The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. Complete

[Footnote: 676. The pen and ink drawing on PI. LIX belongs to this passage.]

[Footnote: 8. tribolatione. In the drawing caltrops may be seen lying in the old man's right hand, others are falling and others again are shewn on the ground. Similar caltrops are drawn in MS. Tri. p. 98 and underneath them, as well as on page 96 the words triboli di ferro are written. From the accompanying text it appears that they were intended to be scattered on the ground at the bottom of ditches to hinder the advance of the enemy. Count Giulio Porro who published a short account of the Trivulzio MS. in the "Archivio Storico Lombardo", Anno VIII part IV (Dec. 31, 1881) has this note on the passages treating of "triboli": "E qui aggiungerň che anni sono quando venne fabbricata la nuova cavallerizza presso il castello di Milano, ne furono trovati due che io ho veduto ed erano precisamente quali si trovano descritti e disegnati da Leonardo in questo codice".

There can therefore be no doubt that this means of defence was in general use, whether it were originally Leonardo's invention or not. The play on the word "tribolatione", as it occurs in the drawing at Oxford, must then have been quite intelligible.]

[Footnote: 9—22. These lines, in the original, are written on the left side of the page and refer to the figure shown on PI. LXI. Next to it is placed the group of three figures given in PI. LX No. I. Lines 21 and 22, which are written under it, are the only explanation given.]

Evil-thinking is either Envy or Ingratitude.

677

Envy must be represented with a contemptuous motion of the hand towards heaven, because if she could she would use her strength against God; make her with her face covered by a mask of fair seeming; show her as wounded in the eye by a palm branch and by an olive-branch, and wounded in the ear by laurel and myrtle, to signify that victory and truth are odious to her. Many thunderbolts should proceed from her to signify her evil speaking. Let her be lean and haggard because she is in perpetual torment. Make her heart gnawed by a swelling serpent, and make her with a quiver with tongues serving as arrows, because she often offends with it. Give her a leopard's skin, because this creature kills the lion out of envy and by deceit. Give her too a vase in her hand full of flowers and scorpions and toads and other venomous creatures; make her ride upon death, because Envy, never dying, never tires of ruling. Make her bridle, and load her with divers kinds of arms because all her weapons are deadly.

Toleration.

Intolerable.

No sooner is Virtue born than Envy comes into the world to attack it; and sooner will there be a body without a shadow than Virtue without Envy.

[Footnote: The larger of the two drawings on PI. LXI is explained by the first 21 lines of this passage. L. 22 and 23, which are written above the space between the two drawings, do not seem to have any reference to either. L. 24-27 are below the allegorical twin figure which they serve to explain.]

678

When Pluto's Paradise is opened, then there may be devils placed in twelve pots like openings into hell. Here will be Death, the Furies, ashes, many naked children weeping; living fires made of various colours….

679

John the Baptist

Saint Augustin

Saint Peter

Paul

Elisabeth

Saint Clara.

Bernardino

Our Lady Louis

Bonaventura

Anthony of Padua.

Saint Francis.

Francis,

Anthony, a lily and book;

Bernardino with the [monogram of] Jesus,

Louis with 3 fleur de lys on his breast and the crown at his feet,

Bonaventura with Seraphim,

Saint Clara with the tabernacle,

Elisabeth with a Queen's crown.

[Footnote: 679. The text of the first six lines is written within a square space of the same size as the copy here given. The names are written in the margin following the order in which they are here printed. In lines 7—12 the names of those saints are repeated of whom it seemed necessary to point out the emblems.]

List of drawings.

680

A head, full face, of a young man

with fine flowing hair,

Many flowers drawn from nature,

A head, full face, with curly hair,

Certain figures of Saint Jerome,

[6] The measurements of a figure,

Drawings of furnaces.

