmechanically, and in his various notebooksLeonardo drew several devices for bowingmany strings simultaneously. The mostfeasible and elaborate solution is in the

sketch shown above, from a manuscript inthe Institut de France. It shows a

workable keyboard instrument with a beltof horsehair passing across the stringsin an endless bow.

Photo © Institut de France, Parla

In his typical way, Leonardo is here tryingto obtain from a single bell sounds whichcould normally only be produced by fourbells. The bell, sketched in CodexMadrid II, is fixed; it does not swing.Two hammers strike its rim at oppositesides. Leonardo has noted: "The same

bell will appear to be four bells. Organkeys with a fixed bell. And when struckby hammers, there will be a changeof tones as in an organ."

Drawing © 1974 by McGraw-Hill Book Co. (UK)Limited. Maidenhead, England and Taurus Edicio¬nes, S.A., Madrid, Spain

into vibration by a mechanical devicea wheel, a bow with a back-and-forthmotion, or a belt of hair moving acrossthe strings as a sort of endless bow.Such an instrument would fill a big gapin the multitudinous array of instru¬ments, not only in Leonardo's timebut also in our own.

It would combine the polyphonicpossibilities of the keyboard with thetone colour of bowed strings and thuswould be something like an organwith string timbre Instead of windtimbre, and in addition it would providethe possibility of producing crescendosand decrescendos by finger pressure.

Although it is not known in whatorder Leonardo made his sketches, itis possible to arrange the drawingsin a logical sequence if we assumethat Leonardo progressed from lessworkable solutions to more practical

18

ones. In fact, he proceeds from aninstrument with a bow moving backand forth across the strings, to onewith a friction wheel, and finally toseveral versions of a revolving bandof hair that sets the many strings intovibration.

The most workable, and apparentlyultimate, solution is in Manuscript H,where we find a sketch of a perfectlyconsistent, workable keyboard instru¬ment with an endless bow (archetto),a belt of hair moved by a motorattached to the side of the sound box

and passed across the strings bymeans of two small rollers. Leonardo

also designed a mechanism permittingthe player, 'by pushing the small pro¬jecting buttons, tq,select the desiredstrings and draw' them against' thearchetto.

We do not know, however, how nearLeonardo came to the actual con¬

struction of the viola organista orwhether he ever made working models.Today, with an electric motor in placeof one using weights or springs, theconstruction of the instrument would

be greatly facilitated.We must finally consider two instru¬

ments which have special interestbecause their invention seems directlyinspired by Leonardo's anatomicalstudies; in fact they are applicationsof mechanisms Leonardo found in the

human body. The first is in the CodexAtlanticus, where we find, amongnumerous small sketches for various

machinery, drawings of two pipes.Every connoisseur of musical

instruments will recognize immediatelytwo recorders by their characteristicheads and mouth holes. Their basic

structure has not changed substantiallysince Leonardo's time. Beneath the

upper end held by the player's lips isa hole with a sharp edge which isstruck by the air-stream emanatingfrom his mouth.

Ordinarily recorders have on theirsides six finger holes which are closedand opened by the fingertips of theplayer to produce the distinct tonesof the scale. But Leonardo's recorders

CONTINUED PAGE 35

' ¡H

.S

'$

:XBrunos Nardini

ii .

I

ARDO

3-VI.N'CI

Stretched out in the grass behindhis grandfather's house a younglad, who was to grow up to be one

of the greatest painters and sculptorsthe world has ever known, waswatchingthe circling flight of a birda kite-round the main tower of the castle in

the town of Vinci. His uncle was lyingin the grass next to him, trying toexplain the mechanics of the way akite flies, soaring round in circles soas to exploit the slightest breath of abreeze. But the young lad was tired:his eyes were already closed and hehad fallen asleep. His name wasLeonardo da Vinci.

It was an afternoon in May, theearth was sweet with the scent of hayand crickets sang out from theirhiding-place in the grass. Leonardohad a strange dream about the kite: hedreamt that he was still in his cradle,

but no longer at home. Lucia, hisgrandmother, had carried the cradleinto the field and then gone away.

The kite made ever-narrowing cir¬cles until it plunged from the sky anddropped on top of him; however, thebird did not scratch Leonardo with its

claws or peck him with its beak. Itsimply flapped its wings and tried toopen the boy's mouth with its forkedtail. When Leonardo's mouth was

opened in this way, the kite struckhis lips and his tongue with its tail.Suddenly Leonardo woke up with acry and found himself sitting on thegrass with his uncle, Francesco.

"What's the matter with you?" askedhis uncle.

"That kite", stammered the lad, still

not quite sure that he had woken upfrom his dream, "Uncle, I had a dreamabout that kite!"

Many years later, when Leonardowas grown up, he wrote in the city ofMilan that this was his first childhood

memory, a striking one which he hadnever forgotten. Now that he wasstudying the mathematical laws thathad to do with birds' flight, that kiteseemed to him to have been some

kind of messenger telling him hisfuture destiny.

BRUNO NARDINI, publisher and founder of theInternational Book Centre in Florence, is the authorof "Vita di Leonardo" ¡Life of Leonardo), written forchildren and illustrated with stills from an Italian

television film on Leonardo directed by Renato Castel-lani (Nardini and Giunti-Bemporad Marzocco Publi¬shers, Florence, 1974). He has adapted the fablesand legends which Leonardo ¡otted down in hisnotebooks into two books for young people: "Favoleet Leggende", to be published in English as 'Fablesof Leonardo da Vine' (Collins, U.K.; Hubbard Press,

U.S.A.), and "Animali Fantastic/" (Nardini and Giunti-Bemporad Marzocco, 1974). He has also publisheda book for youngsters on the life of Michelangelo.

In this house, on the slopes of the Tuscanhills near Vinci, Leonardo was born on

April 15th. 1452.

And what a splendid destiny itwould be! Born in a poor village ofTuscany in central Italy, near the RiverArno, he never had a mother of hisown like other children, or a lovingfather. Instead he had a step-motherand a strict grandfather. His onlyreal friend and teacher was his uncle

Francesco, who was seventeen yearsolder than Leonardo. '

Leonardo was born on the 15th of

April, 1452. The Middle Ages, a longperiod of gloomy tower-keeps andindependent communes, were comingto an end. The period of local lord¬ships, government by the richest andstrongest, was coming in their place.The gloomy old keeps were givingway to luxurious palaces.

Leonardo arrived at Florence with

his father, Ser Piero, on their horse-and-cart, for his father had decided

to move to the big city for good, towork as a notary like his ancestors.Leonardo was also accompanied bySer Piero's second wife, a youngwoman called Albiera who took the

place of his mother.We have no record of what hap¬

pened during that first period ofLeonardo's life at Florence. All we

do know is that Ser Piero sent his son

to do music arid grammar classes;music consisted of learning to playthe flute and grammar meant learning

how to write. Then, in 1465, step¬mother Albiera died and Ser Piero

married again. Leonardo's new"mother" was called Francesca. Bynow he was thirteen years old andhe had already decided what he wasgoing to be when he grew up: not anotary, like his father, or his grand¬father Antonio, but a painter.

It was quite by accident that SerPiero found out his son's secret am¬

bition. One day he went into Leo¬nardo's room and came across a pileof neatly rolled up papers and realizedthat they were drawings. "Not bad atall", Leonardo's father said to him¬

self. "In fact, they are pretty good."Without wasting any further time

Ser Piero put the rolls of paper underhis arm and took himself off to show

them to Andrea di Cione, whom we

know as the painter Verrocchio."Listen, Maestro," said Ser Piero,

"I found these drawings done by myson. What do you think of them?"

Verrocchio looked at Leonardo's

drawings one after the other, payingever more careful attention, then heasked: "How old is this lad?"

"Just seventeen", was the answer.

"Then bring him round to me. Hecan live in my house. I'll turn himinto a great painter."

The next day young Leonardo,accompanied by his father in abrusque,

20

Sketch for the Madonna with the Cat

executed during Leonardo's first

Florentine period.

Florence, the city of towers, as it looked

when Leonardo lived there until the age of30 in 1482, when he left for Milan.

serious mood, entered Verrocchio's

workshop as an apprentice. He didnot feel out of place or nervous, andhe didn't have to face his strict new

teacher on his own. A crowd of youngpupils welcomed him noisily amongthem: these were all young boys ofhis own age, and they too were tobecome famous in their own ways.

The oldest were Sandro Filipepi,also known as Botticelli, and Pietro

Vannucci, known as Perugino. Amongstthe younger pupils of Verrocchio weresuch names as Lorenzo di Credi, Fran¬cesco Botticini and Francesco di

Simone. Surrounded by friends likethese, in those enormous studios fullof blocks of chalk and marble, with

tables loaded with brushes and paints,Leonardo felt happy in the constantatmosphere of hard work and creation.

He willingly carried out the mosthumdrum tasks, sweeping the floor,washing the dishes, grinding the coloursubstances, preparing the paints,cleaning the brushes and posing forhis master who was working on astatue of David.

But what occupied him more than

anything else was keeping his eyes oneverything that was going on aroundhim, soaking in every experience sothat he would soon know the tricks of

the trade. A little later he was en¬

trusted with the task of preparing the"plaster for the frescoes; then he wasallowed to transfer some of the "car¬

toons" (the word used to describe theplan the painter works from) on tothe wall; finally he was given thebrushes and told to touch up some ofthe work on the wall which Verrocchio

had done himself.

One day Verrocchio had assignedLeonardo the job of painting anangel's head on a large canvas whichrepresented "The Baptism of Christ".He noticed that the angel's head whichhe had already done on the paintingwasn't so impressive as Leonardo's.The story goes that Verrocchio pickedup his brushes and broke them, as ifhe was declaring that from then onhe wouldn't have anything more to dowith painting.

From this period in Leonardo's lifecome many sketches and studies of .the horse; Verrocchio was working on r

21

Leonardo's earliest work is a kneeling

angel (detail below) which was hiscontribution to Verrocchio's Baptism of

Christ (1473-78) shown at right.Leonardo painted it in Verrocchio's workshop

where he was apprenticed at the age of 17.

Head of Verrocchio's David, a bronze

sculpture dating from about 1473, for

which the young Leonardo, then aged 20,may have been the model.

22Photo taken from "Vita di Leonardo" by Bruno

Nardini, Giunti-Nardini Publishers. Florence

a monument of Bartolomeo Colleoni,

the military captain, seated on hissteed. Leonardo often amazed his

fellow-apprentices by drawing withhis left hand, and he always wrotefrom right to left, back to front, likea wizard scribbling out his spells.

