A Record of the Manuscripts

Leonardo's Own Method

In the opening lines of the volume of manuscript notes "begun at Florence in the house of Piero di Braccio Martelli, on the 22nd day of March, 1508" — now in the British Museum (Arundel MSS. 263) — Leonardo explains the method of its composition. The passage may serve to summarize the impression made by the whole mass of Leonardo's manuscripts:

"This will be a collection without order, made up of many sheets which I have copied here, hoping afterwards to arrange them in order in their proper places according to the subjects of which they treat; and I believe that before I am at the end of this I shall have to repeat the same thing several times; and therefore, O reader, blame me not, because the subjects are many, and the memory cannot retain them and say 'this I will not write because I have already written it.' And if I wished to avoid falling into this mistake it would be necessary, in order to prevent repetition, that on every occasion when I wished to transcribe a passage I should always read over all the preceding portion, and this especially because long periods of time elapse between one time of writing and another."

Certain pages in the British Museum volume would indeed seem to be of a much earlier date than this introductory sentence, and the whole body of the manuscripts — as may be shown by the time-references contained in them — extend over a period of some forty years, from Leonardo's early manhood to his old age. He commenced them during the time of his first residence in Florence, and was still adding to them when at Amboise.

The Contents — "A Collection Without Order"

The contents of this "collection without order" are so diversified as to render wellnigh impossible any attempt at formal classification. In addition to the numerous fragments of letters, the personal records, the notes relating to his work as an artist, and the fragments of imaginative composition which are to be found therein, it presents by far the most complete record of his mental activity — and this may be said without exaggeration to have extended into practically all the avenues of human knowledge.

These manuscripts serve in a sense to show the mind in its workshop, busied in researching, in making conjecture, and in recording phenomena, tempering to its uses — in so far as human instrument may — the vast forces of Nature. He projected many treatises which should embody the results of these researches. Notes in the manuscripts themselves record the various stages of their composition. Some still exist in a more or less complete form. Of the fragments of others the order of arrangement is now only a matter of conjecture.

Documented Dates of Composition

• April 2, 1489 — In the Windsor manuscripts: a note speaks of writing "the book about the human figure"
• April 23, 1490 — In MS. C (now at Institut de France): "On the 23rd day of April 1490, I commenced this book and recommenced the horse" — a treatise on light and shade, the latter reference being to the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza
• August 1499 — In the Codice Atlantico: a note states he was then "writing upon movement and weight"
• September 12, 1508 — MS. F of the Institut: commenced at Milan, treating of water among other subjects

The Only Eyewitness Account

The manuscripts as a whole are picturesquely described in the diary of a certain Antonio de Beatis, the secretary of the Cardinal of Aragon, who with his patron visited Leonardo at Amboise in October 1517. The many wanderings of the painter's life were then ended, and he was living with Francesco Melzi and his servant Battista de Villanis in the manor house of Cloux, the gift of Francis I.

The diary relates that he showed his guests three pictures — the St. John, the Madonna with St. Anne, and the portrait of a Florentine lady, painted at the request of Giuliano de' Medici, which cannot now be identified. It further states that paralysis had attacked his right hand, and that therefore he could no longer paint with such sweetness as formerly, but still occupied himself in making drawings and giving instruction to others.

"This gentleman has written of anatomy with such detail, showing by illustrations the limbs, muscles, nerves, veins, ligaments, intestines and whatever else there is to discuss in the bodies of men and women, in a way that has never yet been done by anyone else. All this we have seen with our own eyes; and he said that he had dissected more than thirty bodies, both of men and women, of all ages. He has also written of the nature of water, of divers machines and of other matters, which he has set down in an infinite number of volumes all in the vulgar tongue, which if they should be published will be profitable and very enjoyable."

This description of the manuscripts — the only one by an eyewitness during Leonardo's lifetime — leads to the supposition that, if not all, at any rate by far the greater part of them were in Leonardo's possession at the time that he went to France, and were at Cloux at the time of his death.

Francesco Melzi — The Faithful Heir

The manuscripts then passed into the possession of Francesco Melzi, to whom Leonardo in his will, dated April 23, 1518, bequeathed "in return for the services and favours done him in the past," "each and all of the books of which the said Testator is at present possessed, together with the other instruments and portraits which belong to his art and calling as a Painter."

Melzi returned to Milan shortly after Leonardo's death and took the manuscripts with him. Four years later a certain Alberto Bendedeo, writing from Milan to Alfonso d'Este, said that he believed that the Melzi whom Leonardo made his heir was in possession of "such of his notebooks as treated of anatomy and many other beautiful things."

Vasari visited Milan in 1566, and he states that Melzi — whom he saw, and who was then "a beautiful and gentle old man" — possessed a great part of Leonardo's papers of the anatomy of the human body, and kept them with as much care as though they were relics.

