Leonardo da Vinci is one of the outstanding figures of the Rennaissance and of all time. An entirely self-taught intellectual giant, he was endlessly curious about the physical world.
His amazing notebooks reveal the breadth of his research into areas as diverse as anatomy, architecture, botany, geometry, engineering, mathematics physics, painting, including his extraordinarily understanding of what the future would bring like robots, airplanes in anticipation of modern technology.
During his life, Leonardo produced thousands of pages of notes, sketches and designs 'about anatomy and other interesting things ' (extract from a letter of an agent for the Duke of Ferrara) these pages are called codices, manuscript pages that are bound together in a book form. However, Leonardo's manuscripts were not always grouped together in this way.
Although Leonardo had organized his papers prior to his bequest to his student, Francesco Melzi, the manuscripts have unfortunately not been maintained in that manner. Melzi's heirs were terrible curators. Individual pages were sold chaply to collectors. Folios were re-arranged and separated. The individual that did the most damage was a sculptor from the court of King Phillip IV of Spain. His name was Pompeo Leoni. In an attempt to sort artistic drawings from technical drawings, he disassembled, re-organized, rebound and in some cases completely lost many of Leonardo's papers.
Amazingly, some of the documents were so completely lost, that they weren't found again until 1966 ! What a year that was for the National Library of Madrid ! They found two bound manuscripts, which are now referred to as 'Madrid I and Madrid II ' At present, approximately 5,000 pages are accounted for, in various museums and libraries. I will mention a brief resume of a few of the 20 Leonardo's Codices. For me, the most startling is the CODEX ATLANTICUS. This is the largest collection of Leonardo's manuscripts that has ever been assembled in a series of 12 leather bound books. Within this collection, you can find some of his designs for automatons or robots. Of particular interest, are the pages on gliders and flying machines. Most of Leonardo's aereal machines were designed after he studied birds. In his notes he recorded, " The bird is an instrument functioning according to mathematical laws, and man has the power to reproduce an instrument like this, with all its movements". There is written evidence in this codice, that Leonardo may have flown one of his gliders when he wrote:
" When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there, you will always long to return '
Leonardo built a working model of one of his flying machines and on January 2, 1496, he recorded in his notes that he was going to attempt to fly it the next day. It is unknown whether he did try it or not, but judging by what he later wrote on a note to himself to try any more flying experiments over a lake where he would be less likely to be injured in a landing. Suggests that maybe he came down with a painful thump on the ground as later on this same Codice Atlanticus he has drawn a design for a parachute which might have been conceived to allow for the safe escape of ny pilot from a flying device.
This Atlanticus Codice also includes studies for some of his paintings like The Battle of Anghiari of which we talked about earlier and where recently, an Italian professor has claimed that this painting is behind Vasari's other battle painting.
THE CODEX FORSTER
One fascinating element of this Codex is information that lead Prof. Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo ideale of Vinci, to discover that Leonardo had developed one of the original synthethic plastics. The material was organic, non-toxic and unbreakable. Prof. Vezzosi has recreated the materials based on notes from this Forster Codex. The Forster manuscripts were lost for a number of years. When they resurfaced at the end of the 19th Century, they were purchased by Earl Edward George Lytton, and subsequently inherited by John Forster and it was finally bequeathed to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1876 and it remains there to this day.
THE MADRID CODICES
There are two. One and Two, which are bound in red Moroccan leather and these codices are an engineer's delight, full of widgets, gadgets, gears, and inventions, dated between 1490 - 1496. Madrid II, is primarily a treatise on Geometry, and was written by Leonardo between 1503- 1505. Although these manuscripts thought to be lost, they resurfaced in 1966. The manuscript now resides at the National Library in Madrid.
CODEX ARUNDEL
This codex aludes to the properties of water and it even has a description and a drawing of a pre-historic sea-monster. This codex is only rivaled in size and scope only by the Codex Atlanticus, since it covers Art, science, and technology in addition to studies in geometry, weights and architectural projects for the Royal residence of the King of France. It currently resides in the British Museum.
CODEX LEICESTER
It was purchased by Bill Gates for $30.8 million. This manuscript dates from 1506-1510, it covers a wide varity of topics. It only has 72 pages and this is the only manuscript that's in private hands. So we cannot see it.
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27 comments:
Wow, a true Renaiissance man (and a genius too)- that's what I always like : someone who is just so damn curious about the world, that he takes an interest in everything.