A head of the Duke,

[9] many designs for knots,

4 studies for the panel of Saint Angelo

A small composition of Girolamo da Fegline,

A head of Christ done with the pen,

[13] 8 Saint Sebastians,

Several compositions of Angels,

A chalcedony,

A head in profile with fine hair,

Some pitchers seen in(?) perspective,

Some machines for ships,

Some machines for waterworks,

A head, a portrait of Atalanta raising her face;

The head of Geronimo da Fegline,

The head of Gian Francisco Borso,

Several throats of old women,

Several heads of old men,

Several nude figures, complete,

Several arms, eyes, feet, and positions,

A Madonna, finished,

Another, nearly in profile,

Head of Our Lady ascending into Heaven,

A head of an old man with long chin,

A head of a gypsy girl,

A head with a hat on,

A representation of the Passion, a cast,

A head of a girl with her hair gathered in a knot,

A head, with the brown hair dressed.

[Footnote: 680. This has already been published by AMORETTI Memorie storiche cap. XVI. His reading varies somewhat from that here given, e. g. l. 5 and 6. Certi Sangirolami in su d'una figura; and instead of I. 13. Un San Bastiano.]

[Footnote: 680. 9. Molti disegni di gruppi. VASARI in his life of Leonardo (IV, 21, ed. MILANESI 1880) says: "Oltreché perse tempo fino a disegnare gruppi di corde fatti con ordine, e che da un capo seguissi tutto il resto fino all' altro, tanto che s'empiessi un tondo; che se ne vede in istampa uno difficilissimo e molto bello, e nel mezzo vi sono queste parole: Leonardus Vinci Accademia". Gruppi must here be understood as a technical expression for those twisted ornaments which are well known through wood cuts. AMORETTI mentions six different ones in the Ambrosian Library. I am indebted to M. DELABORDE for kindly informing me that the original blocks of these are preserved in his department in the Bibliothčque Nationale in Paris. On the cover of these volumes is a copy from one of them. The size of the original is 23 1/2 centimetres by 26 1/4. The centre portion of another is given on p. 361. G. Govi remarks on these ornaments (Saggio p. 22): "Codesti gruppi eran probabilmente destinati a servir di modello a ferri da rilegatori per adornar le cartelle degli scolari (?). Fregi somigliantissimi a questi troviamo infatti impressi in oro sui cartoni di vari volumi contemporanei, e li vediam pur figurare nelle lettere iniziali di alcune edizioni del tempo."

Dürer who copied them, omitting the inscription, added to the second impressions his own monogram. In his diary he designates them simply as "Die sechs Knoten" (see THAUSING, Life of A. Dürer I, 362, 363). In Leonardo's MSS. we find here and there little sketches or suggestions for similar ornaments. Compare too G. MONGERI, L'Arte in Milano, p. 315 where an ornament of the same character is given from the old decorations of the vaulted ceiling of the Sacristy of S. Maria delle Grazie.]

[Footnote: 680, 17. The meaning in which the word coppi, literally pitchers, is here used I am unable to determine; but a change to copie seems to me too doubtful to be risked.]

681

Stubborn rigour.

Doomed rigour.

[Footnote: See PI. LXII, No. 2, the two upper pen and ink drawings. The originals, in the Windsor collection are slightly washed with colour. The background is blue sky; the plough and the instrument with the compass are reddish brown, the sun is tinted yellow].

682

Obstacles cannot crush me

Every obstacle yields to stern resolve

He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

[Footnote: This text is written to elucidate two sketches which were obviously the first sketches for the drawings reproduced on PL LXII, No. 2.]

683

Ivy is [a type] of longevity.

[Footnote: In the original there is, near this text, a sketch of a coat wreathed above the waist with ivy.]

684

Truth the sun. falsehood a mask. innocence, malignity.

Fire destroys falsehood, that is sophistry, and restores truth, driving out darkness.

Fire may be represented as the destroy of all sophistry, and as the image and demonstration of truth; because it is light and drives out darkness which conceals all essences [or subtle things].

[Footnote: See PI. LXIII. L. 1-8 are in the middle of the page; 1. 9-14 to the right below; 1. 15-22 below in the middle column. The rest of the text is below the sketches on the left. There are some other passages on this page relating to geometry.]

TRUTH.

Fire destroys all sophistry, that is deceit; and maintains truth alone, that is gold.

Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.

Fire is to represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies; and the mask is for lying and falsehood which conceal truth.

685

Movement will cease before we are

weary

of being useful.

Movement will fail sooner than usefulness.

Death sooner than I am never weary of

weariness. being useful,

In serving others I is a motto for carnval.

cannot do enough. Without fatigue.

