.::SETTEMBRE 2008::.

THE CODEX

by Samantha Dossena

Standing in front of Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I became overwhelmed by an inexplicable sense of awe. This Codex, which is full of the passionate research of our beloved Renaissance genius, radiates a strong personal presence; his writings feel as intimate as an aged note from a best friend found amongst old photographs. The Codex, however, is relatively small and could easily fit into the palm of one’s hand. I instantly realized the organization and clarity of Leonardo’s mind after noting how beautifully and systematically arranged his notes are and how each page is numerically labeled; this could not have been an easy feat, being that there is a limited amount of space to write in such a miniscule text. It is said that there are currently a total of twenty-two of Leonardo’s books in known possession. When Leonardo died in 1519 he had given all of his manuscripts and unbound notes to Francesco Melzi, his assistant. Several years later, Melzi wrote the “Trattato della Pittura,” a text which referred to 18 of Leonardo’s manuscripts; only six of the manuscripts mentioned in Melzi’s book are confirmed to be in existence today. It is quite possible that many of Leonardo’s manuscripts have been lost over the years. Although there were many artists who tried their best to keep Leonardo’s manuscripts together after his death, each of their own deaths resulted in the complete unraveling of their efforts. After Francesco Melzi died in 1570, many of Leonardo’s texts were split up. Pompeo Leoni, a Spanish sculptor, attempted to obtain all of Leonardo’s texts, but it is believed that he was not entirely successful. When Leoni died, the manuscripts that he had collected became dispersed throughout Spain and Britain . Although there were twelve manuscripts in the possession of the Ambrosiana library in Milan in 1636, Napoleon ordered them to be sent to Paris in 1796. The Codex Atlanticus was the only one that made it back to the Ambrosiana library: the rest remained at the Institut de France. Only one of Leonardo’s codices is known to be in private hands; this is Codex Leicester, which is owned by Bill Gates and brought to a museum once a year to be placed on display. Each one of Leonardo’s manuscripts has been given a proper name. Many of them contain the word “codex,” which is taken from the Latin word for “book.” The codex currently displayed at the Metropolitan Museum is known as the Codex Forster I, a manuscript in which Leonardo da Vinci explores various theorems on geometrical shapes. This codex is part of a permanent exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in the United Kingdom , which also houses the Codex Forster II and Codex Forster III. These codices were named “Forster” after John Forster, who donated these valuable texts to the Museum upon his death. The Codex Atlanticus, which can be found at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan , is named “Atlanticus” due to the fact that it is the largest collection of Leonardo’s work, making it resemble an atlas in size. The Codex Atlanticus is so large that it is now made up of 12 volumes and over 1100 drawings. Many of the other codices are named according to their permanent residences, such as the Codex Madrid and the Paris Manuscripts. It is believed that Leonardo da Vinci had an I.Q. of over 210, which could possibly make him the most intelligent man ever to exist. Simply by observing the technique he used in writing his texts, one can see how this could very well be possible. His manuscripts are illegible by the untrained eye, as they were written in mirror-image cursive, perhaps to avoid stirring up controversies if they were to fall into the wrong hands. However, Leonardo did not only use mirror-image handwriting to cipher his manuscripts. He would constantly merge several short words into longer words or he would separate a long word into short fragments, both of which made his texts extremely difficult to understand by anyone other than himself. It is not known whether Leonardo ever intended his texts to be published, but it is believed that he never attempted to do so himself. The manner in which Leonardo da Vinci’s texts are currently arranged has them mostly grouped into common themes. The three codices of the Codex Forster collection reveal Leonardo’s observations on hydraulic engineering, the way in which water behaves under certain conditions, and the properties of geometrical shapes. The Paris Manuscript collection addresses various forces of nature, light and vision, rules of mathematics, and the body of Earth. Leonardo made many observations on the Earth and how land masses and mountains originated; he even went as far as explaining his hypothesis on plate tectonics. The Codex Leicester deals mostly with science, water and hydraulics. His anatomical drawings are legendary and have been the hallmark both of his notes and of his art as a whole. Leonardo da Vinci is truly a symbol of the Renaissance, as he did not devote his entire life to any one thing in specific, but spent his lifetime trying to understand and express the world around him. The notebooks mentioned reflect appropriately the unbounded universality of his work.