Imagine if he had been born today, with all modern knowledge at his disposal. What might he have achieved?
Maria, do these notebooks contain many accounts of experiments?
Robert, yes, a lot of these notebooks contain lots of descriptions of experiments like the Forster Codice where there is a formula to make synthtic plastics although in other projects that Leonardo invented, specially the war machines, he employed a backwards form of writing that can only be read by a mirror. There is a lot of speculation about the reason he did this and a good guess would be that Leonardo didn't want some of his inventions reproduced without the guarantee of being paid for them first. On other experiments that have been reproduced, he has left out a small wheel out of the plans so that a machine won't work properly without it. Many think he did this deliverately. In other experiments, he used a personal shorthand making the content difficult to decipher. Much of the of the books appear to be laboratory notes and drawings of machines explainig what these are for. Leonardo invented the first diving suit. It was made out of leather and it had tubes attached to the suit for breathing purposes.
It sounds as if he had all bases covered - try to fly but make sure it's over a lake, design a parachute and take it with you, and a diving suit in case you can't swim.
I suppose there were no such things as patents in those days, so that if you had an idea and then let the cat out of the bag too soon, other people could pinch your idea and take the credit for it.
Chuckling here Robert, you are always so witty !
Yes, that's a possibility and it occurs to me that he left out the wheel or a tiny component out of his machines that would make it work because of security reasons, not only to protect his invention but also not to have such war machines falling into enemy hands! Remember that in those days Italy was not united as it is today, and the different Italian nation- states competed with each other for power and they were at war with each other. So a new machine invented to defeat the enemy, was highly valued as it is today. In a way, we could say, Leonardo was the boffin of his day! Curiously, its only recently that this aspect of Leonardo's life is known since for the most part, Leonardo is chiefly known as the great artist of the Renaissance.
Well they were very argumentative in Italy at that time, weren't they. Even now you get people in the north who want to break away from the south, and the Sicilians who want to break away from everyone.
Robert they were city-states in their own right, Italy didn't exist until Garibaldi united all the city-states fairly "recently".
As it was, Florence during the Renaissance was ruled by the head of the family: Lorenzo de Medici which along with its allies and powerful political machine, controled the affairs of Florence beneath the veneer of Republican Democracy. Here, amidst the wealth and extravagance of Italy's most progressive city, the ancient God-obsessed medieval era is slowly giving way to a new self-confident humanism. The Medici Bank is by now, the most successful and respected financial institution in Europe, with offices and agents in all major commercial centres from London to Venice.
Maria, yes Garibaldi and Cavour united Italy. It's probably a shame that they did, but there you go. I prefer little countries.
It was pretty bloody back then. On the other hand, there is the Harry Lime speech from "The Third Man" - how is it that high cultural achievement could exist in such conditions? Yet it did.
Ah Yes! I remember that speech you are talking about where Harry Lime is speaking to his friend Holly on th eBig Wheek at the Prater in Vienna and Harry says something like: " During the Renaissance in Italy there were murders, wars religious arguments and they produced artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael. Switzerland had hundreds of years of peace and tranquility and they produced the cuckoo clock!"
Despite all that, there were also good times in Florence too. Amongst such geniuses, it is Lorenzo de Medici himself, who epitomises the new humanism of the Renaissance. Not for nothing is he popularly known as 'il magnifico'; he is the prince of Florence in all but name, and his supporters seek him as a godfather to their firstborn male children. Lorenzo sees his rule as a celebration: The people are courted with festivities and carnivals. When commissioning great works of art, his taste is evident; he understands the artists he employs, encouraging them to excel in their own characteristic way - and they respect him as an equal in matters of art. He himself is an accomplished musician, athlete and swordsman; Lorenzo is also well versed in philosophy, and on the way to establishing himself as one of the finest Italian poets of his time; yet for all this, he prides himself on being a man of the people. His clothes are less ornate than those worn by many other Florentine notables, but he has an aura that appeals to the masses for his implicit power. For great art to happen, there has to exist the proper conditions that bring about this creativity. Italy at that time, had those perfect conditions with a superb patron of the arts but that was also happening in all the other Nation-states who were competing with each other in terms of high art. The conditions were ripe for this to happen, the arts were incredibly encouraged. The respective rulers all wanted to pride themselves of having the most grandiouse, most beautiful and sophisticated buildings, sculptures and paintings for their cities and out do each other in terms of splendour; so artists were highly sought after, and were paid princely sums for their works.