No labour is

sufficient to tire me.

Hands into which ducats and precious stones fall like snow; they never become tired by serving, but this service is only for its utility and not for our I am never weary own benefit. of being useful.

Naturally nature has so disposed me.

686

This shall be placed in the hand of Ingratitude. Wood nourishes the fire that consumes it.

687

TO REPRESENT INGRATITUDE.

When the sun appears which dispels darkness in general, you put out the light which dispelled it for you in particular for your need and convenience.

688

On this side Adam and Eve on the other;

O misery of mankind, of how many things do

you make yourself the slave for money!

[Footnote: See PI. LXIV. The figures of Adam and Eve in the clouds here alluded to would seem to symbolise their superiority to all earthly needs.]

689

Thus are base unions sundered.

[Footnote: A much blurred sketch is on the page by this text. It seems to represent an unravelled plait or tissue.]

690

Constancy does not begin, but is that which perseveres.

[Footnote: A drawing in red chalk, also rubbed, which stands in the original in the middle of this text, seems to me to be intended for a sword hilt, held in a fist.]

691

Love, Fear, and Esteem,—

Write these on three stones. Of servants.

692

Prudence Strength.

693

Fame alone raises herself to Heaven, because virtuous things are in favour with God.

Disgrace should be represented upside down, because all her deeds are contrary to God and tend to hell.

694

Short liberty.

695

Nothing is so much to be feared as Evil Report.

This Evil Report is born of life.

696

Not to disobey.

697

A felled tree which is shooting again.

I am still hopeful.

A falcon,

Time.

[Footnote: I. Albero tagliato. This emblem was displayed during the Carnival at Florence in 1513. See VASARI VI, 251, ed. MILANESI 1881. But the coincidence is probably accidental.]

698

Truth here makes Falsehood torment lying tongues.

699

Such as harm is when it hurts me not, is good which avails me not.

[Footnote: See PI. LX, No. 2. Compare this sketch with that on PI. LXII, No. 2. Below the two lines of the text there are two more lines: li gůchi (giunchi) che ritégň le paglucole (pagliucole) chelli (che li) anniegano.]

700

He who offends others, does not secure himself.

[Footnote: See PI. LX, No. 3.]

701

Ingratitude.

[Footnote: See PI. LX, No. 4. Below the bottom sketches are the unintelligible words "sta stilli." For "Ingratitudo" compare also Nos. 686 and 687.]

702

One's thoughts turn towards Hope.

[Footnote: 702. By the side of this passage is a sketch of a cage with a bird sitting in it.]

Ornaments and Decorations for feasts (703-705).

703

A bird, for a comedy.

[Footnote: The biographies say so much, and the author's notes say so little of the invention attributed to Leonardo of making artificial birds fly through the air, that the text here given is of exceptional interest from being accompanied by a sketch. It is a very slight drawing of a bird with outspread wings, which appears to be sliding down a stretched string. Leonardo's flying machines and his studies of the flight of birds will be referred to later.]

704

A DRESS FOR THE CARNIVAL.

To make a beautiful dress cut it in thin cloth and give it an odoriferous varnish, made of oil of turpentine and of varnish in grain, with a pierced stencil, which must be wetted, that it may not stick to the cloth; and this stencil may be made in a pattern of knots which afterwards may be filled up with black and the ground with white millet.[Footnote 7: The grains of black and white millet would stick to the varnish and look like embroidery.]

[Footnote: Ser Giuliano, da Vinci the painter's brother, had been commissioned, with some others, to order and to execute the garments of the Allegorical figures for the Carnival at Florence in 1515—16; VASARI however is incorrect in saying of the Florentine Carnival of 1513: "equelli che feciono ed ordinarono gli abiti delle figure furono Ser Piero da Vinci, padre di Lonardo, e Bernardino di Giordano, bellissimi ingegni" (See MILANESI'S ed. Voi. VI, pg. 251.)]

705

Snow taken from the high peaks of mountains might be carried to hot places and let to fall at festivals in open places at summer time.

*** End of Volume 1

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci

Volume 2

Translated by Jean Paul Richter1888

XI.

