Mixwell Library › Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) · everything here is public domain and free to read
Leonardo filled thousands of pages with notes on painting, light and shadow, the human body, water, plants and machines, but he never put them in order. After his death his pupil Francesco Melzi copied the notes on painting into one manuscript, the Codex Urbinas, first printed in 1651 as the Treatise on Painting.
The notebooks themselves are scattered across libraries in Milan, Paris, London, Windsor and Madrid. Jean Paul Richter transcribed and translated their writings in 1883. Here you can read both, complete and free, with Leonardo’s figures beside the text.
For Leonardo, painting was more than a craft: a science of nature, which he called “related to God”. He asked a great deal of his readers.
Let no man who is not a Mathematician read the elements of my work.
The Notebooks, § 3: Admonition to readers
…for painting is born of nature—or, to speak more correctly, we will say it is the grandchild of nature; for all visible things are produced by nature, and these her children have given birth to painting. Hence we may justly call it the grandchild of nature and related to God.
The Notebooks, § 652: The relation of art and nature
Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.
The Notebooks, § 1133: A prayer
O admirable impartiality of Thine, Thou first Mover; Thou hast not permitted that any force should fail of the order or quality of its necessary results.
The Notebooks, § 1134: The powers of Nature
I obey Thee Lord, first for the love I ought, in all reason to bear Thee; secondly for that Thou canst shorten or prolong the lives of men.
The Notebooks, § 1132: Prayers to God