13 December 2009 12:12
Id suggest he was also wary of accusations of witchcraft ,necromancy and the like.Those were times when,depwending on circs,one might find themselves burnt at the stake for suggesting the earth wasnt flat for example.......
not that much different from today really,merely that the punishments are more subtle.
Of course the difficulty (deliberate or otherwise) of decoding his personal shorthand means that one could read anythi8ng they wished into it surely?
Drawing something and getting it to work are 2 entirely diff things,so lets not go overboard.
Hi Dougie,
That was mostly in Spain during this period, when Spain actually exported the Spanish Inquisition to the New World. I took Peter to the city of Guanajato in Mexico where they have found the torture chambers like the rack (good for the back) ha,ha,ha and in this particular town the victims bodies' actually became mummies due to the type of soil that has preserved the corpses there in very good condition.
Italy, on the other hand was slowly leaving the world of the medieval Ages and arriving at the Renaissance Period, the church still wielded its power but not in the insane way that was happening in Spain. At that time, the Spanish-born Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia was elected Pope in Rome taking the title of Alexander VI. Alexander, (Rodrigo Borgia) certainly fathered at least seven children, accumulated vast wealth and bribed his way to the papal throne. Once in power, he did everything he could to advance his children as well. And it also depended on who your patrons were; in Leonardo's case it was the powerful Federico Sforza, the Duke of Milan but also Lorenzo de Medici from Florence had the wealth to commission his works as well. And no, we are not exaggerating about Leonardo's accomplishments, you only have to look at his drawings to see that his inventions were before his time, for instance the drawings of his man-powered helicopter found on his codex Trivulzianum; or an early version of a tank found in Codex Arundel are proofs that show what was in his mind and anyone can read his words perfectly if you put a mirror in front of his texts. The speculation has been why did he do this mirror writing ?
Id merely say instead of drawings,did he ever construct a machine that actually flew? a tank that did 20 miles an hour and fired armour piercing shells? To dream is one thing,if that was the only prequisite needed to be a genius then we would all come under the same banner.
The use of codes was nothing extraordinary in those days....These are the methods erich von daniken used to promote his books,and confuse his readers ,until they actually believed what was written.
As a painter he was a genius,as an inventor and prophet he was an abject failure....oh of course i forgot his main claim to fame-he invented the combined coat hanger and tooth brush.....the instructions and formula were written in cockney rhyming slang only viewable at the summer equinox while standing on the sacrificial altar at stonehenge at midnight.
Now if you want a REAL scientific genius..take a close peek at Tesla(forget his christian name)..he didnt need to write in code because apparently his handwriting was so bad that the only one who could decipher it was himself.......viva la revolution!
Dougie,
If you look in the Forster Codex you will find that one fascinating element of this codex is information that led Professor Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale of Vinci, to discover that Leonardo had developed one of the original synthetic plastics.
His inventions, are works that other inventors made many years later, independently of what he had already written and designed. Your thoughts about fearing the consequences and being burnt at the stake, are more valid as to why he used this mirror writing so that no one could read them and understand them until our modern times. Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo's protector was intrigued and delighted by Leonardo's designs for battle machines, such as catapults, giant screws, armoured vehicles, giant crossbows. To entertain his master, Leonardo produced ice sculptures, and constructed mechanical monsters and Ludovico Sforza housed him in an apartment for which Leonardo designed a central-heating system. There is evidence that he flew in one of his gliders because he mentioned it in one of his notebooks noting that he would be flying the next day over a lake where he would be less likely to be injured in a landing. After that, he designed a parachute which was conceived to allow for the safe escape of any pilot from a flying device. Engineers who have seen his designs today recognize that he invented all those things before his time, they have also said, that his other man powered flight machines based on birds, would never have worked, since a man cannot generate enough energy with his muscles to lift himself and a flying machine off the ground without the use of a very high powered motor.
Even though Lorenzo de Medici was a powerful and influencial protector, his reign was threatened by the church who at one point conspired and nearly succeeded, to have Lorenzo killed and you are right about Galileo Galilei who was living well over a century after this time, when he was threatened that he would die burned at the stake unless he recanted his assertion that the earh moved around the sun, and not the other way around. In Leonardo's ideas it is possible to see the scientific method in embryo, although it would be well over a century before Galileo advanced on these ideas, launching the era of modern science.