The notes on Sculpture

Compared with the mass of manuscript treating of Painting, a very small number of passages bearing on the practice and methods of Sculpture are to be found scattered through the note books; these are here given at the beginning of this section (Nos. 706-709). There is less cause for surprise at finding that the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza is only incidentally spoken of; for, although Leonardo must have worked at it for a long succession of years, it is not in the nature of the case that it could have given rise to much writing. We may therefore regard it as particularly fortunate that no fewer than thirteen notes in the master's handwriting can be brought together, which seem to throw light on the mysterious history of this famous work. Until now writers on Leonardo were acquainted only with the passages numbered 712, 719, 720, 722 and 723.

In arranging these notes on sculpture I have given the precedence to those which treat of the casting of the monument, not merely because they are the fullest, but more especially with a view to reconstructing the monument, an achievement which really almost lies within our reach by combining and comparing the whole of the materials now brought to light, alike in notes and in sketches.

A good deal of the first two passages, Nos. 710 and 711, which refer to this subject seems obscure and incomprehensible; still, they supplement each other and one contributes in no small degree to the comprehension of the other. A very interesting and instructive commentary on these passages may be found in the fourth chapter of Vasari's Introduzione della Scultura under the title "Come si fanno i modelli per fare di bronzo le figure grandi e picciole, e come le forme per buttarle; come si armino di ferri, e come si gettino di metallo," &c. Among the drawings of models of the moulds for casting we find only one which seems to represent the horse in the act of galloping—No. 713. All the other designs show the horse as pacing quietly and as these studies of the horse are accompanied by copious notes as to the method of casting, the question as to the position of the horse in the model finally selected, seems to be decided by preponderating evidence. "Il cavallo dello Sforza"—C. Boito remarks very appositely in the Saggio on page 26, "doveva sembrare fratello al cavallo del Colleoni. E si direbbe che questo fosse figlio del cavallo del Gattamelata, il quale pare figlio di uno dei quattro cavalli che stavano forse sull' Arco di Nerone in Roma" (now at Venice). The publication of the Saggio also contains the reproduction of a drawing in red chalk, representing a horse walking to the left and supported by a scaffolding, given here on Pl. LXXVI, No. 1. It must remain uncertain whether this represents the model as it stood during the preparations for casting it, or whether—as seems to me highly improbable—this sketch shows the model as it was exhibited in 1493 on the Piazza del Castello in Milan under a triumphal arch, on the occasion of the marriage of the Emperor Maximilian to Bianca Maria Sforza. The only important point here is to prove that strong evidence seems to show that, of the numerous studies for the equestrian statue, only those which represent the horse pacing agree with the schemes of the final plans.

The second group of preparatory sketches, representing the horse as galloping, must therefore be considered separately, a distinction which, in recapitulating the history of the origin of the monument seems justified by the note given under No. 720.

Galeazza Maria Sforza was assassinated in 1476 before his scheme for erecting a monument to his father Francesco Sforza could be carried into effect. In the following year Ludovico il Moro the young aspirant to the throne was exiled to Pisa, and only returned to Milan in 1479 when he was Lord (Governatore) of the State of Milan, in 1480 after the minister Cecco Simonetta had been murdered. It may have been soon after this that Ludovico il Moro announced a competition for an equestrian statue, and it is tolerably certain that Antonio del Pollajuolo took part in it, from this passage in Vasari's Life of this artist: "E si trovo, dopo la morte sua, il disegno e modello che a Lodovico Sforza egli aveva fatto per la statua a cavallo di Francesco Sforza, duca di Milano; il quale disegno e nel nostro Libro, in due modi: in uno egli ha sotto Verona; nell'altro, egli tutto armato, e sopra un basamento pieno di battaglie, fa saltare il cavallo addosso a un armato; ma la cagione perche non mettesse questi disegni in opera, non ho gia potuto sapere." One of Pollajuolo's drawings, as here described, has lately been discovered by Senatore Giovanni Morelli in the Munich Pinacothek. Here the profile of the horseman is a portrait of Francesco Duke of Milan, and under the horse, who is galloping to the left, we see a warrior thrown and lying on the ground; precisely the same idea as we find in some of Leonardo's designs for the monument, as on Pl. LXVI, LXVII, LXVIII, LXIX and LXXII No. 1; and, as it is impossible to explain this remarkable coincidence by supposing that either artist borrowed it from the other, we can only conclude that in the terms of the competition the subject proposed was the Duke on a horse in full gallop, with a fallen foe under its hoofs.

