title: The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci: Complete & Illustrated
author: Leonardo Da Vinci
description: Leonardo Da Vinci, Born on April 15, 1452, in Vinci, Italy, Leonardo da Vinci was concerned with the laws of science and nature, which greatly informed his work as a painter, sculptor, inventor and draftsmen. His ideas and body of workwhich includes "Virgin of the Rocks," "The Last Supper," "Leda and the Swan" and "Mona Lisa"have influenced countless artists and made da Vinci a leading light of the Italian Renaissance. Quotes "Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind."  Leonardo da Vinci Humble Beginnings Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452, in Vinci, Italy. Born out of wedlock, the love child of a respected notary and a young peasant woman, he was raised by his father, and his stepmothers. 'The Last Supper' In 1482, Lorenzo de' Medici, a man from a prominent Italian family, commissioned da Vinci to create a silver lyre and bring it to Ludovico il Moro, the Duke of Milan, as a gesture of peace. Da Vinci did so and then wrote Ludovico a letter describing how his engineering and artistic talents would be of great service to Ludovico's court. His letter successfully endeared him to Ludovico, and from 1482 until 1499, Leonardo was commissioned to work on a great many projects. It was during this time that da Vinci painted "The Last Supper." 'Mona Lisa' Da Vinci's most well-known painting, and arguably the most famous painting in the world, the "Mona Lisa," was a privately commissioned work and was completed sometime between 1505 and 1507. Of the painting's wide appeal, James Beck, an art historian at Columbia University, once explained, "It is the inherent spirituality of the human creature that Leonardo was able to ingenuine to the picture that raises the human figure to some kind of majesty." It's been said that the Mona Lisa had jaundice, that she was a pregnant woman and that she wasn't actually a woman at all, but a man in drag. Based on accounts from an early biographer, however, the "Mona Lisa" is a picture of Lisa Gioconda, the real-life wife of a merchant, but that's far from certain. For da Vinci, the "Mona Lisa" was forever a work in progress, as it was his attempt at perfection. The painting was never delivered to its commissioner; da Vinci kept it with him until the end of his life. Today, the "Mona Lisa" hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, secured behind bulletproof glass, and is regarded as a priceless national treasure.
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  THE NOTEBOOKS
  OF
  LEONARDO DA VINCI
  
  Other boo\s by Hdward MacCurdy
  THE MIND OF LEONARDO DA VINCI
  LEONARDO
  DA
  VINCI.*
  THE
  ARTIST
  
  Digitized by the Internet Archive
  in 2012 with funding from
  Metropolitan New York Library Council
  - METRO
  http://archive.org/details/notebooOOIeon
  
  Ms
  S/M'/iH
  &.
  SELF PORTRAIT
  Royal Library, Turin
  
  THE NOTEBOOKS
  OF
  LEONARDO DA VINCI
  Arranged, Rendered into English
  and Introduced
  by
  EDWARD MACCURDY
  yjUUtytey
  New Yor\
  GEORGE BRAZILLER
  1955
  
  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
  First published, 1939, by Reynal & Hitchcock, Inc.
  Manufactured in the United States of America
  by The Haddon Craftsmen, Inc.
  Scranton, Pa. <*g||^>i
  
  DEDICATED
  BY PERMISSION
  TO
  HIS MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY
  KING GEORGE THE SIXTH
  
  i3
  4 1
  CONTENTS
  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  1
  INTRODUCTORY NOTE
  (FROM THE DIARY OF
  ANTONIO DE BEATIS, I517)
  12
  PREFACE
  A RECORD OF THE MANUSCR