Maria,
My point is,in a nutshell,I guess, that if for example,in the future,,scientists do indeed invent a time machine that actually works,say in the year 4000 a.d.people will probabley say H.G.Wells was a genius and had actually thought of,designed and foresaw this time machine 2050 years earlier. (which i guess in a way he did....but its similar to the "inventions" of the producers of startrek isnt it?One could argue that they were genius too,but of course they werent..they were dreamers and innovators..its not the same thing..neccessarilly.
Hi Dougie
Let's not confuse the butter with the lard here. The similarities of dreaming about time travel, or the 'Wars Of The Worlds' by H.G. Wells is quite different since Leonardo was actually inventing his dreams, these were not just dreams. He was translating them into reality whilst H.G. Wells was writing science fiction, there are hundreds of writers who have written science-fiction some of them like Jules Verne quite accurately predicted the submarine but he didn't go about producing one. Star Treck is passe fiction as we know full well that we are not able to land on Venus without being crushed by its dense atmosphere first and burned to death as well. The truth is that we haven't got the possibility of living in our known nearby planets and the distant planets where maybe life might be possible, are a light years away.
As I said before, we are all dreamers and we may all be visionaries, but we are not all geniuses. The difference between the da Vinci's and others is that they can catch a thought or an idea that comes in the still of the night, in a dream and create from it REALITY. That is the great difference. Leonardo's notebooks are amongst the most remarkable survivals in the history of human culture. There is nothing quite like them in art, science, and technology. There is an extraordinary fluency of his thought, unconstrained by disciplinary boundaries like the ones we have today. For instance, in his 'Treatise On Painting' Leonardo touches anatomy in great detail, perspective in buildings; In landscapes, he explains to us in a scientific way, why our eyes see the receding mountains blue, whilst the nearby mountains are seen green by our eyes, in other words, he touches atmosphere and optics and how the eye works as well as Botany, geometry it all comes in the one same text, fluently and it all makes sense without having to separate it into different disciplines.
I must say that apart from his artistic productions, this is what I most admire about Leonardo - the all-embracing curiosity. Nowadays we have these divides not just between arts and sciences, but even between different sciences, and it is a great pity.
Here is the dark side of leonardo....he and 3 other young men were accused and tried for sodomy ....lol....in 1476 apparently.....acquitted maybe,but as many judges now..and probabley then are/were "brown hatters" the verdict probabley doesnt mean very much. well ,well,well just shows doesnt it? Is it not true that all our heroes have feet of clay?
Why clay, Dougie? It doesn't bother me if he was gay. The only time gays bother me is when
1. They go on and on about being gay, as if they deserve a medal
or
2. Ask for special treatment because they're gay.
Robert,
Why clay?..cos it rhymes with gay i suppose.Its not just being a poof that made me say clay...but sodomy with 3 men isnt exactly a 5 star reccomendation for his character is it?So yes..feet of clay seems an apt description..plus of course in those days it was a crime,punishable by death in some cases,so he wasnt exactly whiter than white .....while of course its probabley the fashion today to denigrate those who have acheived excellence in their lives ,that was not what I was doing.The man was a marvelous painter,thayts it..the codexes are preserved and hungrily sought after cos of the historical significance,and naturally enough cos of who wrote them,not necessarilly because of their content.
For instance the tanks -the flying machines-submarines he supposedly invented,were sketched500 or so years before the technology existed to power them,so the comparison isnt a fair one or even logical really when looking at what we see as tanks-submarines aeroplanes etc...its silly.
Dougie,
In Iran gays are senteced to death, but just remember that you hit the nail on the head when you said that just for thinking something that went against the doctrine of the church, meant that you could end up burned at the stake but as you correctly pointed out, it all depended on who your protectors were, and how much influence those protectors had over the affairs of society and as we know, this was a time, when even the Popes were murderers ! but because they were essentially the law, they would get away with it.
Leonardo's Treatise On Art taught me more about practical art and his guidance about how to do many things and why, it has been a tremendous source of inspiration and knowledge for me and so his teachings are timeless. Right now, we have only one fourth of what he wrote, so there was much that was lost and like the beautiful painting shown below, it is possible that some other things could still surface in the future. I had heard that Leonardo might have been gay. Genuises do not have much time for relationships. Isaac Newton's wife usually complained that her husband hardly had time for her and as understanding as she was, she would often complain about it.
