The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci

About this book

Leonardo da Vinci filled thousands of pages with notes and drawings, often written backwards in mirror script. This first volume gathers what he wrote for painters: his rules of linear perspective; long studies of light and shadow and of how colours change with distance and air; the proportions and movements of the human body; notes on plants and landscape for artists; and practical advice on the art of painting, from how to compose a battle scene to how a painter should live and work.

Context and significance

This edition, prepared by the scholar Jean Paul Richter and first published in 1883, arranges the notebooks by subject and translates them into English beside Leonardo's drawings. It lets us watch one of the most curious minds in history at work. For the classical source of many of his ideas on proportion, read Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture.

About the author

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was born near the town of Vinci, the illegitimate son of a Florentine notary, and trained in the workshop of the painter Verrocchio. He worked for the rulers of Florence and Milan, where he painted The Last Supper, and spent his last years in France as the guest of King Francis I.

His paintings, among them the Mona Lisa, are few, but his notebooks are full of studies of anatomy, flight, water, optics and machines, written in mirror script. The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci let us follow his endless curiosity; for one of his sources, see Vitruvius.