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WD_327/ 2007
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Works on paper: Drawings 4 | | Medium: | oilstick on paper | | Size (inches): | 25.6 x 17.7 | | Size (mm): | 650 x 450 | | Catalog #: | WD_0327 | | Description: | Signed, date and copyright in pencil on the reverse.
Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus -
Autograph paper codex (1478-1518 c.), 1119 ff., 65x44cm.
This is the largest collection of Leonardo's manuscript sheets, formed at the end of the sixteenth century by the sculptor Pompeo Leoni, who dismembered many original notebooks. In the present arrangement, after the restoration work carried out in the 1960s, the codex consists of 1119 sheets. It contains studies related to the entire range of Leonardo's interest in science and technology, together with architectural projects, town planning, biographical records and personal notes.
-w3.impa.br/~jair/e62atl.html
Codex Atlanticus -
This Codex contains a number of drawings, most of which can be dated in the period 1480 to 1518. Various themes are touched on, from mathematics to geometry, astronomy, botany, zoology and the military arts. Today it consists of twelve leather-bound volumes, comprising 1,119 supports which gather together pages of different sizes. The name "Codex Atlanticus" derives from the fact that originally all the sheets were contained in a single large-sized volume, rather like an atlas in fact. The Codex Atlanticus was created around the end of the sixteenth century by the sculptor Pompeo Leoni who - in a disastrous operation - dismembered the original Leonardo manuscripts which had came into his possession: many drawings were cut in order to separate all the scientific and technical drawings, today contained in the Codex, from the naturalistic and anatomical ones, many of which are today part of the Royal Windsor collection.
-www.museoscienza.org/IdealCity/english/atlantico.htm
Codex Atlanticus -
The Codex Atlanticus and the Windsor Collection are two great miscellaneous collections containing original drawings, texts and notes by Leonardo. These collections were created by the sculptor Pompeo Leoni, who purchased in Milan a large quantity of material by the hand of Leonardo. Leoni manipulated this vast heterogeneous material by cutting out parts of it and isolating fragments, which he then redistributed and reassembled, pasting the fragments on blank pages. Some of these pages had an opening in them, like a window, to show both sides of the original sheet pasted on them.
Pompeo Leoni composed the Codex Atlanticus by putting toghether on 402 pages (65x44 cm) a total of 1.750 pieces, including sheets and fragments. Subsequent to restoration, conducted in the Sixties and Seventies, it appears today recomposed in 12 volumes, but the old binding enclosed the entire content in a single volume of gigantic size, an atlas indeed. In effect, the papers by Leonardo found in the Codex Atlanticus deal with an incredible variety of subjects, including painting, sculpture geometry perspective optics, astronomy, mathematics, engeneering, architecture, urban plannig, etc. The Codex Atlanticus, was added to the Ambrosiana a few years after Federico’s death. Only the merest outline of the troubled history of this colection of annotated drawings can be given here. On 23 April 1519, a few days before dying, Leonardo, in his French exile at Amboise, bequeathed his manuscripts, painting and instruments to his faithful and beloved disciple Francesco Melzi, who then transferred the materials to his father’s villa at Vaprio d’Adda (Milan province). Here ignorant heirs allowed its dispersal. A Barnabite friar Giovanni Ambrogio Mazenta and subsequently Pompeo Leoni, son of Leone Leoni, Philip II of Spain’s favourite sculptor, collected and preserved a part of that heritage. It was Leoni who unstitched some of Leonardo’s notebooks and had them bound in two volumes, one of 234 sheets and the other of 402. The first volume was taken to Spain and from there to Windsor Castle in England; the other became the Codex Atlanticus, so called because of its large format like that of an atlas. These 402 sheets brought together, without any scholarly system, drawings and other remains of Leonardo and was given the title Disegni di machine et delle arti, secreti et altre cose di Leonardo da Vinci racolti da Pompeo Leoni.
In the 17th century the codex was purchased by the Marquis Galeazzo Arconati of Milan and donated – toghether with eleven other manuscripts by Leonardo – to the Ambrosiana with a deed of gift on 21 January 1637. In the 1796 Napoleon's army entered Milan and requisitioned the Codex Atlanticus with twelve other texts by Leonardo and various precious materials in the library and gallery: they were sent under guard to Paris. After the fall of Napoleon in 1815 only the Codex Atlanticus was returned to the Ambrosiana: the twelve other manuscripts, a painting by Rubens, a canvas by Giorgione, two Brueghel's Four Elements ("Air" and "Earth"), numerous drawings and various incunabula remained in the French capital.
-www.ambrosiana.it/ing/ca_principale.asp
Codex Atlanticus 1478-1518 -
Leonardo’s work a military engineer for Cesare Borgia may account for his involvement in the Florentine Republic’s scheme to divert the course of the River Arno away from Pisa, with whom they were at war, on his return to Florence in 1503.
The scale of the project was enormous. Canals would have to be dug about 20 metres wide and 7 metres deep to carry the river 11 Km off its normal course. The government had calculated that the digging would require the employment of 2000 workers for about six months. Leonardo designed this large treadmill-powered digging machine in order to save time and effort. Huge buckets hang from pivot arms and convey the excavated soil to the sides of the canal. Once the buckets are emptied, each returns carrying a workman who acts as an ingenious counterweight to the soil in the other buckets.
The drawing is highly finished, implying that it may have been intended for presentation to the authorities. It is not known whether any of Leonardo’s machines were ever built. A section of the canal was begun, but the excavation collapsed and the project was abandoned.
In Leonardo's words:
A head in profile with beautiful hair
certain bodies drawn in perspective
certain devices for ships
certain devices for water…
-www.universalleonardo.org/trail.php?trail=198&work=212
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