The Manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci, Vol. 2 (1881) - Page 12

conclusions that it authorizes), when exact and complete facsimiles everywhere accompany transcriptions and translations whose only pretension is to allow everyone to read them, the inconvenience of errors committed would only be truly serious for those who neglect to make use of these facsimiles¹. I have nonetheless applied myself to gathering in the Errata, which will be found at the end of this second volume, the imperfections that were rightly pointed out to me in Volume A, as well as others that an attentive revision allowed me to discover myself. The care with which Mr. Richter applied himself to highlighting all the words regarding which I happened to be mistaken has facilitated this task for me; but this care, having been pushed a bit far in writings that will endure, obliges me to show, for my legitimate defense, by a few examples found in notes placed at the bottom of the Errata at the end of this volume, that even men of great knowledge or very special competence might not have escaped faults or inaccuracies just as regrettable as mine may have appeared. As for the value of the method we have inaugurated², one can say it is beyond discussion, since a scholar of such authority as Mr. G. Govi has joined it, recommending its use to Italy³, and since in England the idea of bringing to light in their entirety all the writings found there is beginning to prevail⁴.

The second volume of the complete edition of the twelve manuscripts of the Institute will appear to present even more importance, and be better suited to satisfy curiosity than the first, for it includes both the one which, as much by the development of certain subjects as by the importance and variety of the drawings, passes for the principal one, Manuscript B, and the one which, among those known, is perhaps the most finished, Notebook D.

Manuscript B contains 84 folios today; Manuscript D, 10. The second volume of the complete publication will therefore comprise, in total, 94 folios, 188 facsimiles, instead of the 126 comprised in the first, or: 62 more facsimiles⁵.

In order not to lose sight of all the interest these precious notebooks must offer to artists and scholars, one would do well to keep in mind the considerations

1\. The Writings of Leonardo da Vinci (excerpt from the Gazette des Beaux-Arts of March, April, June 1881, p. 63, by Charles Ravaisson-Mollien, published by Quantin). In some respects, this study was also criticized by Mr. de Geymüller, in the Chronique des Arts of June 11, 1881, with the greatest courtesy (see in the Errata note 1 of folio 1 recto of Manuscript A), and by Mr. Richter in The Literary Works of L. da V., perhaps without enough impartiality. These criticisms are far, I believe, from being all indisputably well-founded. I hasten to recognize that on points of detail I was mistaken, or may have been mistaken. Thus, was I wrong to suggest interrogatively that Leonardo spoke in January 1511 of Benedetto da Maiano, a time at which it turns out the latter was dead; thus it is very possible that the technical remarks of Mr. de Geymüller on the architecture shown in the sheet of 1473 (and although certain lines of the landscape could, in my opinion, indicate perspective at least as well as "cultivated fields") should make one regard this sheet as representing a site in Italy and not the Righi A mountain in Switzerland; the author is debating the location of a specific Leonardo landscape drawing (see page 40 of the said Study). Thus again, I undoubtedly went astray regarding the person, though not the horses, of the Cyprus sheet (p. 41, and in Le Temps of February 27, 1881). But I see no reason to renounce what I said about the nature of Leonardo's genius as it appears in his writings, nor most at least of the conclusions I drew from it. The disagreement that arose between Messrs. Govi and Richter regarding this hypothesis of a journey to the Orient, of which so much has been said, proves that I was not wrong to estimate that it was wise not to yet consider the question resolved for or against. I also persist in believing that the famous letter to Ludovico Sforza original: "Louis le More" is not in Leonardo's hand (a recent analysis of the Codex Atlanticus original: "l'Atlantique" has strengthened me in this conviction), and that, consequently, it is admissible, until proven otherwise, that it may not have been originally written by him or for him. As for the facsimiles, I am still persuaded that the best ones to adopt for the complete publication were those very ones we adopted, that is to say, as produced by photography, unmodified under any pretext, and not straightened (see at the end of the offprint, the Study in question, and the facsimiles of the Literary Works of L. da V.), etc., etc. 2\. See: The Times of September 2, 1882, and the Nuova Antologia of October 15, 1883. 3\. Reports of the Royal Academy of the Lincei original: "Transunti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei" (vol. V, ser. 3 — sessions of April 24 and June 5, 1881). 4\. See: The Times of August 9, 1883. 5\. The small Notebook D interrupts the alphabetical order, but it could take its place in this volume, whereas Manuscript C could not. Moreover, the former completes, from certain points of view in the sense the publication was understood, Manuscripts A and B. Manuscript C, on Light and Shadow, will follow well after the treatise on Optics in Manuscript D, in the next volume.