The Great Dispersal

The care which had been taken of those in Melzi's possession ceased at his death, which occurred in 1570. Some years later no restriction was placed by Melzi's heirs upon the action of a certain Lelio Gavardi di Asola, a tutor in the Melzi family, who took thirteen of the volumes of manuscripts with him to Florence for the purpose of disposing of them to the Grand Duke Francesco. The duke's death, however, prevented the realization of this project, and Gavardi subsequently took the volumes with him to Pisa.

Giovanni Ambrogio Mazzenta, a Milanese who was then at the University of Pisa studying law, remonstrated with Gavardi upon his conduct, and with such success that on Mazzenta's return to Milan in 1587 he took the volumes with him for the purpose of restoring them to the Melzi family.

When, however, he attempted to perform this duty, Dr. Orazio Melzi was so astonished at his solicitude in the matter that he made him a present of all the thirteen volumes, telling him further that there were many other drawings by Leonardo lying uncared-for in the attics of his villa at Vaprio.

In 1590 Giovanni Ambrogio Mazzenta joined the Barnabite Order and the volumes were then given by him to his brothers. They seemed to have talked somewhat freely about the incident, and in consequence, according to Ambrogio Mazzenta's account, many people were filled with the desire to obtain similar treasures — and Orazio Melzi gave away freely drawings, clay models, anatomical studies, and other precious relics from Leonardo's studio.

Pompeo Leoni — The Collector

Among the others who thus came into possession of works by Leonardo was the sculptor Pompeo Leoni, who was employed in the service of the King of Spain. He afterwards induced Orazio Melzi, by the promise of obtaining for him official honours and preferment, to appeal to Guido Mazzenta — in whose possession they then were — to restore the volumes of Leonardo's manuscripts so that he might be enabled to present them to Philip II.

Melzi's entreaties were successful in obtaining the return of seven volumes. Three of the others subsequently passed into Pompeo Leoni's possession on the death of one of the Mazzentas.

The Fate of the Three Remaining Volumes

• One was given to Cardinal Federico Borromeo and passed into the Ambrosian Library which he founded in 1603
• One was given to the painter Ambrogio Figini, who later bequeathed it to Ercole Bianchi; it was subsequently in the possession of Joseph Smith, English Consul at Venice, and with the sale of his effects in 1750, all record of it ends
• One was given to Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy, and nothing further is known as to its history — Professor Govi conjectured it was perhaps burnt in one of the fires which occurred in the Royal Library at Turin in 1667 or 1679

Some of the volumes which had passed into Pompeo Leoni's possession were afterwards cut in pieces by him in order to form one large volume from the leaves, together with some of the drawings he had obtained from Melzi's villa at Vaprio. This volume, known as the Codice Atlantico on account of its size, contains 402 sheets and more than 1,700 drawings, and bears on its cover the inscription:

Disegni di Machine et
delle Arti Secreti
et Altre Cose
di Leonardo da Vinci
Racolti da
Pompeo Leoni

Apparently the collector's instinct proved stronger in Pompeo Leoni than his original intention. He was subsequently in Madrid, executing bronzes for the royal tombs in the Escurial, but there is no evidence to show that he ever parted with any of Leonardo's manuscripts to Philip II. The Codice Atlantico remained in his possession until his death in 1610.

The Arconati Donation to the Ambrosiana

After Pompeo Leoni's death, the Codice Atlantico passed to his heir, Polidoro Calchi, who sold it in 1625 to Count Galeazzo Arconati. Two of Leonardo's manuscripts from Leoni's collection were sold after his death at Madrid and bought by Don Juan de Espina. It seems probable that others also descended to Calchi and from him passed to Count Arconati.

In 1636, Count Arconati presented twelve volumes of Leonardo's manuscripts to the Ambrosian Library at Milan. The volume from Cardinal Federico Borromeo had already been placed there in 1603, and in 1674 yet another volume was added by the gift of Count Orazio Archinti.

The count's munificence was commemorated in a marble inscription on the wall of the staircase of the Ambrosian Library — "the glorious (boasting) inscription" as John Evelyn described it in his Memoirs.

The inscription noted that the King of England had offered 3,000 Spanish gold pieces for the manuscripts. Evelyn records his failure to obtain a sight of the manuscripts when he visited Milan in 1646, owing to the keeper being away and having taken the keys. However, he had been informed by the Earl of Arundel that all of them were small except one book — "a huge folio containing four hundred leaves full of scratches of Indians."

What Happened to the Twelve

Of the list of twelve manuscripts in Count Arconati's deed of gift, the second was afterwards lost, and the fifth was removed from the Library — it being identical with the manuscript later bought from Gaetano Caccia of Novara by Carlo Trivulzio around 1750, now the Codex Trivulzianus.