Leonardo may have been in the competition there and then, but the means for executing the monument do not seem to have been at once forthcoming. It was not perhaps until some years later that Leonardo in a letter to the Duke (No. 719) reminded him of the project for the monument. Then, after he had obeyed a summons to Milan, the plan seems to have been so far modified, perhaps in consequence of a remonstrance on the part of the artist, that a pacing horse was substituted for one galloping, and it may have been at the same time that the colossal dimensions of the statue were first decided on. The designs given on Pl. LXX, LXXI, LXXII, 2 and 3, LXXIII and LXXIV and on pp. 4 and 24, as well as three sketches on Pl. LXIX may be studied with reference to the project in its new form, though it is hardly possible to believe that in either of these we see the design as it was actually carried out. It is probable that in Milan Leonardo worked less on drawings, than in making small models of wax and clay as preparatory to his larger model. Among the drawings enumerated above, one in black chalk, Pl. LXXIII—the upper sketch on the right hand side, reminds us strongly of the antique statue of Marcus Aurelius. If, as it would seem, Leonardo had not until then visited Rome, he might easily have known this statue from drawings by his former master and friend Verrocchio, for Verrocchio had been in Rome for a long time between 1470 and 1480. In 1473 Pope Sixtus IV had this antique equestrian statue restored and placed on a new pedestal in front of the church of San Giovanni in Luterano. Leonardo, although he was painting independently as early as in 1472 is still spoken of as working in Verrocchio's studio in 1477. Two years later the Venetian senate decided on erecting an equestrian statue to Colleoni; and as Verrocchio, to whom the work was entrusted, did not at once move from Florence to Venice—where he died in 1488 before the casting was completed—but on the contrary remained in Florence for some years, perhaps even till 1485, Leonardo probably had the opportunity of seeing all his designs for the equestrian statue at Venice and the red chalk drawing on Pl. LXXIV may be a reminiscence of it.

The pen and ink drawing on Pl. LXXII, No. 3, reminds us of Donatello's statue of Gattamelata at Padua. However it does not appear that Leonardo was ever at Padua before 1499, but we may conclude that he took a special interest in this early bronze statue and the reports he could procure of it, form an incidental remark which is to be found in C. A. 145a; 432a, and which will be given in Vol. II under Ricordi or Memoranda. Among the studies—in the widest sense of the word—made in preparation statue we may include the Anatomy of the Horse which Lomazzo and Vas mention; the most important parts of this work still exist in the Queen's Li Windsor. It was beyond a doubt compiled by Leonardo when at Milan; only interesting records to be found among these designs are reproduced in Nos. 716a but it must be pointed out that out of 40 sheets of studies of the movements of the belonging to that treatise, a horse in full gallop occurs but once.

If we may trust the account given by Paulus Jovius—about l527— Leonardo's horse was represented as "vehementer incitatus et anhelatus". Jovius had probably seen the model exhibited at Milan; but, need we, in fact, infer from this description that the horse was galloping? Compare Vasari's description of the Gattamelata monument at Padua: "Egli [Donatello] vi ando ben volentieri, e fece il cavallo di bronzo, che e in sulla piazza di Sant Antonio, nel quale si dimostra lo sbuffamento ed il fremito del cavallo, ed il grande animo e la fierezza vivacissimamente espressa dall'arte nella figura che lo cavalca".

These descriptions, it seems to me, would only serve to mark the difference between the work of the middle ages and that of the renaissance.

We learn from a statement of Sabba da Castiglione that, when Milan was taken by the French in 1499, the model sustained some injury; and this informant, who, however is not invariably trustworthy, adds that Leonardo had devoted fully sixteen years to this work (la forma del cavallo, intorno a cui Leonardo avea sedici anni continui consumati). This often-quoted passage has given ground for an assumption, which has no other evidence to support it, that Leonardo had lived in Milan ever since 1483. But I believe it is nearer the truth to suppose that this author's statement alludes to the fact that about sixteen years must have past since the competition in which Leonardo had taken part.