Maria
Of course if anyone needed a mentor for art studies then leonardo would be the ideal candidate,Im not saying he was a charlatan,just trying to keep things in perspective..it makes one wonder taking into consideration the number of tanks,submarines,jet planes,nuclear power stations ,aircraft carriers,parachutes,micro chips,space ships,weapons of war,tvs,(thats televisions-not transvestites by the way)he supposedly succesfully designed,thought out and invented,where he found the time to paint..or for that matter to indulge in sodomy with multiple partners in the equivalent of a 15th century public shithouse,in front of a horde of admiring viewers( or should that be voyeurs?)Oh yes Ive read the court transcript ..such as it is.....amazing reading,even after allowing for the translation.
Gays?-stuff them! er er er maybe i could have phrased that better ...
You sound like if you don't like Leonardo, Dougie. I know that he didn't invent the nuclear bomb nor the nuclear power station for that matter. I seem to remember that the nuclear power stations were invented in Britain but were not built here at the time because it was thought to be too dangerous. The car was invented in France and the car engines as we know them today were invented by the Germans, and so on. What is the point in all this ? Inventions have been invented in the past and re-invented decades later when everyone has forgotten about them. The Chinese, invented many things that were unknown in the West. Algebra was invented in Baghdad as well as democracy although modern countries like to think they invented democracy.
Robert and Dougie,
I have finally found the real reason why Leonardo employed mirror writing. The answer is given by Prof. Alessando Vezzosi, he says that Leonardo used his left hand and started his lines on the right -the practice of the oldest civilizations and still characteristic of Arabic and Hebrew today. Leonardo often filled the right page first, then the left, and his letter forms, were also reversed. He did this with no intent to conceal -it was merely a fairly common quirk of perception that was not corrected when he was a child. That it was not illustrates the freedom Leonardo enjoyed, but also the limits of his literary schooling. He was, after all, an illegitimate child to whom any career requiring a formal education was closed. Leonardo also used normal handwriting, though it was more difficult for him. He employed it for specific projects that had to be intelligible to others, such as certain maps or when he recorded his father's death in a manuscript note. In general, Leonardo had others pen his official correspondence and letters of introduction. He used both hands to draw and perhaps that ambidexterity, with everything it implies about his senses and perception, contributed to the development of his visual and conceptual gifts. " There you have it that is the real reason.
I haven't studied these manuscripts so cannot say how close Leonardo got to modern inventions. However, it's not uncommon for someone to have an idea way before his time, before the conditions for fulfilling the idea exist.
Marry Christmas to Maria, Victoria and Dougie.
Maria,
It isnt that I dislike Leonardo,how could I dislike or like him?
I was only making the point that people tend to go overboard about things...taking these claims at face value people could be forgiven for believing that his flying machines for instance were blueprints for todays jumbo jets.They werent.
The chinese were the first (as far as we know) who experimented ,and came up with primitive flying machines, in the form of kites around 4oo b.c. But hey..who cares?
Anyhow merry xmas to all and a flatulent new year.
Totally unconnected to either topic,I ,tonight watched a dvd of the edinburgh military tattoo and just before the finale,consisting of the march down castle hill with the pipers blasting out "scotland the brave"..the commentator read out alexander grays stanza
This is my country
The land that begat me
These windy spaces
Are surely my own
And those who toil here
in the sweat of their faces
are flesh of my flesh
and bone of my bone.
It brought a tear to my eye,Im not really sure why i should have a reaction like that..but i did.
Hello Maria, Robert and dougie ..
sorry I have been not here lately but have been too busy, and caught up in the Christmas rush ...
So .. Wishing you all a Happy, Peaceful and Joyful Christmas Season!
It is Christmas eve here now .. morning of the 24th. Now, because I will be seeing xmas before any of you .. if it is someway not how it should be, I will post again to fore warn you ..
ps. Robert enjoy your quality street.
Hee, hee. Dougie, I'd have tears in my eyes if I had a cold Scottish wind blowing into them.
Maria, that's a very nice nativity painting. The mother looks just as though she's leaning forward to make sure the baby isn't dribbling etc.
Victoria, you mean, what's left of them after the nephew and niece have been at them. The green triangles definitely disappear.
Heh,heh, I would have tears in my eyes if I had a cold Scotish whisky gulp !
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