INTRODUCTION

C*

... we will make use of standard signs and alphabetic combinations, writing for example: to rejoin, you will judge, length, hills, dust, emery, plates, cause, science, etc., where Leonardo wrote: ricongugnere, gudicherai, lungeza, cholli, poluere, smeriglo, piasstre, cavsa, sscientia, etc. The editors are explaining their "critical transcription" method. They have updated Leonardo's Renaissance Italian spelling—which was often idiosyncratic, phonetic, or lacked standard punctuation—into modern Italian forms, which are translated here into English. Leonardo's original spellings are retained in the second list for comparison to show his specific linguistic habits.

Excluded from this transcription are the few words added by another hand and the few words erased by Leonardo.

To this second transcription, understood in this way, corresponds the translation. The original text specifies a "French translation," as this 1897 edition was published in Paris to serve an international scholarly audience. It was made necessary by the international character that Mr. Th. Sabachnikoff Theodor Sabachnikoff (1850–1912) was a Russian patron and collector who funded the publication of several important facsimiles of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, including the Codex on the Flight of Birds. intends to give to this publication and by the desire to make the various manifestations of Leonardo’s genius accessible to the greatest possible number of people devoted to his study.