PREFACE

I

IN THE year 1906, with the audacity of youth, I ventured to apply a comprehensive title to what was actually a relatively small selection from the contents of Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebooks.¹ I have now attempted to fulfill the promise of my title with some degree of completeness. More than half a century ago, when the work of transcribing Leonardo’s manuscripts first began, a controversy arose among scholars as to whether the best method of publication was by individual manuscripts or collectively with an attempt at classification. Time has a way of proving most controversies pointless, and in this instance, it has shown that both sides were essentially right. The publication of the transcripts of the original manuscripts, along with facsimiles, has served as the foundation for all subsequent study. However, some classification of the material has been found necessary because of the extraordinary diversity of subjects treated within the same manuscript in the majority of cases. Leonardo himself admitted as much in a prefatory note to the manuscript now in the British Museum (Arundel 263), and the actions of Pompeo Leoni—who compiled the Codice Atlantico from other manuscripts using scissors and paste—have only made the confusion worse. I have therefore arranged the subject matter under various main headings, but beyond this I have made no change to the order; the passages in each section appear in the same sequence as they do in the manuscripts, with those from Milan coming first, followed by those in Paris, London, and Windsor. In the few cases, however, where all or substantially all of a manuscript falls within the same section, I have given it priority—for example, in 'Anatomy', 'Flight', 'Painting', and 'Optics'.

About a dozen pictures are all that can be attributed to Leonardo

¹ Leonardo da Vinci's Notebooks, Edward MacCurdy, M.A., crown 8 vo, 14 illustrations, pp. xiv, 289. London: Duckworth & Co., 1906.