Leonardo da Vinci Quaderni d'Anatomia. Edited by Ove C. L. Vangensten, A. Fonahn and H. Hopstock. Parts I and II, Jacob Dybwad, Christiania, 1912
✍ Scribed by McM., J. P.
- Book ID
- 101600478
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1913
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 178 KB
- Volume
- 7
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0003-276X
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✦ Synopsis
Dybwad, Christiania, 1912. I t has long been known, from statements made by Vasari, that, Lconardo da Vinci had contemplated the writing of a book on Human Anatomy and had made for its illustration numerous drawings from tlissections prepared by his own hand. On his death these drawings and the notes that accompanied them passed into the hands of a Milanc w gent,lr:man, Francesco da Melzi, but thereafter their history becomes obscure. During the reign of George I11 Dalton, who was a t that trim? in charge of the Royal Library at Windsor, chanced upon a number of sheots covered with anatomical sketches and notes by Leonardo, whic.h wm: :tpparently the manuscripts mentioned by Vasari. Investigation showed that they had been presented to Charles 11, probably by the then Earl of Arundel, who had been Ambassador t o the court of the Emperor Ferdinand I1 of the Holy Roman Empire, and having been dcposited by the king in the Royal Library they had remained there, forgotten, until rediscovered by Dalton. But even then they attracted hut litkle attention, notwithstanding the praise bestowed upon them by Willinm Hunter, to whom they were shown by Dalton, and it was not unt,il 1383 that their existence became generally known by the publication in that year of J. P. Richter's The Literary Works of Leonardo da. Vinci, in which some quotations of the notes accompanying the skctc8ht.s w r v given.
A littlc later, when the interest in the literary and artistic remains of Lwn:wdo, now so manifest, had developed, a facsimile reproduction of sisty of the sheets in the Windsor collection was published by Sabachnikoff and Piumati in two beautiful volumes, which contained also a transcription of the manuscript notes and a French translation of them. These volumes appeared in 1898 and 1901 and the second contained a promise that other volumes containing reproductions of the remaining sliwts would follow. This promise has, however, remained unfulfilled, ibly because there also appeared in 1901 facsimiles of nearly all the sheets in the collection in ten volumes, edited by Rouveyre. This edition lacked, however, a transcription and translation of the notes ant1 thereby was far from satisfactory, since the crabbed chirography of t>lw fifteenth century, the uncertainty of Leonardo's orthography and, :il)ovc: all, his hahit of writing from right to left, makes the translation of t,ho notes from the fncsimiles a most arduous task for the ordinary rcwler.