One day, when he was twenty-twoyears old, he decided to join the Guildof San Luca, an association of artists;

so he left Verrocchio's workshop to setup in business on his own, as wewould say nowadays. Lorenzo theMagnificent gave him a contract todraw a Madonna, another patronasked him for an "Annunciation", thenhe was asked for a Saint Jerome, and

an "Adoration of the Magi".His own father asked him to paint

the wheel of a cart for a peasant fromhis home town of Vinci. He never

refused anybody, he took all his jobsseriously, even the wheel, which headapted into a kind of grotesquemonster. With every task he under

took, Leonardo aimed to arrive at an

even greater perfection, until eventu¬ally he had to give up and leave hisworks unfinished. This was the hidden

drama of Leonardo's whole life.

Leonardo, however, was not just apainter. He also did sculpture. Earlieron he had modelled a number of

human heads and a Via Crucis. Later

on he was to sculpt an enormous horse.He was also a musician. He could

play the flute and the lyre, and peoplewho knew him have recorded that he

"sang exquisitely".At Vinci he had learnt from his uncle

Francesco to distinguish the differentplants and the effects they had: thismeans that he was also a skilled botan¬

ist and knew about herbs. At Florence

he had come to know a number of

famous doctors, and even started to

study anatomy. At night he would slipinto the hospital's mortuary to dissectthe dead bodies and then sketch the

various organs of the human body.

He studied the way rivers flow, andmade plans for canals that ships couldsail down. He read history books andbooks about the art of warfare, then

he promptly sat down to invent strangenew war engines. He studied buildingsclosely, among them the Cathedral ofFlorence where Verrocchio had placedan enormous ball of copper on thelantern (the open structure on top ofthe dome) designed by the great archi¬tect Brunelleschi, and he thought upextraordinary machines that could liftand transport huge weights in the air.He watched the way that birds fly anddreamt of a machine that would allow

men to fly through the sky.He analyzed the sea-bed and could

already picture a frogman's suit andmask in his mind's eye. He watchedmen at work, and anticipated moderncybernetics and "time and motion"studies by working out machines thatcould cut out some of their movements

and save them trouble.

He read the works of Greek and

Latin philosophers, until he coulddiscuss their ideas in such a way as toimpress his listeners. He was not rich,but the generosity of those who ap¬preciated his genius meant that hecould live in the style of a prince. Hewas handsome, tall and strong: withhis hands he was capable of bending ahorseshoe. Yet he was also' gentle andrefined, full of help for others and neverboastful.

He appreciated everything about life,and knew how to pick out the good sideof things, the most noble and attractive r

The Adoration of the Magi, a painting

begun by Leonardo about 1481 but never

completed (Uffizi Gallery, Florence).

mmn

The Annunciation, the first full painting

completed by Leonardo (Uffizi Gallery,Florence).

Photos © Anderson-Giraudon, Pans

23

This unfinished portrait of St. Jerome byLeonardo (about 1481) illustrates one of the

great painter's theories: men and animals

experience the same emotions.

k side to life. He was a great lover ofNature: nowadays we would callhim an "ecologist". He even plannedan ideal city with lots of greenery andcriss-crossed by canals, the streetscarried overhead and the houses

tucked underneath.

He also loved animals. Whenever

he saw birds in a cage, he would buythem in order to let them go. Heconsidered everything to be a "wonderof the universe", and whatever he set

eyes on seemed to him to reveal thehand of its creator, God, whom hecalled "The Prime Mover".

Leonardo, then, was a man of the

future, the first and most deeplyconvinced citizen of the world.

At the age of thirty Leonardo wentto Milan, to the court of Lodovico il

Moro, who had asked Lorenzo de

Medici for a sculptor to carry out amonument in memory of his fatherFrancesco Sforza.

There is an extraordinary letterwhich Leonardo sent to the Duke of

Milan just after his arrival in theLombard capital. In this letter hemakes a list of all the things he knewhow to do, like making giant slingsand gun-shot for bombardment, self-propelling cannons, tanks, multiplemachine-guns and siege platforms.

24

At the end of the letter he even states

that he can out-class all others at

architecture, painting and sculpture,and challenges the Duke to put theseabilities to the test.

Leonardo was taking quite a risk.Lodovico il Moro could have simplylocked him up as a starry-eyed lunatic.Instead, the Duke summoned Leo¬

nardo to his presence, listened to whathe had to say and gave him the taskof raising the monument to his father.He also gave him the official title of"Engineer to the Duke."

It was at Milan that Leonardo

revealed another ofhis secret passions:the art of staging elaborate shows,making him the equivalent of what weunderstand by the word "director".He produced an allegorical represent¬ation called "Paradise" for the mar¬

riage of Gian Galeazzo Sforza toIsabella of Aragon, as well as the"Joust" for Lodovico's wedding toBeatrice d'Esté, and both perform¬ances have become legendary.

In the first show the seven planetswere seen following their orbitsround a star-studded sky, accompaniedby music and singing, while thechariot of the sun, drawn along bysteaming horses (an extraordinaryexample of self-propelling machinery),slowly crossed the stage. In the othershow, the "Joust", a live horse

covered with golden scales stole thescene, with a ram's head and a fitted

tail that would have suited a serpent.From this period which Leonardo

spent at Milan there remain famousworks like the painting The Virgin ofthe Rocks, of which a version byLeonardo's sole hand is in Paris, and

a version by both Leonardo and theMilanese artist De Prédis in a gallery

From an early age Leonardo carried out

meticulous studies of human anatomy.

He made this drawing (about 1 508) of the

dissection of the principal organs of a woman.Photo © Royal Library. Windsor, U K.

A charcoal, pencil and crayon portrait ofIsabella d'Esté, made at Mantua in 1500.

(Louvre Museum).

in London. He also did a "Madonna"

for Matthew Corvino, the King ofHungary, and a portrait of a girl witha stoat in her arms, as well as a

portrait of a woman in profile, whomay well be Beatrice d'Esté.

Lastly there is the stupendousCenacolo (painting of Jesus' LastSupper), which has its own tragicstory. What happened is this: Lodo¬vico il Moro gave Leonardo the taskof painting Christ's Last Supper withhis Disciples .on to a wall of thedining-room in the Dominican convent

One of Leonardo's secret passions was the

staging of elaborate spectacles or shows on

festive occasions. For the marriage of Gian

Galeazzo Sforza to Isabelle of Aragon he

put on an allegorical representation called

"Paradise", in which a chariot of the sun

crossed the stage drawn by a fuming,

snorting horse, shown in photo below.The scene is taken from a seven-hour

Italian television film, "La Vita di

Leonardo", directed by Renato Castellani

and to be screened in 120 countries.

Lady with an Ermine, a portrait of CeciliaGallerani, painted by Leonardo at the courtof Lodovico il Moro, in Milan about 1483.

(Museum Czartoryski, Cracow.)

Photo from the film "La Vita di Leonardo"

25

Leonardo contemplates the Last Supper, themonumental composition he executed in

Milan, on a wall of the refectory of the

Dominican Convent of Our Lady of the Gracesin a scene from the Italian film on Leonardo.

Around Leonardo are the sketches from

which he worked to complete the painting.

Below left, one of Leonardo's preliminary

studies for the Last Supper.

L of Our Lady of the Graces (SantaMaria delle Grazie). Leonardo wentstraight to work: he even stoppedpassers-by in the street so as to fixsome detail of movement or facial

appearance in his mind's eye.Night and day he worked on sketches

and plans for the various charactersin his mural, until the cartoon was

ready in every detail. Unlike otherartists, who had always tended todepict the Last Supper as a gloomymeeting before the final Passion, Leo¬nardo's plan was to paint the exactmoment when Christ uttered the words

"One of you will betray me!" Horror,indignation and amazement were tobe expressed on the faces of theApostles, while Jesus would be seatedmotionless in the centre, isolated and

detached from the passionate reaction

ofhis followers.

But the ever-scientific Leonardo

wanted to test out a new kind of

plaster, made up out of three separatelayers of stucco. When he had finishedthe painting, and the people of Milancrowded into the refectory to admirethe completed masterpiece, Leonardosadly realized that the layers of stuccowere not capable of resisting the out¬side temperature to the same degree.This meant that his great paintingwould not last for very long. Fiftyyears later it was already wrecked,though we can still gain an idea of theoriginal when we look at it today.

As soon as the painting was finishedLeonardo had to leave Milan for Venice.

The French troops of King Louis XII,under the command of Trivulzio, hadentered Milan after the retreat of Lodo-

Leonardo devoted two compositions to the

theme of The Virgin and Child with Saint

Anne. The first version, shown here, is

known as the Burlington House Cartoon from

the collection to which it formerly belonged.Most authorities date it from about 1498-99.

Study in silverpoint for the angel's head in the

Louvre Museum version of 77»e Virgin of theRocks (see page 2). Deceptively simple inappearance, it is in fact one of Leonardo's

most polished drawings, its subtle shading

of slanted parallel lines creating an impression

of depth and softness (from about 1483).

26

ÖO?

«.--*..

I

k vico il Moro. A number of Gascon

crossbowmen found an immense horse

fashioned out of clay in a courtyard.They had no way of knowing that it

was Leonardo's model for the monu¬

ment to Francesco Sforza, ready forits final casting into bronze. For thatmatter they would not even haveknown who Leonardo was. They play¬ed a game of knocking it to pieces,aiming at it with their crossbows to seewho could hit it most often.

From Venice Leonardo moved back

to Florence again, but this time hewas returning to his city with a solid

reputation built up over twenty years.He took lodgings with the Servants ofMary, in the Convent of SS. Annun-ziata, for he had promised them apainting of St. Anne and the Madonnafor the main altar.

Everyone wanted something fromhim, every organization wanted hisadvice and recommendations. The

Secretary of the Florentine Republic,Niccolô Machiavelli, even asked himif he could divert the waters of the

river Arno, which flows into the sea

at Pisa, in order to starve out thePisans who were at war with Florence

*vtH '**Hf**»1 »iv-wWJ

"»r4*iJ<tf*ï*y

Leonardo sketched this dredger

resembling a twin-hulled catamaran.

"This plough will be able to dislodgethe mud from the bottom," he wrote,

"and unload it upon the barge

which is placed underneath it."

Model of a car driven by springs, constructedfrom a drawing made by Leonardo da Vinci.

Photo © Mario Carrier!. Florence

A~' -^¡M-p

28

Photo © Royal Library. Windsor, U K

at that time.

Leonardo never felt like refusing; hisfavourite motto was "I am never tired

of serving others". But the friars ofSS. Annunziata were impatient, soLeonardo locked himself in a room of

the convent to work on the St. Anne

and Madonna painting, and in less thana month the cartoon was ready.

For three whole days the people ofFlorence filed past Leonardo's designin a solemn procession. Amongstthem was Pier Soderini, the ageingChief Magistrate for life of the Floren¬tine Republic, and also a young

Leonardo was a skilled and ingenious

cartographer far ahead of his time.

He drew this plan of the town of Imola.

near Bologna, in 1502.

Drawing of a bombard for firingexplosive shells, designed by Leonardo.

Leonardo's giant ballista, or catapult.The bow is built with laminated sections

for greater flexibility and firepower.

