We have all heard of his art, be it the hashtag#MonaLisa hashtag#TheLastSupper or the hashtag#VitruvianMan but Leonardo da Vinci was a true Renaissance genius, mastering art, science, and engineering with visionary brilliance.
His curiosity knew no bounds whether dissecting human anatomy or designing futuristic machines centuries ahead of his time.
Da Vinci’s legacy endures not just in masterpieces of art but in his relentless pursuit of knowledge and innovation.
Thankfully , much of Leonardo’s early work was preserved and bound into sets of notebooks called codices.
These are now kept in a few museums most famously at the Victoria & Albert Museum of London where they can be viewed and consulted online.
These notebooks contain the written thoughts of Leonardo da Vinci on a diverse array of subjects : technology, mechanics, hydraulics, architecture and many more.
Leonardo worked on loose sheets of paper which he carried about with him to record his observations. His papers were at some stage folded into booklets and later bound, possibly by the Spanish sculptor Pompeo Leoni (1533 – 1608).
The five notebooks in the V&A’s collection are called the Forster Codices, after John Forster who bequeathed them to the Museum in 1876.
The notebooks contain careful sketches and diagrams annotated with notes in 16th-century Italian mirror writing, which reads in reverse and from right to left
The Codex Atlanticus or Atlantic Codice is another twelve-volume, bound set of drawings and writings by Leonardo. As the name indicates it has atlas-like breadth and is the largest set.
It comprises 1,119 leaves dating from 1478 to 1519, the contents covering a great variety of subjects, from flight to weaponry to musical instruments and from mathematics to botany.
It is currently preserved at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan.
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