The remaining ten manuscripts of the Arconati donation, together with the two from Borromeo and Archinti, remained in the Ambrosian Library until 1796 — when Napoleon changed everything.

Lord Arundel and the English Connection

The only inference that can fairly be drawn from the Ambrosian inscription is that the manuscripts now in the Royal Collection at Windsor did not form part of the Arconati Collection. That some of Leonardo's manuscripts at Windsor were once in the possession of Lord Arundel is established by an engraving of one of the drawings by Hollar — whom Lord Arundel brought from Prague and established in London — inscribed "Leonardus da Vinci sic olim delineavit. W. Hollar fecit ex collectione Arundeliana."

That some of these Windsor manuscripts were also formerly in Pompeo Leoni's Collection is clearly shown by the fact that one of the volumes is inscribed "Disegni di Leonardo da Vinci Restaurati da Pompeo Leoni."

Mr. Alfred Marks showed that for one of the volumes bought by Don Juan de Espina at Madrid, the Earl of Arundel was in treaty. The evidence is found in a note by Endymion Porter, dated 1629:

"... of such things as my Lord Ambassador Sir Francis Cottington is to send out of Spain for my Lord of Arondell; and not to forget the booke of drawings of Leonardo de Vinze which is in Don Juan de Espinas hands."

Don Juan seems to have proved obdurate, for Lord Arundel wrote on January 19, 1636, to Lord Aston, then ambassador to Spain: "I beseech you be mindful of Don Juan de Espina's book, if his foolish humour change."

There the record breaks off. But as Mr. Marks truly observes, there can be little doubt that eventually a change did take place in Don Juan's "foolish humour."

The Windsor Manuscripts

The earliest record of any of Leonardo's manuscripts or drawings as being in the royal possession occurs in an inventory found by Richter in the Manuscript Department of the British Museum, which states that some drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, marked with a cross, were delivered for Her Majesty's use in the year 1728.

Richter also cites a note in an inventory at Windsor Castle in which a drawing is referred to as not having been in the volume compiled by Pompeo Leoni, but in one of the volumes in the Buonfigluolo Collection bought at Venice. Nothing apparently is known about this collection, but the note is important as tending to prove that the manuscripts at Windsor were not all acquired at the same time, and did not all form part of Pompeo Leoni's collection.

The volume now in the British Museum (Arundel MSS. 263) was certainly once in the possession of Lord Arundel. It may be noted that the greater part of his collection of manuscripts was acquired by the earl himself at Nuremberg in 1636, and had formerly belonged to Wilibald Pirkheimer, the humanist, the friend of Erasmus and Dürer.

Napoleon's Seizure — Paris, 1796

Thirteen manuscripts were all removed to Paris in the year 1796 in pursuance of the decree of Bonaparte as General-in-Chief of the Army of Italy — providing for the appointment of an agent who should select such pictures and other works of art as might be worthy of transmission to France.

The words of the decree justifying the removal arrest attention by the naiveté of their spirit:

"Tous les hommes de génie, tous ceux qui ont obtenu un rang distingué dans la république des lettres, sont Français, quelque soit le pays qui les ait vus naître."

The Codice Atlantico was in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris in August 1796. The other twelve volumes were deposited in the Institut de France.

In 1815, the Austrian Ambassador, representing Lombardy, made application for the return of all the Leonardo manuscripts. The request was complied with as regards the Codice Atlantico, which was then restored to the Ambrosian Library at Milan. But the twelve volumes in the library of the Institut de France were apparently overlooked, and there they have since remained.

On their arrival in France the manuscripts were described by J. B. Venturi, who then marked them with the lettering (A through M) by which they have subsequently been distinguished. He gave their total number as fourteen, because MS. B contained an appendix of eighteen pages which could be separated and considered as the fourteenth volume.

Count Libri — The Thief

This eighteen-page appendix to MS. B — listed as No. 3 in the Arconati donation, described as having at the end a small "volumetto" containing various mathematical figures and drawings of birds — was treated as a separate work by Count Guglielmo Libri, who frequently had access to the manuscripts in the Institut de France in the early part of the 19th century.

Libri apparently abstracted it at some time previous to 1848, at which date its loss was discovered. In 1868 it was sold by Libri to Count Giacomo Manzoni of Lugo, and in 1892 it was acquired from Count Manzoni's heirs by M. Sabachnikoff, who published it the following year as Il Codice sul Volo degli Uccelli — the Codex on the Flight of Birds. It was subsequently presented to the Royal Library at Turin.

Two other manuscripts by Leonardo — of sixty-eight and twenty-six pages respectively, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Nos. 2038 and 2037) — must have originally formed part of Manuscripts A and B of the Institut de France. They tally both in the dimensions of the pages and in the subjects of which they treat, and their total numbers added to those of Manuscripts A and B respectively do not amount to quite the full numbers described in the 1636 Arconati donation.