The inclined carriage wheels are a feature

later incorporated in the wheels

of artillery pieces.

Drawing© 1974 by McGraw-Hill Book Co lu M Limited,Maidenhead, England and Taurus Ediciones, S A. Madrid, Spain

Well over four centuries before

the invention of the helicopter,

Leonardo made a drawing of sucha machine designed to lift off verticallyfrom the ground. Here a 3-dimensional

model built from his sketch.

Horse's head. Leonardo loved all animals

and especially the horse to which

he devoted many studies

(see also pages 36-39).Photo taken from "Vita di Leonardo" by Bruno

Nardini. Giunti-Nardim Publishers, Florence

The discovery in Madrid of two

lost manuscripts of Leonardo's

(called Madrid Codex I and II)

has revealed new aspects of hisachievements as an inventor

and engineer.This meticulously drawn model

of a spinning frame is from Madrid Codex I.

Photo © Science Museum, London.

Photo © Musée du Mans. Le Mans, France. Photo © Institut de France, Paris

The earliest free-flying "whirlibird"

dates from about 1320: pull a string

and a spinning propeller will soar free.The one shown above is from

a 1460 painting. Above right,Leonardo's design for a helicopter.Beside it he wrote: "If this instrument

be well made... and be turned swiftly,

the said screw will make its spiral

in the air and will rise high."

Model of the articulation of a wing

based on a drawing by Leonardo.

His study of wings was astonishingly

precise, particularly with respectto their curve, flexion and distention,

and their rotation.

Photos taken Irom "Vita di Leonardo"

by Bruno Nardmi, Giunti-Nardini Publishers. Florence

k sculptor who had recently returnedfrom Rome where he had completeda stupendous Pietà. His name wasMichelangelo Buonarroti.

Writers of the time tell us that the

rivalry that developed between Leo¬nardo and Michelangelo was intense.It began when Soderini assignedMichelangelo a block of marble whichhad been lying behind the Cathedralfor more than sixty years and hadalready caught Leonardo's interest.While Michelangelo was chisellingaway at that marble to create hisfamous David, Leonardo had gone toRomagna with the rank of "Architectand general,, engineer" to its duke,Cesare Borgia.

When he got back to Florence hefound that he had been chosen as one

30 Drawing of a ribbed wing by Leonardo

with a crank device for manipulating it.

rY

of the committee who were to decide

what to do with Michelangelo's David.Michelangelo was irritated by Leonar¬do's presence on the committee, andthey spoke rudely to each other.

When Soderini offered Leonardo a

wall of the Great Council Hall of the

Palazzo Vecchio to paint a battlescene, Michelangelo asked for theother wall to paint another battlescene on. This request was granted,and an. elegant contest developed bet¬ween the two great artists, which waswatched and followed by the whole ofFlorence.

Both painters sought to excel them¬selves, rather than each other. Leo¬

nardo's cartoons, depicting the battleof Anghiari, and those of Michelangelo,dealing with an incident from thebattle of Caseína, were shown to the

general public at different times andplaces. The Italian artist and metal¬worker Benvenuto Cellini was later to

call them "the school of the world."

In the meantine Leonardo was

working on the portrait of a beautifulbut rather melancholy woman, thecelebrated "Gioconda", or "Mona Lisa."

After he had completed the cartoonsfor his battle scene, Leonardo beganto paint his subject on to the wallof the Palazzo Vecchio. Yet once againthe demon temptation of experimentled him astray. He had found in awork by the Latin writer Pliny a for¬mula for a special plaster used by theancient Romans called "encaustic".

It was a kind of paste, based on amixture of oily substances and Greekpitch, dried out against a flame tomake the colours sharp and brilliantlike enamel.

Leonardo made a series of successful

tests, then decided to use the encaustic

process for his Battle of Anghiarimural. But when his ambitious projectwas already nearing completion andonly the upper half remained to bedone, Leonardo discovered that the

flame was too far away and the colourscould not be hardened into place.

It was a desperately sad night forhim: the colours were beginning to run,and Leonardo anxiously ordered morewood to be burned in the large brazier

which was suspended by a pulley nearthe painting. But by now it was too lateand the flame failed to harden the

colours: by being brought too close tothe wall it even spoiled the colourswhich had already dried. In the spaceof one hour Leonardo's planned mas¬terpiece was ruined.

With an icy feeling in his heartLeonardo fled to a friend's house in the

nearby village of Fiesole. But here hewas destined to meet with another

failure. After years of study he hadfinally rigged up a mysterious "flyingmachine". Everything was ready for animposing test run, and this took placeon Mount Ceceri (which means"swan"). But the human swan (anassistant of Leonardo's) could not getup into the air with the machine and

LEONARDO AND FLIGHT

Leonardo was one of the great forerunners

of modern aviation. On these pageswe can see a few examples

of his revolutionary ideas.One of his most cherished dreams was

to enable men to "take to the air"

by various means. After years of study

he built a "flying machine", but its

test-flight, like that of Icarus.

was a failure, and Leonardo's hopes

were dashed. Photo, the start of the ill-fated

test, is from the Italian film on Leonardo.

Photo taken from the film "La Vita di Leonardo".

stay there. He managed to cover a fewmetres and then plunged into thebushes underneath him. Thus another

long-cherished dream was shattered.By now he was happy to leave Flo¬

rence, and went back up to Milan. TheKing of France, Louis XII, wanted himin his court, and the Governor of

Milan, Charles of Amboise, heapedhim with honours and favours. Leo¬

nardo recovered his nerves again,started enjoying his friends' company,and went back to his scientific research.

He painted a series of Madonnas forthe King, which are now unfortunatelylost.

But political upheavals made itnecessary for Leonardo to leave Milan.Lodovico's son was returning to .recapture Milan, and the venture was *

One of Leonardo's earliest aircraft

designs (1486-90). The aviator lies

on the board with his head through

the front hoop. The wings, pivotingabove the head at "m", are raised

by the left foot and lowered by the right.

31

^ backed by troops of Swiss cavalry.The French thought it best to retreatback over the Alps, and Leonardo tookrefuge in Vaprio d'Adda, at the homeof his young pupil Francesco Melzi.

Meanwhile Pope Julius II had diedat Rome, and Cardinal Giovanni de

Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magni¬ficent, had been elected Pope with thetitle Leo X. Gradually the artists beganto flock to Rome from all over Italy,and Leonardo decided to go too. Giu-liano de' Medici, the youngest ofLorenzo's sons, put him up as a guestin his palace and gave him variouscommissions: a portrait of a woman,research into optical mirrors, and a

project to reclaim the Pontine marshes.France, however, was planning to

recapture Lombardy, which now hadan alliance with the Pope. Louis XIIwas dead, and his successor, the youth¬ful Francis I, made a quick moveacross the Alps and defeated thedefending Italian force at Marignano.Leonardo had left Rome with the

court of Giuliano de' Medici, who was

commander in chief of the Pope'sarmy. But Giuliano fell sick andstopped at Florence, where he died.

Leonardo continued with the armyas far as Piacenza. The Pope thencame up to Bologna, in an attempt tocounter-balance the military defeat

Photos ©Giraudon. Paris

by a diplomatic conference with theFrench monarch. Because he knew

that Francis I was a great art-lover,the Pope called for a number ofartists, including Leonardo, to bepresent at the conference.

When Leonardo was presented tothe French king he was as amazed aseverybody else when the king cameup and embraced him with the words"My father...!"

Two days later Leonardo acceptedthe king's invitation to go to Amboisein France, where His Majesty wouldmake a whole castle, Clos-Lucé, per¬sonally available to him.

Now begins the long slow twilightof Leonardo's life. Helped by his faith¬ful pupil Francesco Melzi, the ageingartist began to reorganize his writingsand drawings in order to collect all hisresearch into a "corpus", or grandencyclopaedia containing ancient, med¬ieval and contemporary knowledge.

The French king never asked forspecific paintings from Leonardo, hewas content just to go and see himand hear what he had to say aboutthings. Later on Cellini would say:"I heard the king declare that he didnot believe there could be a single manin the world who knew as much as

Leonardo... and that Leonardo was a

supreme philosopher."As a favour to the king, Leonardo

drew up an astonishing project for acanal system in the Loire. He planneda castle for the king's residence andorganized an enormous festival mar¬ked by the appearance on stage of aroaring lion which hears the king'sname and then tears its breast with its

talons, causing a cascade of Frenchlilies to come out of it. W

The second version of Leonardo's painting

of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (LouvreMuseum) dating from between 1500 and1510 (the first version appears on page 27).

In the two compositions, Leonardo used

entirely different techniques and styles.

Can you spot the eagle that Leonardo

included, perhaps unwittingly, in the draperyof the leaning figure of the Virgin?

The Mona Lisa is undoubtedly

the most famous painting in the world.

Painted by Leonardo in the early years

of the 16th century, it now hangs

in the Louvre, in Paris. Mona Lisa

has recently been on a world tour,

attracting long queues of people willingto wait for hours to catch a few seconds'

glimpse of her enigmatic smile. |

32

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In his death agony, on May 2, 1519,Leonardo imagined that King Francisof France had entered his bedroom.

at Amboise. This legend has been

immortalized in this famous drawingby the French painter Ingres.

k In the peaceful surroundings ofAmboise Leonardo relived in solitude

his long life of toil, and wrote in hisdiary: "A well spent life is a long one."

A kite flew above the castle of

Amboise. It was spring, May 2nd inthe year 1519. In his ill-lit roomLeonardo was dying. He had a visionof the king hurrying to be with him,already arriving down below in the

CANON OF PROPORTIONS

The ¡deal proportions of the human

body as Leonardo saw them.

courtyard, and yet nobody came tohis side. He wanted to call out aloud,

but his voice would not obey him.Finally a rough, indistinct sound

emerged from his lips. His pupil Melziheard him, and rushed in to lift Leo¬

nardo onto the pillows and arrangeround the dying man's shoulders thefine cloak which he always wore whenFrancis I came to visit him. In his

feverish delirium Leonardo then im¬

agined that the king was coming intothe room, approaching his bedsideand embracing him in tears.

Leonardo was overcome by hisemotion and closed his eyes.

This legend, for that is all we cancall it, has been immortalized in a

famous drawing by Ingres. But ifLeonardo did not die in the arms of the

King, it was only because Francis Iwas far away from Amboise at thetime. Otherwise he would have rushed

like a son to Leonardo's bedside, and

the legend would have been made intoreality. Bruno Nardini

Photo © Anderson-Giraudon, Paris

34

Continued from page 18

look strange. The one on the left hastwo broad slits on the side of the tube,

and the other has one long, thin slit.Fortunately we have an explanatory

text in Leonardo's most beautiful

calligraphy, running from right to left:"These two flutes do not change theirtone by leaps as most wind instru¬ments do, but in the manner of thehuman voice; and one does it bymoving the hand up and down just aswith the coiled trumpet and more soin the pipe a; and you can obtain oneeighth or sixteenth of the tone and justas much as you want."

