Leonardo da Vinci - Kathleen Krull [27]
Today the notebooks are divided into ten different assortments, as follows.
CODEX ARUNDEL
The name comes from Lord Arundel, an English collector who pounced on Leonardo’s work for King Charles I as well as for himself. In this notebook—really just an assortment of pages—Leonardo designs a complete new city for King Francis I of France. “Let us have fountains on every piazza,” he remarks. Besides architecture, these pages deal with geometry, weights, sound, and light. The pages, some 238 of them, have been sliced from other manuscripts and bound in leather. You can find them at the British Library in London. But if you go to Turning the Pages at The British Library, http://www.bl.uk/collections/treasures/digitisation.html#leo, you can come close to the sensation of physically turning the pages of this Leonardo notebook yourself.
CODEX ATLANTICUS
This notebook is the work of Pompeo Leoni, a sixteenth-century sculptor with nerve. Taking original Leonardo manuscripts from 1480 to 1518, Leoni used his own judgment in separating the scientific sketches from one, concerned with nature, anatomy, and the human figure. In this codex, made up of what he thought of as scientific materials, are some 1,119 sheets on astronomy, botany, zoology, geometry, and military engineering. Leoni titled his creation “Drawings of Machines, the Secret Arts, and Other Things by Leonardo da Vinci, collected by Pompeo Leoni.” It has since been renamed the Atlanticus, and today the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan is home to its twelve leather-bound volumes. Many (but not all) of what Leoni deemed to be the more artistic pages ended up in England, in the Royal Windsor collection.
CODEX TRIVULZIANUS
These pages detail Leonardo’s ongoing efforts to educate himself in literature, architecture, and other areas. The name comes from the codex’s home—the Biblioteca Trivulziana at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. At least seven out of the original sixty-two sheets are missing.
CODEX “ON THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS”
Held in the Biblioteca Reale of Turin, Italy, this collection from 1505 includes seventeen sheets of the original eighteen. It covers Leonardo’s studies of birds, the mechanics of flight, air resistance, winds, and currents.
CODEX ASHBURNHAM
General Napoleon Bonaparte, in his expansion of French rule, made a point of amassing as much of Leonardo’s work as he could; he later returned some of it to the original owners, but not this collection. Dating from about 1489-1492, these assorted drawings, bound in cardboard, remain in the Institut de France, in Paris.
CODICES OF THE INSTITUT DE FRANCE
Also at the Institut de France in Paris, these papers are bound together in various ways—by parchment, leather, or cardboard. Each of the twelve manuscripts is called by a letter of the alphabet, from A to M. The topics relate to Leonardo’s usual interests—the flight of birds, hydraulics, optics, geometry, and military matters.
CODEX FORSTER
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London houses these manuscripts, bound in parchment, which focus on geometry and hydraulic machines.
CODEX LEICESTER
This codex was lost until 1690, when it was discovered in a sculptor’s trunk. The Earl of Leicester bought it, and eventually it was purchased—for $30 million—by Bill Gates of Microsoft, at a 1995 auction. Its seventy-two linen sheets, bound in leather, detail all aspects of water and its movement; included is an illustration of what looks like a toilet. More information and pages to view are at http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/codex/.
ROYAL WINDSOR FOLIOS
This notebook lives on in the Royal Collection of England’s Windsor Castle. It includes the artistic drawings pulled by Italian sculptor Pompeo Leoni—some six hundred studies in human anatomy, horse anatomy, geography, and many other topics.
THE MADRID CODICES
These are the most recent discovery. At some point after their creation between 1503 and 1505, they were in the possession of Pompeo Leoni, and were then lost. Only