Books and writing

Codex Atlanticus: Twelve volumes of drawings and writings (1478)

Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan (manuscript). The largest single set of his papers. It holds 1,119 leaves dated from 1478 to 1519. The subjects run from flight and weapons to musical instruments, mathematics and botany. The sculptor Pompeo Leoni assembled it in the late 16th century and cut up some notebooks to do so.

Wikipedia: Codex Atlanticus · Wikipedia: Leonardo da Vinci

Codex on the Flight of Birds (1505)

Biblioteca Reale, Turin (manuscript). A short codex of 18 folios. It studies how birds rise, glide and use the wind. It then proposes mechanisms for flying machines. The Smithsonian showed the original in Washington for 40 days in 2013.

Wikipedia: Codex on the Flight of Birds · Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: Codex on the Flight of Birds

Treatise on Painting: Trattato della pittura (1651)

Raphael du Fresne, Paris (first printed edition). Melzi gathered his master’s notes on painting from 18 notebooks. Two-thirds of those notebooks are now lost. An abridged edition appeared in French and Italian in 1651 with engravings after Poussin. The fuller text was found in the Vatican Library and printed in 1817. In France it ran to 62 editions in 50 years.

Wikipedia: A Treatise on Painting · Wikipedia: Leonardo da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci: Translated by Jean Paul Richter (1888)

Free text from Project Gutenberg. Richter’s English edition of the notebooks arranged by subject. It covers painting, perspective, light, anatomy, water, astronomy, architecture and his letters. Project Gutenberg’s text gives 1888 as its original publication.

Project Gutenberg: The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, trans. Jean Paul Richter · Wikipedia: Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man: By Martin Kemp (1981)

Oxford University Press (revised edition, 2006). The first of many books on Leonardo by Martin Kemp. He later held the chair of art history at Oxford from 1995 to 2008. The book won the Mitchell Prize for the best first book in art history. Oxford University Press issued a revised edition in 2006.

Wikipedia: Martin Kemp (art historian)

Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting: By Martin Kemp and Giuseppe Pallanti (2017)

Oxford University Press. An archival history of the portrait and the people around it. It traces Leonardo’s mother Caterina and the family of Lisa del Giocondo through Florentine records.

Wikipedia: Martin Kemp (art historian) · The Guardian (20 May 2017)

Leonardo da Vinci: By Walter Isaacson (2017)

Simon & Schuster. A biography built on thousands of notebook pages. Isaacson argues that Leonardo’s science fed his art. It ends with lessons such as be curious and think visually. A number-one New York Times bestseller. The Observer called it “sumptuous, elegantly written and diligently produced”.

Wikipedia: Leonardo da Vinci (Isaacson book) · The Observer: review of Isaacson (23 October 2017) · The Guardian: review of Isaacson (16 December 2017)

Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester: A New Edition. Edited by Domenico Laurenza and Martin Kemp (2019)

Oxford University Press. The 72-page notebook on water, rocks, fossils and the light of the moon. It explains earthshine a century before Kepler. Armand Hammer bought it in 1980. Bill Gates paid $30.8 million for it at Christie’s in 1994.

Wikipedia: Codex Leicester · Christie’s: The Leonardo da Vinci Codex Hammer (1994) · Wikipedia: Martin Kemp (art historian)

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