Obtaining an eighth or a six¬teenth obviously means in acousticallanguage to reach the upper octaves;and "moving the hand up and down"evidently means not to stop pre¬arranged finger holes, but to movealong the silts to change pitch gradu¬ally, or as we say today, to produceglissandos, or gliding tones.

Where could he have found the idea

or a model for his glissando pipes?The clue lies in the words "the human

voice", though I must confess thatI found the solution by chance andthen had it confirmed by Leonardo'sown words. The model for our glis¬sando pipes is found in the larynx,and it is significant that Leonardo callsthe larynx "the human voice", applyingthis term to the machinery thatproduces the voice as well.

Leonardo made designs of thelarynx and the trachea, now in WindsorCastle, in which we recognize im¬mediately that the upper openingresembles that of a recorder. Fur¬

thermore, in accompanying texts in theanatomy manuscripts the trachea iscalled fistola, 'fthich is also the nameof a vertical flute such as the recorder.

There is, though, one flaw in ouranalogy: Leonardo wrongly attributedthe change of pitch of the human voiceto the narrowing or widening of thecartilage rings of the trachea andfailed to observe the function of the

vocal cords in the larynx. This failurewas probably caused by the technicaldifficulty of dissecting the small andfragile larynx. (By the way, Leonardo'sdrawings are thought to have beenbased on the anatomy of an ox.)

Still, we have in Leonardo's glis¬sando recorder a new musical instru¬

ment which opened, or could haveopened, a new musical horizon; whichworks well (some reconstructions thatI have made function perfectly); andwhich was patterned after an ana¬tomical analogy, that of the larynx,even though Leonardo misunderstoodits actual function. Hence we have

here a positive result built uponwrong premises.

The Madrid Codices contain only afew pages devoted to musical matters,but they add considerably to ourknowledge of Leonardo's interest inmusic and musical instruments and to

our comprehension of his indefatigablemind, so overwhelmed by new ideas,associations, and technological im¬agination that he could cope with thisonslaught only by jotting down passingthoughts, often so sketchily that im-

ln drawing, above from Codex Arundel,Leonardo has combined three drums into

a single instrument. It consists of threeshallow boxes beaten by mechanismattached to left of drum, and was intendedto produce a chord of three tones. Modelshave been made of most types of drumsketched by Leonardo and they havebeen found to work well.

portant details, which he evidentlytook for granted, are neither delineatednor explained in his comments.

One of Leonardo's drawings ofmusical instruments In the MadridCodices is of a bell with a wide rim.

Instead of a clapper inside, ¿fcwohammers strike the rim from oppositesides. To the left of the bell there is

a mechanism including what seems tobe a set of four keys operating ona tracker action that in its turn controls

four levers ending in oval heads. Inmy opinion, these heads must bedampers. The accompanying text says,"The same bell will appear to be fourbells. Organ keys with a fixed bell.And when struck by two hammers,there will be a change of tones as inan organ."

Acoustically important in this ex¬planation are the indication that thebell is firm, neither swinging norequipped with a clapper In the mannerof a church bell, and the statementthat It produces "a change of tones",which is in all probability one of pitch,not of timbre.

Thus Leonardo must have believed

that the upper section of the bell hasring-shaped areas that produce tonesof different pitch If they are slightlymuted when the rim is set into

vibration by the hammers. It is in¬teresting that Leonardo, here as inmany other of his musical inventions,tried to obtain from one instrument

what could normally be produced onlyby several instruments or by an entireset of instruments.

Emanuel Winternitz

%1Û o

Another of Leonardo's brilliant solutions

to the problem of obtaining different tonesfrom a single drum is shown in sketchabove from Codex Arundel. This drum has

holes in its sides like a flute. It has been

reconstructed by the author of this article,who found that by closing the variousholes while beating the drum he couldin fact obtain differences in pitch.

Drawinqs from Codex Arundel¡D British Museum, London

Drum shown below, one of the seriesLeonardo drew in Codex Arundel, is

another attempt to combine several drumsinto one. It was almost certainly intendedto produce a chord. Unfortunately,Leonardo's drawing does not allow us tounderstand the connexion between the bodyof the drum and the curious cones

inserted into iL

35

THE MADRID NOTEBOOKS

Continued from page 14

devices, mechanisms using the springprinciple to obtain a constant motordrive, cog-wheels to transmit motion,and so on. Leonardo pays consider¬able attention to the problem of reduc¬ing friction and comes up with someingenious solutions.

Here I should like to develop severalobservations by Carlo Zammattio, whohas pointed out how absorbed Leo¬nardo was In water-courses when he

was in Lombardy. Leonardo was inte¬rested in water and the uses it could

be put to, such as providing power formachines, driving a mill-wheel, etc.

A particularly compelling example ofthe way Leonardo proceeds to a uni¬versal rule from his observation of a

specific phenomenon is provided byhis method of working out the"powers" (i.e. the motor force) of aseries of jets of water pouring fromapertures of the same size but atvarious different heights in a recep¬tacle which is kept full of water at thesame level. Now, Leonardo is awarethat the force behind the individual

jets remains Identical.This is how he explains the pheno¬

menon: each particle of water, onceit falls free from the aperture, respondsexclusively to its own weight andacquires an impetus which producesa corresponding force of impact if Itmeets something in its path. But inthe original receptacle, the water par¬ticles are subject not only to their ownweight, but also to the weight of allthe water that lies above them.

So when the jets of water emergefrom their apertures at varying heightsand fall towards the same horizontal

surface below them, the force of theirimpact is bound to remain constant,because their "power" is a sum of theweight of the column of water thatpressed down on them in the recep¬tacle and the velocity acquired duringtheir downward trajectory once releas¬ed from it. Hence the more the one

increases, the less the other becomes,and vice versa.

Zammattio points out that the methodand conclusions in this analysis byLeonardo correspond to the theoremenunciated in 1738 by Daniel Bernoulli,in other words, the fundamental equa¬tion of hydrodynamics. Such werethe formidable results which Leonardo

was capable of drawing from minuteobservation.

A number of other comments remainto be made in connexion with Leo¬

nardo's Madrid II Codex. There is,for example, a passage which immedi¬ately became famous because of itsobvious reference to Leonardo's mural

for the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence,The Battle of Anghiari, which wasruined before completion:

"Friday the 6th of June, 1505, at thestroke of the thirteenth hour I beganto paint in the Palace. As I lowered

the brush, the weather changed for theworse and the bell started to toll,calling the men to the court. Thecartoon was torn, water poured downand the vessel of water that was beingcarried broke. Suddenly the weatherbecame even worse and it rained very

heavily till nightfall. And the dayturned to night."

Some persons have considered thispassage as a solemn record of the dayon which Leonardo began to paint TheBattle of Anghiari; this interpretationdoes not seem to me to have a solid

basis. This is a typical reference toan exceptional meteorological occur¬rence. These always fascinated Leo¬nardo, and as well as arousing hisscientific curiosity about their naturalcauses, stimulated the fantastic, apo¬calyptic side of his imagination.

A long list of Leonardo's bookscomes next, containing 116 titles. Itis the longest list of book holdingsthat Leonardo has recorded in any ofhis manuscripts, and therefore consti¬tutes a precious source of informationabout the authors which he drew on.

There is also a shorter and more

cursory list of fifty books. The titlesare not recorded and the books are

simply grouped according to theirshape and size. This list almostcertainly refers to autograph manu¬scripts by Leonardo himself.

There are also some superb colour¬ed maps of the Arno valley and theplain of Pisa, drawn up as part ofLeonardo's research into a plan todivert the course of the Arno in order

to cut Pisa off from the sea at a timewhen the Pisans were at war with

Florence. These maps can be datedto the summer of 1503. Also there

are the red chalk sketches of moun¬

tains which we have alreadyreferred to.

A side of Leonardo's activities which

was completely unknown until thediscovery of the Madrid II Codex isrevealed in the repeated referencesaround November and December 1504

to Leonardo's work on the harbourand citadel of Piombino. The Codex

contains many drawings dealing withproblems of architecture and forti¬fications.

Once again the insatiable studentof nature that Leonardo was could not

resist the proximity of the sea, and inthe Madrid II manuscript we find noteson currents, winds and navigation.There are also drawings of sailing shipsin the different positions they adoptaccording to the changing direction ofthe wind. Often these drawings areno more than a few rapid strokes butthey are always strikingly evocative.

Then come drawings and notes onthe flight of birds, descriptions dealingwith aspects of painting, comments ongeometry, proportion, and so on. The

quantity of material is breathtaking.However, Codex Madrid II is not a

single manuscript. It actually containstwo separate manuscripts. The foliosnumbered 141 to 157 verso make up aseparate section entirely devoted tothe casting of the "Great Horse ofMilan" for the monument to FrancescoSforza. This monument was never

cast. Leonardo protracted his researchinto it for so long that the dukeeventually used the bronze which hehad allocated for the horse to smelt

some cannons instead. Nonetheless,the detailed studies which Leonardo

made for the project and which herecords in these pages are packedwith bold and ingenious solutions.

Taken together, the two MadridCodices cover a long period of time,from 1491, a date which can be foundin the part devoted to the casting ofthe Great Horse, to 1505, the date ofthe projected Battle of Anghiari mural.This period stands at the very centreof Leonardo's creative span, coveringhis experience at Milan and Florence,his activities as "engineer general" toCesare Borgia, and (as we now knowfrom Codex Madrid II) his service asan engineer to other local despots,such as the Duke of Piombino.

Above all, the Madrid notebookswere rediscovered at a time when

Leonardo studies were directed more

at the contents of da Vinci's manu¬

scripts than his paintings and otherworks of art proper. The immenserange of subject matter found in thenotebooks, especially the scientificand engineering studies, has come tolight at a time when the world isincreasingly interested in science andtechnology and their history.

The forthcoming publication of thefacsimile edition of the Madrid Co¬

dices, reproducing the beauty andelegance of the originals, will placea unique fund of new knowledge atthe disposal of scholars and thegeneral public everywhere.

Anna Maria Brlzlo

The three drawings shown on thesepages reveal in what detail 'Leonardo

studied the problems of casting hiscolossal bronze statue. Never before

had such a great statue been cast ina single operation. On manuscript

sheet from Codex Madrid II

(opposite page, top) Leonardosketched the horse, jotted down the date,

December 20, 1493, and wrote : "I havedecided to cast the horse without tail

and lying on the side." (In fact he laterchanged his mind and decided to cast

it upside down to allow proper distributionof the molten bronze. See illustration

page 38.) Above, sketch from CodexMadrid II of structure for transporting

the huge mould and placingit in position in the ground.

Opposite, Madrid II sketch showingnow the mould would be opened.

