Codex Madrid (Leonardo da Vinci)
The Codex Madrid is a bound collection of sheets with notes, sketches and drawings by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519).
Surname
The name Codex Madrid was given to the manuscript by the place where it was found, the Spanish National Library ( Biblioteca Nacional de España ) in Madrid , which still holds the work today.
history
Most of Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts and drawings were kept in his villa near Vaprio d'Adda by his pupil and heir Francesco Melzi (around 1491/92 - around 1570) after his death . His son Orazio Melzi inherited the documents in 1570. The Madrid Codices, like other manuscripts by Leonardo da Vinci, were sold by Orazio Melzi around 1590 to the sculptor Pompeo Leoni (1533–1608).
The path of the volumes into the holdings of the Biblioteca Nacional has not yet been clarified. Although it had been known since the 19th century that the codes were in Madrid, they remained undetectable there until the late 1960s.
In February 1967 Jules Piccus (1920–1997), a professor of Romance studies and a specialist in early Spanish literature at the University of Massachusetts , searched the Biblioteca Nacional for medieval ballads . He came across two volumes of manuscripts which he identified as Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts. The finds were called Codex Madrid I and II .
content
The work consists of two volumes ( Codex Madrid I and II ) with a total of 349 sheets in the format of about 15 cm × 21 cm. The manuscript Madrid I (192 sheets) is dated to around 1490 to 1499, Madrid II (157 sheets) to around 1503 to 1505. Leonardo wrote the text in his characteristic mirror writing and provided it with numerous drawings and sketches.
The sheets of both codes show the wide range of Leonardo's interests. They deal with painting , geography , mechanics , mathematics and geometry , weapons technology and architecture , including designing a bridge to cross the Golden Horn . According to da Vinci's plans, the Leonardo da Vinci Bridge was built as a pedestrian bridge in the Norwegian town of Ås in 2001 .
One of the drawings in the work is apparently a gear . The engineer and da Vinci expert Roberto Guatelli (1904–1993) compared the drawing with a similar sketch in the Codex Atlanticus manuscript ( Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan). In a controversial interpretation, he suspected a construction detail of a counter, the first calculating machine in world history.
Quotes
"Read me, reader, if I give you pleasure, for very seldom do I return to this world."
literature
output
- Leonardo da Vinci: Codices Madrid: National Library Madrid . 5 volumes. Vol. I: Codex Madrid I. Tratado de estatica y mechanica en italiano. Call number: 8937 (facsimile edition); Vol. II Codex Madrid II. Tratados de fortification estatica y geometria escrittos en italiano. Call number 8936 (facsimile edition); Vol. III: Commentary by Ladislao Reti ; Vol. IV: Codex Madrid I. Transcription and translation ; Vol. V: Codex Madrid II. Transcription by Ladislao Reti and translation , S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 1974, ISBN 3-10-742401-3
Secondary literature
- Stefan Klein : Da Vinci's Legacy or How Leonardo Reinvented the World . Frankfurt am Main: Fischer 2008. Fischer paperback. 2009. ISBN 978-3-596-17880-3
- Charles Nicholl : Leonardo da Vinci - The biography . Frankfurt am Main; Fischer 2006. ISBN 978-3-10-052405-8
- Emma Dickens (Ed.): The da Vinci Universe - The Notebooks of Leonardo . Berlin: Ullstein 2006. ISBN 3-548-36874-3 , from 2007: ISBN 978-3-548-36874-0
- Martin Kemp : Leonardo . Munich: Beck 2005. ISBN 978-3-406-53462-1 .
- Jean Paul Richter (Ed.): The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci . 2 volumes, Dover Publications Inc., Dover 1970, Volume 1: ISBN 0-486-22572-0 , Volume 2: ISBN 0-486-22573-9 . Online version of the first edition in 1883 at www.gutenberg.org , English.
- Carlo Pedretti : Leonardo da Vinci on Painting . University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1964 ( digitized ).
- Theodor Lücke (Ed.): Leonardo da Vinci: Diaries and records . 3rd edition Leipzig: List 1953.
Web links
- Annotated edition of Codex Madrid I , accessed on January 10, 2014
- Madrid I - Institute and Museum of the History of Science - Florence, Italy , accessed February 13, 2011
- Madrid II - Institute and Museum of the History of Science - Florence, Italy , accessed February 13, 2011
Individual evidence
- ↑ Pedretti, p. 256
- ↑ Pedretti, p. 255
- ↑ Nicholl, p. 358
- ↑ a b Der Spiegel 42/1974 of October 14, 1974, p. 150, article: I rarely return
- ↑ Georg Ruppelt : The great humming god - stories of thinking machines, computers and artificial intelligence . CW Niemeyer, Hameln 2003, ISBN 978-3-8271-8807-6 , p. 36