These two manuscripts were formerly in the collection of the late Earl of Ashburnham, who purchased them in 1875 from Count Libri. The mutilation of Manuscripts A and B and the removal of the "volumetto" were first discovered in 1848. It is impossible to avoid the inference that the action in each case was the work of Count Libri — now known as the Ashburnham manuscripts.

Other Surviving Manuscripts

The only other manuscripts by Leonardo now known to exist — with the exception of a few separate sheets of sketches and diagrams with explanatory text — are:

• Three small notebooks in the Forster Library at South Kensington — acquired in Vienna for a small sum by the first Earl of Lytton and by him presented to Mr. Forster
• A volume of seventy-two pages — the Leicester Codex — long in the possession of the Earls of Leicester at Holkham Hall, later sold to Mr. Pierpont Morgan, and now owned by Bill Gates. According to a note on the title-page, it once belonged to the painter Giuseppe Ghezzi, living in Rome at the beginning of the eighteenth century. This volume — a treatise on the nature of water — is in all probability that referred to by Rafaelle du Fresne in his edition of the Trattato della Pittura (Paris, 1651)

Publications of the Manuscripts

The manuscripts at Windsor which treat mainly of anatomy have been published in several editions:

• Dell' Anatomia Fogli A (Paris, 1898) and Fogli B (Turin, 1901) — by Piumati and Sabachnikoff
• Quaderni d'Anatomia, six volumes (129 leaves, ~1,050 drawings) — by Vangenstan, Fonahn and Hopstock (Oslo, 1911–16)
• The British Museum manuscript and the three Forster manuscripts — published by the Reale Commissione Vinciana (Rome, 1923–34)
• The Leicester manuscript — edited by Gerolamo Calvi (Milan, 1909)
• The manuscripts of the Institut de France — published in facsimile by M. Ravaisson-Mollien, in six volumes (Paris, 1880–91)
• The Codice Atlantico — published in facsimile by the Accademia dei Lincei (Rome, 1894–1904)
• The Trivulzio manuscript — published by Signor Beltrami (Milan, 1892)

The Treatise on Painting

As Leonardo's fame as a writer has chiefly rested upon the Treatise on Painting, it is important to state the relation which this work bears to the original manuscripts.

The Treatise was first published by Rafaelle du Fresne, in Paris, in 1651 — a French translation by Roland Fréard, sieur de Chambray, being also issued in the same year. Du Fresne derived his text from two old copies of MS. 834 in the Barberini Library. One of these copies had been made by the Cavaliere Cassiano del Pozzo, who had given it in 1640 to M. Chanteloup, by whom it was presented to du Fresne.

Another edition was issued in 1817 by Guglielmo Manzi, who took as his text a manuscript in the Vatican Library (Cod. Vat. [Urbinas], 1270), which had formerly belonged to the Library of the Dukes of Urbino. This manuscript is by far the more complete — five out of eight books which it contains being absent from the du Fresne version.

The only adequate critical edition of the Vatican manuscript is that published by H. Ludwig (Leonardo da Vinci: Das Buch von der Malerei, Vienna, 1882, Stuttgart, 1885), containing the complete text with a German translation and commentary, and an analysis of differences between the Vatican manuscript and Leonardo's own manuscripts.

The Vatican manuscript probably dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century. Its close connection with Leonardo is indisputable. About a quarter of the whole number of paragraphs — 225 out of 944 — are identical with passages in the extant manuscripts. Many others which are not now found in any form in the manuscripts yet carry their lineage incontestably, and would afford sufficient proof that some of the manuscripts have now perished.

The compiler had access to manuscripts of which we have no record. Nevertheless, Leonardo cannot be adjudged directly or even indirectly responsible for the arrangement and divisions of this treatise.

Did Leonardo Write a Treatise?

Did he write a treatise on painting or only parts of one? In Fra Luca Pacioli's dedication to Ludovic Sforza of the De Divina Proportione, dated February 9, 1498, he speaks of Leonardo as having finished "il Libro de Pictura et movimenti humani."

Dr. Ludwig puts forward the supposition that the treatise was in the possession of Ludovic and probably became lost at the time of the French invasion of Milan.

On this same occasion, according to both Vasari and Lomazzo, there also perished a treatise by Leonardo on the anatomy of the horse, which he had written in the course of his studies for the Sforza statue.

Genius Is Not Apt to Be Synthetic

The work itself grew continually in the mind of the author. It was moulded and recast times without number, as his purpose changed and expanded in his progress along each new avenue of study that revealed afresh the kinship of art and nature.

It is certain that he never wrote "finis."

It is at any rate possible that he never halted in investigation for so long a time as would be necessary to arrange and classify what he had written — that he left all this to a more convenient season.

"Genius, we should remember, is not apt to be synthetic."

Timeline of the Manuscripts