36

f

i, ( iifc" JThr story pithe colossal horse

1 ^¡rV^SrASTT **»*

Drawinqs © 1974 by McGraw-Hill Book Co. (UK) Limited. Maidenhead.England and Taurus Ediciones. S. A Madrid, Spain

NN 1482 Leonardo wrote a remarkable letter to thelruler of Milan, Lodovico Sforza. In it, the brilliant

. /and self-confident young man of thirty offered his\~S services as engineer and architect, and at the endof the letter, in a cunning attempt to arouse Lodovlco'sinterest, he suggested that "the bronze horse may be takenIn hand, which is to be to the immortal glory of the princeyour father of happy memory..."

He was referring to the equestrian statue which Lodovicowanted to construct of his father Francesco Sforza.

Leonardo was hired as an engineer by Lodovico andduring the next ten years or so he pondered and plannedhow to construct this great monument, in the intervalsbetween amusing the court with entertainments and paint¬ing The Last Supper.

Originally the bronze statue was to be life-size, but asLodovico's power and ambitions mounted, so did the size ofthe monument. Finally the horse alone was to be over23 feet high. To cast it, 100 tons of bronze would berequired. No sculpture of this size had ever been attemptedbefore.

Leonardo wanted to cast the colossal statue in a singleoperation to avoid the disfiguring seams which mar statuescast in several pieces. But existing technology was inade¬quate for a single casting on such a scale.

By May 1491 Leonardo had completed a full-scale claymodel of the great horse. It was unveiled in the old yardof Lodovico's ducal residence at a betrothal ceremonyin November 1493, and became one of the wonders ofMilan. But the horse was never cast. In 1494 the bronzeset aside for it was sent to Lodovico's brother-in-law to bemade into cannon.

For centuries no one could be sure whether Leonardo

had solved the intractable problems of casting on such amassive scale. Now the problem is clarified by almosttwenty fascinating pages in the second Madrid notebookin which we can actually see Leonardo thinking aloud aboutthe casting. These notes are virtually a treatise on castingproblems. *

Leonardo draws the horse's pose. He sketches the r

37

Drawings taken from "The Unknown Leonardo"© 1974. McGraw-Hill Book Co(UK) Limited, Maidenhead, England

Outer mould

of the great horsefrom Codex Madrid II shown

on front cover.

Photos above and right reveal theremarkable similarities between the casting

method Leonardo invented and that used

two centuries later in the making of thestatue of Louis XIV (above) with its

network of tubes into which the bronze

was poured. Right, a page of CodexMadrid II on which Leonardo visualized

the casting pit for his horse, with,above centre, an 18th-century schematic

drawing (from above) of the casting pit ofthe Louis XIV statue. The resemblance

between the two pits is unmistakable.Sketch at bottom of manuscript page(right) was made by Leonardo after he

had decided to cast the horse upside down.(See illustration on previous page.)

mould. It "can be made in one day", he notes. "Half aboatload of plaster will serve you. Good." He decides tocast the horse on its side. Then he changes his mind andthinks that It would be better upside down. He draws thebolts which will hold the outside mould together. Theideas tumble onto the page from his fertile brain.

Leonardo abandoned the traditional "lost-wax" method

of casting, whereby a wax model was created over a claycore, an outer mould applied, the wax then being heated anddrained off, to be replaced by the molten bronze. Theworst disadvantage Is that the original model is lost.

Leonardo's method was much more complex. He doesnot describe it fully In the Madrid manuscript, but it canbe more or less reconstructed as follows. First an outer

female plaster mould was to be made from the original claymodel. This outer mould was then to be lined with wax or

potter's clay and inside it a male mould of refractory claywas to be made.

This male mould would then be baked, the wax or clay

s**uírvl*~'* «i

H

\

ht 41 »»«»*-»

lining removed, and in the empty space between the twomoulds a wax countermodel cast. All imperfections wereto be eliminated from this wax model and then a new

female mould of refractory clay was to be made over it.The wax would then be heated and tapped off, the outsidemould removed, strengthened, and then refitted on themale.

The molten bronze would then be poured in.This was the new system Leonardo devised. Historical

circumstances deprived him of an opportunity to put itcompletely to the test.

The great clay horse came to a sad end too. Whenthe French conquered Milan in 1499, their bowmen usedthe horse for target practice. It cracked, and then fell topieces. The mould was also soon lost.

It is interesting to note that some 200 years later whena huge equestrian statue of Louis XIV was constructed inParis in 1699, the moulding and casting process used wasalmost identical with Leonardo's.

Leonardo's manuscripts are filled with countless

sketches of horses, showing his unceasingstudy of their various postures and movements,which he drew without compromising thespontaneous quality of real horses. Manysketches, like the study of a foreleg abovefrom the Windsor Collection in England showthe minute precision with which he drew horses,dividing their bodies into sectionsand measuring them.

ri*0

Drawings © 1974 Giunti-Barbera, Florence and Johnson Reprint Corporation. New York

by Eugenio Garin

LEONARDO da Vinci spent manyyears of his life as a restlesswanderer. After his early yearsin the stimulating artistic climate

of Florence, his life reads like a

travelogue.In 1482, at the age of thirty, he

moved to Milan to enter the service

of Lodovico il Moro as an engineer,for in those days artists wereconsidered craftsmen and technicians

and it was common practice for themto be interested in and work on

technical and scientific questions.Then in the 1490s a period of change

and instability began in Italy. Lorenzothe Magnificent died in Florence.France (and later Spain and Austria)invaded Italy. There was crisis in theDuchy of Milan. And in Florence Savo¬narola was organizing his Republicanexperiment.

Amidst all this turmoil Leonardo first

went to work for the French, thenwandered from one Italian city toanother: to Mantua and the splendidcourt of Isabella d'Esté, back toFlorence, to Urbino where he was

received by Cesare Borgia and then toRome. Finally in 1516 he moved toFrance at the invitation of KingFrancis I. When he died three yearslater he had met and worked for some

of the most exceptional men of histime and had lived through a periodof renaissance art and culture in Italyand France, which was without parallelin Europe.

EUGENIO GARIN, professor of the historyof philosophy at the University of Florence, isinternationally known for his studies on theculture of the Renaissance and medieval

thought. He is the author of major works ontenth-century Italian culture.

Yet, it would not be incorrect to saythat in many ways Leonardo was atragic figure. He was a man alone.He had no family (he was an illegitimatechild) and had no social standing. Heknew that the world was breaking uparound him and that its values were

being swept aside by the blind forceof events. Amidst the wars and turmoil

surrounding him, he plodded on withhis eternal search for a supremeharmony. Death cast its shadow overeverything: "I thought I was learninghow to live," Leonardo wrote, "butI was learning how to die."

The lifeline which had once bound

the intellectual to the city was broken.The idea of civic pride was on thewane. Political power in Italy hadpassed into the hands of richoligarchies and tyrants, some mean-spirited, others able men. The in¬tellectual was no longer a churchman.In Leonardo's time he was a laymanwho thought of himself first and fore¬most as a technician ready to offerhis services to any ruler who wasinterested. Leonardo would offer to

build a bridge across the Golden Hornfor the Sultan.

Referring to himself as "the infidelcalled Leonardo," he wrote to theSultan as follows: "I, your servant,have heard it said that you intended tobuild this bridge but that you could notdo so because you could not find mencapable of doing it. Now I, yourhumble servant, know how to build thisbridge and will build it."

Leonardo also undertook to build

a fortress for Cesare Borgia and amodel city for the ruler of Milan, dukeLodovico il Moro. He set to work

designing all kinds of machines, suchas a device for flying from a mountaintop and a means of underwatertransport. He Invented ingeniousmachines for use at court entertain¬

ments, and made elaborate war enginesto put paid to his patron's enemies.(It didn't really matter to him who theenemies were.) As an engineer, hehad a lot in common with the politicianof that period who was also scientistand expert, chief among them beingMachiavelli.

The legend surrounding Leonardo,as an expression of his own time anda model for all ages, began to takeshape almost with Leonardo's death.

Its outlines are eloquently drawn byGiorgio Vasari in the first edition ofhis Lives of the Painters, publishedin 1550, only thirty years after Leo¬nardo died.

Vasari's Leonardo was a man fas¬

cinated by science, a passionateenquirer into the mysteries of scienceand nature, a man driven by thecuriosity of a magician oran astrologer."His capricious research led him tonatural philosophy," Vasari wrote, "tostudy the properties of herbs and toobserve the movements of the heavens,the moon's orbit and the progress ofthe sun." And in this first edition of

his Lives, Vasari also added: "Hedeveloped such a heretical stance thathe lost interest in religion of any sort,perhaps more interested in being aphilosopher than a Christian."

However, Vasari, who was beingperfectly faithful to what Leonardo hadwritten about himself, omitted thissentence from the second edition of

his Lives, published in 1568, in thestraitened atmosphere which set inafter the Council of Trent.

For Vasari, Leonardo had been theincarnation of the Ideal man as de¬

lineated by the philosophical dis¬cussion group centred on Lorenzo deMedici. "The heavens often rain down

the richest gifts on human beingsnaturally," Vasari wrote, "but some¬times with lavish abundance bestow

upon a single individual beauty, graceand ability, so that, whatever he does,every action is so divine that he out¬distances all other men, and clearlydisplays how his genius is the gift ofGod and not an acquirement of humanart. Men saw this in Leonardo daVinci."

Thus Vasari was simply depicting,in his own way and according to theperspective of his times, the man thatLeonardo had wanted to be. Not so

much the ¡mage of himself that Leo¬nardo presented as the characterwhich he had delicately yet carefullyfashioned for himself.

The basic premise underlying allLeonardo's work is that the artist, andabove all the painter (which is howLeonardo primarily thought of himself),must understand every object hedepicts if he is to be worthy of hisart, since his task is to representreality in all its facets. In other words,

40

Photo Unesco Courier

Leonardo sketched

this set of ball

bearings inCodex Madrid I

almost 500 years ago.It bears a remarkable

resemblance to the

modern set of ball

bearings shown aboveleft. Leonardo

understood that

"if balls or rollers

touch each other in

their motion, they willmake the movement

more difficult." To

solve this problem,says "The UnknownLeonardo", he putthe bearings inthe ring-shaped raceshown here so that

they could rotatefreely. Top of oppositepage, drawing in theCodex> Atlanticusfor studyingtractive effort.

Drawing © 1974 by McGraw-Hill Book Co.(UK) Limited, Maidenhead, Englandand Taurus Ediciones, S. A Madrid, Spain

he must know the whole world around

him: its Innermost secrets, its fun¬damental laws, its origins and causes.If we fail to understand this essential

fact about Leonardo then we risk

missing the point of his life's work.Leonardo himself was perfectly

clear on this point. He declared thatthe painter should be a "universalmaster", capable of "imitating" throughart "all the different shapes which are

produced by nature." "The artist must"first have a mental picture" of everyform. He must know the reasons for

everything. He must use his intellectto master the brute force of the

elements, and he must learn how toconstruct all kinds of machines and

devices which will enable him to

reproduce reality and triumph over it."The painter," Leonardo proclaims, 'is,in conflict and competition with Nature; r

41

he is the Lord and Master of Nature."It has been said that the enormous

mass of material in Leonardo's note¬

books gives the impression that heintended to produce an encyclopaediaof human knowledge. It is most pro¬bable that this was indeed his purpose.

