FOREWORD

The French Academy has awarded the full Bordin Prize The Prix Bordin was a prestigious academic prize established in 1835 to encourage high-quality literary and scientific works., "specifically dedicated to encouraging high literature," to the three published volumes of the complete publication of the Manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci.

The contents of the three volumes remaining to be published will not make one regret such encouragement. The present volume, the fourth of the work, will particularly show what the last of the previous series hinted at: how much the painter of the Last Supper original: "Cène" and the Mona Lisa original: "Joconde", as profound and universal a scholar as he was, was a man of great and vivid imagination, in letters and sciences as much as in the arts; it is not useless to insist upon this point. This must have been one of the reasons why Francis I King Francis I of France, Leonardo’s final patron. could not tire of Leonardo da Vinci’s conversation, of whom he said that he did not believe there was another man in the world who knew as much.

The report and observations which accompanied the volume containing manuscripts C, E, and K in June 1888 were intended to serve as a preface to the facsimiles remaining to be edited for the deadline originally set for 1891. It is exactly on its date, announced in that report, that the fourth volume sees the light of day.

It was difficult to arrive at this point within the legal deadlines of the ministerial subscription, while taking every possible care that each new part of the work was, from all points of view, complete in its entirety and very exact in its details¹. Therefore, it is only right that the author state what intelligent and persevering will was required by the House of Quantin Maison Quantin was a prominent French publishing firm known for high-quality art and history books., leaders and collaborators, to successfully reach this goal.

The fourth volume adds manuscripts F and I (see the preface of the 1st volume, p. 20 [6th], 22 [9th], and 25) to the six from the Institute Refers to the Institut de France, where these specific manuscripts are held. already published. These manuscripts contain many drawings, sometimes in pen, sometimes in red chalk, among which one will notice an energetic face bearing some resemblance to that of the elderly Leonardo da Vinci (see manuscript I, folio 139 [91] verso, note 1, 2nd part), a

1. Nevertheless, some errors will undoubtedly be discovered little by little; they will be noted at the end of the sixth volume or, if necessary, at the end of the fifth.