Alleged bicycle drawing by Leonardo da Vinci
The bicycle is a drawing on the back of a sketch sheet by Leonardo da Vinci found in the Codex Atlanticus in 1974 . If the drawing were by da Vinci, he would have been the inventor of the bicycle . However, doubts about the attribution arose early on; the sketch is now considered a forgery.
Find history
The sketch was found in 1974 in da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus , a collection of loose leaves by da Vinci compiled in the 16th century. It was found there on the back of a da Vinci manuscript. A group of monks led by the lexicographer Augusto Marinoni completed a restoration of the codex and presented the discovery of a drawing of a bicycle-like vehicle.
description
The drawing is kept with the rest of the codex in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan.
The pencil drawing shows a vehicle with two wheels. Eight spokes are shown for both. It has a fork, pedals, a chain, rigid handlebar and a saddle. Due to the rigid handlebar, steering seems impossible. The geometry also makes pedaling impossible.
effect
The bicycle was quickly attributed to his pupil Francesco Melzi due to the way of drawing, which differed from da Vinci . For example, the news magazine Der Spiegel adopted this thesis in 1974.
The bicycle has often been recreated, including by the model maker Giovanni Sacchi .
In 1993 the Mexican author Paco Ignacio Taibo II wrote the novel La bicicleta de Leonardo (The Bicycle of Leonardo da Vinci) , for which he received the Hammett Prize in 1994 .
Proof of forgery
It is now recognized that the drawing is a forgery. The codex containing the drawing was checked by Carlo Pedretti in the 1960s, but nothing was mentioned of a drawing of a bicycle.
As part of the International Bicycle History Conference at the Glasgow School of Art in 1997, the researcher Hans-Erhard Lessing demonstrated this fact and assumed that a chain of well buckets drawn by Leonardo had inspired the forgery.
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ I rarely return . In: Der Spiegel . No. 42 , 1974, pp. 150-156 ( Online - Oct. 14, 1974 ).
- ↑ German by J. Alberts; Berlin: Eisbär 1997, ISBN 3-930057-15-8 .
- ↑ Peter Michalski: Professor from Mannheim pushes Leonardo da Vinci out of the saddle - bicycle drawing is a forgery. In: Berliner Morgenpost . October 17, 1997, archived from the original on July 6, 2003 ; accessed on July 31, 2014 .
- ^ Hans-Erhard Lessing: The Leonardo da Vinci Bicycle Hoax. In: Cycle Publishing , 1997.
- ↑ Wrong bike in the Pinakothek . In: Der Spiegel . No. 39 , 2002, p. 187 ( online - September 21, 2002 ).