The idea was not a new one: Leo¬

nardo was acquainted with the en¬cyclopaedias of the Middle Ages andknew Pliny's Natural History, whichwas widely read and admired duringthe Renaissance. And Leonardo was

apparently much more aware than helets on of what was going on in the"sciences" during this time.

The real novelty lay in his line ofapproach. He did not simply seek toaccumulate facts and data or examplesof strange occurrences for his ownedification and contemplation. Hispurpose was action: he wanted tocreate, to become "Lord and Master"over Nature. And so he strained to gobeyond what the senses observed andsought to apprehend the deeper forceswhich act on the senses.

It was precisely because he wantedto produce in the eyes of the beholderthe effects that the real world

produces, and because he wished todo so in a fresh, transfigured way, thatLeonardo felt that he had to reach

down into the roots of the visible world

and that he had to comprehend theimpulses which produce optical images.

If an artist wants to render all the

possible effects of light, Leonardoreasoned, then he should learn whatlight actually is, study light rays andthe laws governing their diffusion, thestructure of the eye and the charac¬teristics, of sight. Before undertakingto carve the human form, an artistshould have long practice in thedissection of dead bodies. He should

be an expert in anatomy, have a goodknowledge of muscular movement, andthe whole process of movement in aliving body.

Drawing © 1974 Giunti-Barbera, Florence, andJohnson Reprint Corporation, New York

Similarly, to paint the macrocosmthat is, the world around us the artistmust study the anatomy of the uni¬verse, scrutinize its subtlest fibres andexamine its every movement andmanifestation.

Leonardo's notebooks are the ex¬

traordinary fragments of this greatnew-type encyclopaedia, based not ontexts or scholastic disputes, norindeed on superficial experiments, butinstead on studies in depth into theunknown, using calculations, measure¬ments, laws and elementary formswhich then make it possible to workback to the surface of things, tophenomena which we can understandand thereby dominate, transform andmould to our needs.

Such an encyclopaedia, as conceivedby Leonardo is not unlike a greatanatomical or physiological study ofthe universe. Just as man is a world

in miniature (a microcosm) and in¬corporates everything contained in theuniverse (and hence is capable ofknowing everything, and can do andbecome everything), so the world islike a great living organism (a macro¬cosm) with water. instead of blood asits life-giving force, and its "causes"that is, its mathematical laws are itssoul.

Light, motion and life these are thefabric and structure of the universe.

We see that the chapters of the en¬cyclopaedia fall naturally into placewith sections on optics, mechanics,hydraulics, anatomy, biology, physi¬ology and cosmology. Then come themachines which enable man to rival

Nature. And finally we have the crownand summit of It all, the science ofpainting, which Leonardo saw as fun¬damental and basic to the whole work.

For through art, according to Leonardo,a new world is created inside the

world. This is the world of man the

"creator" and poet, a world whichtriumphs over the existing world.

The world-view which found its most

extraordinary outlet in Leonardo cannotobviously be considered his ownunique creation. The circles in whichhe moved during the first thirty yearsof his life had seen other distinguishedartists with a broad cultural back¬

ground including training In scientificas well as literary disciplines.

Filippo Brunelleschi, for example, isknown to have carried on an intellec¬

tual exchange for many years with oneof the greatest mathematicians andscientists of the century, Paolo Tosca-nelli.

Italy had also known other en¬cyclopaedic minds before Leonardo,such as Lorenzo Ghiberti and Leon

Battista Alberti. Alberti, like Leonardo,

The famous needle-sharpening machinedrawn by Leonardo in the Codex Atlanticus.He hoped that this machine wouldbring him "60,000 ducats a year", butit is unlikely that it was ever constructed.

was a skilled artist. He had made a

special study of physics, mathematicsand optics because he felt they wereindispensable for an artist.

But throughout their lives these menhad preserved an attachment to theircities. Leonardo on the other hand

is totally detached from the idea ofthe city-state (Florence, Milan); hisscience transcends civic and national

boundaries and has no ideological ornational loyalty.

Leonardo had nothing in commonwith the humanist "dignitaries" of histime or with the scholastics entrenched

in their cities, nor for that matter withthe artists attached to a particularcourt or belonging to a specific school.His patriotism extended quite simplyto the universe, to which he belongedentirely, like his mathematics, scienceand philosophy.

His architectural projects fired theimagination of rulers such as CesareBorgia, Lodovico il Moro, the King ofFrance, and the Sultan of the OttomanEmpire. Leonardo's work is inscribedin great geometrical flourishes acrossthe open book of the universe.Science and technology owe allegianceto neither church nor country.

To understand Leonardo's detached

attitude, his wanderings from city tocity, his readiness to offer his"secrets" to the sovereigns of so manydifferent lands, the above remarksmust be kept constantly in mind.Leonardo's "secrets" were not, or notonly, his exquisite paintings; they wereweapons and instruments of war. Butfor Leonardo they were nothing morethan machines that reflected man'sscientific Inventiveness, his drive tointerpret Nature and bend it to hiswill. For him, these "instruments",were neither good nor evil but simplyeffective in other words, they did thejob required of them.

It is here, in his "detachment" as a

scientist and engineer, that Leonardoparallels Machiavelli, an affinity muchmore significant than the fact (notwithout its own importance) that bothmen passed briefly under the aegisof Cesare Borgia in his court at Urbino.

The extraordinary synthesis achievedby Leonardo reached its culmination,as we have pointed out earlier, in"painting", which for him, was chargedwith very special meanings. Leonardosaw the work of the painter asdominating the process of humanknowledge. It was the ultimate goalof scientific enquiry and the startingpoint of creative endeavour. Creativityand scientific research are not two

separate activities but part of the samecircular process with the artist standingat the critical juncture. He is themeeting point between knowledge andaction. More precisely, where know¬ledge is transformed into creation.

It is no accident if Leonardo extols

the painter for he always attributesspecial importance to the eye and theact of visual perception, as well asanything having to do with the worldof images.

Leonardo always tended to express

42

Leonardo's notebooks

contain many drawings,diagrams and architecturalplans for an "Ideal City"In a manuscript now atthe Institut de France,Paris, Leonardo writes

that "A building shouldalways be detached onall sides in order that

its true shape may beseen." Leonardo wanted

the inhabitants of his

ideal city to enjoy asmuch privacy as possibleand to this end devised

ingenious access systemsby staircase: above

right, building withquadruple staircase, and,above, a double spiralstaircase designed forthe "Ideal City". InCodex Madrid II Leonardo

drew many architecturalstudies and sketches,

using his ideas on privatecorridors and staircases

to design a castle inwhich the lord could see

what was going onin the building.

his ideas in visual terms: "The

painter," he wrote, "should resemblea mirror." He should welcome "the

multiplicity of things," not just theirexternal forms, but also their inner

properties and essence, and theirelementary geometric patterns, whichstand at the roots of perceptual ex¬perience and allow us to understand it.

Hence the primacy of mathematicsover the evidence of the senses: "no

human enquiry can properly be calledscience unless it passes by way ofmathematical reasoning," said Leo¬nardo. Hence too the "philosophical"importance of painting: "Anyone whofeels contempt for painting has no realaffection for philosophy . . . Paintingitself is philosophy because it capturesthe movement of bodies through spacein their full spontaneity. And philos¬ophy does exactly the same thing ..."

These two aspects of human activity,knowledge and action, "seeing" and"creating", cannot, therefore, be sep¬arated. The circular process science-engineering-art and seeing-doing is asingle unique activity.

For Leonardo, the invention andconstruction of machines underscore

a number of important considerations:(1) that technology and science areinseparable, the two being linked bythe "mathematical" structure of all I

Photos Institut de France, Paris Leonardo designed a stable withautomatic mangers which would notbe out of place on a 20th-century farm

(drawing below is from a} manuscriptin the Institut de France)j The hay. in -the loft Is fed "to the mangers, bymeans of funnels, narrow at the top andwide over the manger". Leonardoalso designed a 220-feet-long stablecapable of housing 128 horses.

Below, detail of Leonardo's drawingof the "Ideal City" which appears ina manuscript now at the Institut deFrance, Paris, showing its high andlow level roads. Lower photo, model ofthe Ideal City in the Milan ScienceMuseum, reconstructed from Leonardo'sdrawings and notes. Leonardo wrotethat "By the high streets no vehiclesand similar objects should circulate,but they are exclusively for the useof gentlemen. The carts and burdensfor the use and convenience of the

inhabitants have to go by the low[streets]." In his plans for the city,Leonardo is exclusively concerned withsocial and hygienic goals, unlike mostarchitects of his time.

uûûûQûûtt

One of Leonardo's grandiose projectswas the bridge across the Bosphorusfrom Constantinople to Galata whichhe offered to build for the Sultan

of the Ottoman Empire. Right, above,drawing of this bridge from aboveand in elevation, from a manuscriptin the Institut de France. Leonardo

notes the length, 1,150 feet Model,right, below, by a modern Swiss scientist,D.F. Stussi proves that the planswere technically feasible.

k things; (2) that the skeletal frameworkof physical objects can be reduced toa mechanical model; (3) that there isa fundamental connexion between

mechanics and real life; (4) thatresearch into models based on visual

observation shows that "the eye is theleast fallible of all the human senses."

From all this we can clearly see theperfect unity that existed in Leonardencyclopaedia, in which it is absuiv.to separate science, technology andart. Vasari's mistake was to break, orrather misunderstand, the close linkbetween these three domains, with theresult that he failed to see the real

significance of the work, and finallyconcluded that it was an example ofLeonardo's madness and incoherence.

"He perpetrated many such follies,"Vasari wrote, "he studied mirrors andmade curious experiments to find oilfor painting . . . His knowledge of art,indeed, prevented him from finishingmany things which he had begun, forhe felt that his hand would be unable

to realize the perfect creations of hisimagination, as his mind formed suchdifficult, subtle and marvellousconceptions that his hands, skilful asthey were, could never have ex¬pressed them ..."

Vasari referred to these activities

of Leonardo as "caprices". But inreality they were part of an unendingsearch for the unifying factor in humanexperience, for a meaning of thecreated universe, for man's placein the world. Here was the restless

beginning of a new era, a new wayof understanding art and science.

Each of Leonardo's thousands of

manuscript pages, with their awesomeentwining of fragments of minutelydetailed prose and delicately refinedillustrations, strange machines andprecisely sketched anatomy, not onlysymbolizes man's perennial dreamsand aspirations but also expressesa totally new way of considering man'stask on earth as an endless search

to master the transient stuff of reality.I have taken care to stress Leo¬

nardo's extreme refinement in every¬thing (whether it be his hand-writingor the disdain he showed for the

literati). He was an exquisitely literateman, and we know from the Madrid

notebooks that he possessed a richand widely diverse library.

All of Leonardo's "caprices" arejustified by an awareness that manand his works are fragile. And hereperhaps is the sign, and the secret,of Leonardo's relevance for all of us

today: the fact that he understoodand expressed with superlative skillthe enigmatic insecurity of man andthe mystery of his destiny and condi¬tion, at a time when unforeseen andunforeseeable possibilities were open¬ing up in art and science.

Eugenio Garln

¡S.*«r rfWoJJVrV» -^f^*? VKroflf

Photo © Science Museum Milan

44

THE GLORY by Carlo Pedretti

Reflections

on art

in the

Madrid II Manuscript

OF PAINTING

Photo O Anderson-Giraudon. Paris

Leonardo defined his whole approach to artin Codex Madrid II. "Do not make the muscles

of your figures apparent", he writes, "becauseeven if they are in their right places they do notshow prominently unless the limbs in whichthey are located are exerting great force orare greatly strained." He criticizes "barrenand woody figures" and applies the phrases"bag of nuts" and "bunch of radishes" tonudes that are "woody and without grace."Leonardo attacked many artists who wereguilty of this abuse, and in a manuscriptdating from 1513-1514 (known as "Manuscript E",at the Institut de France in Paris) his Imprecationappears to be a criticism of Michelangelo'snudes in the Sistine Chapel, in Rome. Aboveleft, red chalk nude by Leonardo (about 1503-1504).Above right, Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise,detail of a fresco by Michelangelo on theceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508-1510).

LIMBS which are not in exercise must be drawn

without showing the play of muscles. And if youdo otherwise, you will have imitated a sack of nutsrather than a human figure."

This is one of the notes on painting found in the secondof the recently discovered Madrid Manuscripts of Leonardoda Vinci dating from the first years of the 16th century.It is of great interest because it illustrates how Leonardoand Michelangelo differed sharply in their approach todepicting the human form, particularly as portrayed in *Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes (1508-1510). For r

CARLO PEDRETTI Is the author of many books on Leonardo. Thelatest, "Leonardo: A Study In Chronology and Style', was publisheain 1973 by Thames and Hudson, London. He is a professor in theDepartment of Fine Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles.This article is inspired by a chapter on the "Notes on Painting inthe Madrid Manuscripts" published In Italian in his book "Leonardoda Vinci Inédito" (Leonardo' da Vinci's unpublished works), publishedby Barbera Editore, Florence, 1968.

45

r-

wWtw*t^mmmm»^!-

^^mmMmWÊMW^Ê

'*- HI^IMiHHH^HBHHI^^^^^^^^^^HH

An eye of the angel in The Virgin of the Rocks,executed by Leonardo in Milan about 1483(Louvre Museum, Paris).

k Leonardo, the human body was not an excuse for theartist to show off his skill in depicting bulging musclesunnecessarily.

This and the other notes on painting in Codex Madrid IIwere written at a crucial moment of Leonardo's career, and

as such they reflect the innovations in the artistic theoriesof the Cinquecento (16th century).

It is no longer the appearance of things that Leonardo isconcerned with, but their structure, so that he adopts a typeof drawing which moves away from atmospheric effects tostress form: form which is defined by sharp contours andby lines of shading which curve around it with deliberateslowness.

It is no longer the Florentine gracefulness of the lateQuattrocento but a more heroic and herculean sense ofproportions which is reflected in his anatomical studies, andin the studies for the warriors of his Battle of Anghiari,which appear to conform, like a silent homage to Masaccio,to the example provided by Michelangelo with his David,completed in 1501.

Form is expressed by style; and by style I mean not onlyLeonardo's art but also his thought as expressed by words,for there is a close affinity between his writing and hisdrawing. An example is given by a text already known, inwhich Leonardo tells the painter how to retain the imagesof human figures in action by using essential lines,something like shorthand.

"In order to draw a head," says Leonardo, "make an O,for an arm make a straight or bent line, and do the samefor the legs and bust, and when at home turn such notationsinto perfect form."

However, our eye does not need to "turn" those notationsInto "perfect form"; on the contrary it is able to perceivethe impulse that has guided the artist's hand, and it isundoubtedly seduced by the open touch, which leaves muchmore to the imagination.

3W --An eye of Mona Lisa. Leonardo began workon the painting about 1501 and finished itmore than four years later (Louvre Museum, Paris).

The notes on painting in Leonardo's Codex Madrid IIpertain not only to the human figure but also to the problemsof light, shadow, and colour.

On one page Leonardo brings together two major aspectsof pictorial vision: the representation of colour "in per¬spective", (that is, the colour of objects as it Is affected byintervening atmosphere and therefore varying in intensityaccording to the distance of the objects), and humanmovement.

These aspects are further elaborated in other parts of themanuscript, and while the first is treated with a considerabledegree of abstraction which can only be explained with thelanguage of the diagram, the second is exemplified by quicknotations of the human figure in action.

Some of them recall the sketches for the Battle of

Anghiari drawings of an energy which approaches fury,done with an explosive line, such as the one at Windsorin which Leonardo juxtaposes the screaming expressions ofmen and animals, lions and horses. This is a sheet ofthoughts, more than the definite path of an idea for com¬position: a search for the expression of human bestialityin war.

In Codex Madrid II one can see how optics is closelyrelated to painting. One example: "The surface of everyopaque body takes on the colour of the object oppositeto It. But green subjects, such as meadows and othersuch things should be arranged opposite the shadows ofgreen bodies, according to art, so that the shadows thattake on the colour of such an object do not lose theirquality and appear to be the shadow of a body other thangreen; should you put bright red facing a green shadow,the shadow will become reddish of a most ugly colour, andwill be very different from the true shadow of green."

Most Interesting here is the advice given to the painterto make colour juxtapositions "according to art", so as toachieve the kind of harmony that derives from retaining in

46 The smile of the angel in The Virgin of the Hocks. The smile of Mona Lisa.

An eye of St. John the Baptist, paintedby Leonardo about 1509 (Louvre Museum, Paris).

WHEN LEONARDO EYES

ARE SMILING

In Codex Madrid II, Leonardo states that thehuman face and body are defined by thelight surrounding them. He notes thatreflected and refracted light as well as colouredshadows are all what he calls "the truthof colours". This may explain the affinity^between the many faces he painted whichthe photographic enlargements on this doublepage clearly reveal, especially Leonardo'srendering of the eyes and the smile. Theenlargements show how skilfully Leonardoplayed with light and shadow in order to achievehis enigmatic smile and beautifully expressiveeyes (thousands of pages have been writtenabout Mona Lisa's smile). In Codex Madrid II,Leonardo advises the painter to strive for asubtle blend of shadows which he describes

as "the gracefulness of shadows, smoothlydeprived of every contour". By so doing hehas given us his secret of how he achievedsuch delicately nuanced forms in his models.

An eye of the lady in the portrait known asthe Belle Ferronnière. (Louvre Museum, Paris.)

a shadow the colour of its object (Leonardo refers to the"true shadow") and by avoiding what he calls "very badshadows", which are those affected by the reflection ofanother object of different colour, as would be the casewith a green object that comes to produce a reddish shadow.

All the elements of Leonardo's painting are present in thetheories expressed in the Madrid Manuscript. Anotherseries of notes, in addition to those on form and colour,deals with light and shadow and the smooth transition fromlight to shadow, which is the true essence of the famousLeonardo sfumato. The notes on this subject in the newlydiscovered manuscript are numerous, but it is interestingto note that each one takes into account the element ofcolour.

When in the first period of his activity Leonardo wasdealing with the problem of light and shadow he conceivedof objects in terms of geometrical entities and was mainlyconcerned with the study of the gradations and degrees ofintensity of the shadows.

After 1500 his major concern becomes the study of lightand shadow on objects placed in the open air, thus takinginto account colour and reflections. Light becomes thevehicle that blends the elements of landscape into a har¬mony of transitions from colour to colour, and this Leonardocalls "grace".

The human figure too becomes part of the landscape (onethinks of the Mona Lisa, The Virgin and St. Anne, Leda) andthus participates in the phenomena of reflection, refraction,and Interplay of coloured shadows, as is the case with everyother object placed under the light of the sky. What canbe seen under the projection of a roof is also to be seenunder the chin of a human face.

One of Leonardo's most beautiful observations pertainsto the way a human face should be represented. Headvises the painter to arrange the setting so as to achieve ^the most delicate sfumato effects in the shadows, what he r

The smile of St. John the Baptist. The smile of the lady in the Belle Ferronnière. 47

calls "the gracefulness of shadows, smoothly deprivedof every sharp contour."

The setting is provided by the walls of the houses flankinga street, through which the light penetrates light made ofair without brightness, a golden, diffuse light such as thatof Giorgione.

Now, says Leonardo, "light ends upon the pavement ofthe street and rebounds with reflected motion at the

shadowy parts of the faces, brightening them considerably.And the length of the aforementioned light of the skycreated by the boundaries of the roofs hanging over thestreet illuminates almost as far as the beginning of theshadows which are underneath the projections of the face,and so it is gradually changed into brightness, until it endsover the chin with imperceptible shadows all over."

It is a widely accepted opinion that Leonardo was in¬sensitive to colour and that for him the "glory of painting"lay only in the effect of relief that it can produce. Thechronology of his notes on painting shows that this mayapply to the first period of his theoretical work, when his artwas still bound to the teaching of the Florentine school ofthe Quattrocento.

But after 1500 his observations on colour graduallyintensify to a point where his theories have no applicationin any of his works which have come down to us. It isenough to mention the effects of violet light at sunset,a light that he designates as being of the colour of the lilyand that makes the landscape "most cheerful and pleasant."

"The beauty of colour," concludes Leonardo, "is to befound in the main lights." Light is taken as a symbol ofvirtue, and the "truth of colours" is the beauty that lightreveals in them.

What is most interesting in this d^ase as in many othersis what the British would refer to as the "unpredictableLeonardo", the Leonardo who cannot be anticipated, becausethe notes he writes are nothing but the record of the move¬ments of his mind, so that his precepts to the painter do nothave the stiffness of academic teaching but the freshnessof a revelation.

But enough of comments, explanations, and interpret¬ations! Leonardo's words come to us with the precisionof mathematics and yet they are evocative of the spacethat opens up in the background of his paintings:

"What I would remind you of, concerning faces, is thatyou should consider how, at varying distances, differentqualities of the shadows are lost and that only the main

spots are left, that is, the pits of the eye and the like: andfinally that the face remains dark, because the lights, whichare small compared with the medium shadows, are absorbedby darkness. For this reason, at a distance, the qualitiesand quantities of the main lights and shadows are con¬sumed, and everything blends into a medium shadow. Andthis is why trees and all objects appear darker at a distancethan if the same objects were near the eye. From thisobscurity on, the air which is between the eye and the objectcauses the object to become brighter and to turn towardsblue. But it turns bluish rather in the shadows than in the

luminous parts, where one can see better the true qualityof the colours."

Carlo Pedrettl

fryH s

Study of Star of Bethlehem amid twirlinggrasses, with leaves of crowsfoot and woodanemones, and flowers of spurge. Drawnas part of a study for Leonardo's Leda.

48

nnoto <D Taken from "Leonardo and the Aqe of theEye" by Ritchie Calder, Hememann, London. 1970

»fcqf vfcttf' jMfriAtJ ,+.~a. * V. %.*

Whirling movements of every kind fascinatedLeonardo. He likened the eddies of whirlpools,which he called "the cosmic breathing of theocean", to the "lake of blood extendingthrough the human body". He saw a parallelbetween water and hair. "Observe the movement

of the surface of water", he wrote, "howit resembles hair, which has two movements,one of which comes from the weight of the hair,the other from the curves of the curls. Thus

water has its whirling curls, some of whichfollow the rush of the main current, whileothers have a movement of incidence and

reflection". Leonardo's scientific drawingsof water in motion are veritable works of art.

Above, a shaft of water pouring into a poolforms a chrysanthemum-like image ofbubbles and dancing lines.

Drawing of a rearing horse executed byLeonardo in 1504 for his never-completedmural, The Battle of Anghiari. Even the cartoonof this ill-fated work has been lost, althoughmany preliminary sketches of the workhave survived.

Study of hair arrangement for Ledaand the Swan, a Greek myth which inspiredLeonardo to produce a painting, now lostand known only from preliminarysketches and 16th century copies.

LEONARDO'S MANUSCRIPTS

(Continued from page 7)

edition of Leonardo's unpublished

writings.However, Count Libri could not re¬

sist the temptation of removing a num¬ber of leaves from the Leonardo note¬

books which he studied at the Institut

de France. Libri was a sharp business¬man and he set about selling themanuscripts he had appropriated.

Some of the stolen manuscript pagesfound their way to England, whilethe small Codex on The Flight of Birdswas purchased for 4,000 lire by a cer¬tain Count Manzoni, who later sold itto an eminent Leonardo scholar, Theo¬dore Sabachnikoff. Meanwhile, the di¬rectors of the Institut de France be¬

came suspicious of Libri, the onlyperson who had been in a position toconsult the Paris manuscripts. Libridenied the theft energetically, but theevidence against him was overwhelm¬ing, and he was sentenced (in hisabsence) to ten years' imprisonment.After this scandal, the Leonardo pagesthat had illegally crossed to Englandwere returned to the Institut de France,and Sabachnikoff handed over The

Flight of Birds Codex to the BibliotecaReale in Turin, where it still is today.

The story of the main changes ofownership of the Leonardo notebooksmight have ended there. However, atthe beginning of 1967 came officialnews of an astonishing find : two Leo¬nardo notebooks previously consid¬ered lost had been discovered in the

Madrid National Library.After an initial reaction of justified

amazement, people began to ask howthese two manuscripts could have tur¬ned up in Madrid. Scholars have comeup with the following answer. Some ofthe Leonardo material owned by Pom¬peo Leoni was sold in Spain after hisdeath. One of the purchasers wasprobably Juan de Espina, a Madridcollector. Between 1620 and 1630 first

the future Charles I of England (thenthe Prince of Wales) and later theFlorentine Vincenzo Carducci visited

de Espina and saw his collection.Both visitors were particularly im¬pressed by two books "written anddrawn by the great Leonardo da Vinci."

When de Espina died in 1642, heleft his precious collection to the Kingof Spain. The legacy included the twoLeonardo books, and these were thendeposited in the Palace Library, whicharound 1830 became the nucleus of

Spain's recently founded National Li¬brary. It is highly likely that the tworecently discovered notebooks are thetwo manuscripts which once belongedto de Espina.

In a nineteenth-century printed cata¬logue of the Madrid National Library,there is a reference to two Leonardo

"autographs". However, everyone whofollowed up this reference and askedto consult the precious manuscriptswas disappointed. Other manus¬cripts were found at the shelf-marksgiven in the catalogue, and there wasno sign of the Leonardo autographs.

At the end of the 19th century, aFlorentine bibliophile named Tammazode Marins tried to find the manus¬

cripts in the Madrid Library, but he

This drawing from the Codex Atlanticussuggests that Leonardo envisageda form of water skiing. However, thesefloating shoes and supporting stickswere never made, and we do not knowwhat material he intended to use

to make them buoyant.Drawing © 1974 Giunti-Barbera, Florence, andJohnson Reprint Corporation, New York

was unsuccessful and the Library's di¬rectors decided to consider the two

volumes as definitely lost.Then, in 1964, an eminent French

Leonardo scholar, André Corbeau, ex¬pressed his conviction that the twomanuscripts were in fact in the Natio¬nal Library and that their failure tocome to light might well be due to anerror in the printed catalogue. At thispoint the Library's directors decided tomake another attempt to locate the twonotebooks.

This time the search was success¬

ful. At the beginning of 1965, Don Ra¬mon Paz y Remolar, the director of themanuscript section of the Library, hadthe immense surprise of finding theLeonardo volumes, not at the shelf-marks given in the nineteenth-centurycatalogue (Aa 19 and 20), but at shelf-marks Aa 119 and 120.

The news of this important discoveryspread by word of mouth through theworld of scholarship. In 1967 the newswas officially confirmed, and today themassive contribution to our knowledgeof Leonardo's work provided by thesenew manuscripts is at last being madeavailable to the public in a facsimileedition to be published this autumnby McGraw-Hill Book Company ofCodex Madrid /and Codex Madrid II,

as they are now called.Another event of the last few years

which can be compared without exces¬sive exaggeration to the discovery ofa new manuscript is the restorationof the Codex Atlanticus belonging tothe Ambrosian Library in Milan.

The man behind this great projectwas Cardinal Montlni, Archbishop ofMilan, now Pope Paul VI. In 1962 hesuccessfully urged the directors of theAmbrosian Library to send the preciousCodex to be restored at the Convent

of Grottaferrata near Rome. The idea

was not only to conserve the CodexAtlanticus, but to salvage as much aspossible from the disastrous scissors-and-paste job carried out by its compi¬ler, Leoni, who had arbitrarily gatheredtogether whatever he thought related

to mechanics in the Leonardo papersand notebooks belonging to him.

Leoni had taken large sheets of thickwhite paper (the size used for atlases,hence the title Codex Atlanticus), andused them as a backing on which to"stick" the original pages by Leo¬nardo, which were considerably smal¬ler and often covered from top to bot¬tom with sketches and writing.. Someof Leonardo's pages were coveredwith drawing and writing on just oneside of the paper. In these cases, orwhenever Leoni considered the hand¬

ful of notes and hurried sketches on

the verso of the paper to be unimpor¬tant, he stuck the verso directly on tothe backing page.

When, however, Leonardo had cov¬ered both sides of the paper with nota¬tions and drawings, Leoni made a kindof window in the backing page so thatboth recto and verso were visible. Fi¬

nally, when dealing with large-sizedLeonardo pages, Leoni adopted yetanother system : he folded the pagein two, introduced a window in the

backing page on which he mountedone of the two halves, and left theother half of the Leonardo page hang¬ing folded just as it was.

Leoni's barbaric treatment of the

manuscripts had unfortunate results.A large number of verso sides onwhich Leonardo had recorded his

thoughts are lost. The margins of thepages which have been pasted on to"windows" are also lost, and theseoften contained parts of a drawingor the continuation of writing. Third¬ly, in the case of the large pagesfolded in two, the part left hanginghas often been torn off and conse¬

quently has disappeared.The restoration carried out during

ten years of devoted work at Grotta¬ferrata has entirely altered the appear¬ance of the Codex Atlanticus. In manyways it is now a completely new docu- .ment. The restorers used the most

advanced techniques. For example, theLeonardo originals were scrupulouslywashed and toughened with sophis¬ticated modern fibres and chemicalsin order to make them more resistant

to the ravages of time.Today, as a result of this great

enterprise, the Codex Atlanticus con¬sists of 1,068 pages, divided intotwelve leather-bound volumes.

There was no question of letting thenewly-restored Codex be used for con¬sultation, and so a facsimile edition ofit is being produced by the Florencepublishing house of Barbera. Thefirst volumes, the end-product of re¬fined technology and painstaking colla¬tion with the original, have alreadybeen published, and the CommissioneNazionale Vinciana is at present pre¬paring more transcriptions of the Co¬dex, which will thus soon be available

to Leonardo scholars in its entirety.Thus modern scholars and restorers

have done much to repair the havocwreaked on Leonardo's manuscriptsand we can now appreciate more fullythe activity of one of the most power¬ful and universal minds the world hasever known. Paolo Galluzzl

50

Just published

Three Centuries

of Scientific

Hydrology

123 pages 25 F. quadrilingual(English, French, Spanish, Russian).

Leonardo da Vinci thought thatsea water rose from within the earth

to the heights of mountains, like bloodrising from the lower regions of thehuman body to the head;

Aristotle believed that river waters

originated in underground caverns bythe transformation of air into water;

The Chinese recorded rain, sleet,snow and wind as far back as

1200 B.C. and used rain gaugesas early as 1000 B.C.;

Ancient Egyptians noted floodheights and forecasted the floodwaters of the Nile before 3000 B.C.

Three centuries of scientific hydrologyIron siècles d'hydrologie ifirntiUqut

1 re-, siglos de hidrología cieniíficaIpil bckíi na>HHOH rHjpo.iorHM

I ivx.. »\*> (IV» IAIIS MSII

These are just a few of the examplesof man's historical concern with

water as a major force in thedevelopment of civilization. Buthydrology as a science was bornin 1674 with the study by Pierre

Perrault which paved the way for theuniversal recognition of the watercycle as we know it today.

Three Centuries of Scientific

Hydrology commemorates theevolution of hydrology and theconclusion of the International

Hydrological Decade, launched byUnesco In 1965.

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r^^Check the spruce treesm Porta della Giustizia'

f W/AV

* 0V1"

-JL 6

This is a page fromLeonardo's rediscovered

manuscript CodexMadrid II. It shows

new designs forwindmills which

Leonardo worked out.

Some of them (bottomrow) had sailsdesigned to rotate

horizontally. In themargin Leonardoscribbled this note:

" Check tomorrow-

morning whether thespruce trees at Portadella Giustizia [inFlorence] are good formaking such a mill."

Drawing © 1974, McGraw-Hill IBook Co. (U.K.) Limited, Maiden¬head, England and Taurus Edi-.ciones, S.A. Madrid, Spain

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