The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Complete
treatment of detail. On Pl. LXXXV No. 10 and Pl. CIII No. 3, we find
some details of pillars; on Pl. CI No. 3 slender pillars designed
for a fountain and on Pl. CIII No. 1 MS. B, is a pen and ink drawing
of a vase which also seems intended for a fountain. Three handles
seem to have been intended to connect the upper parts with the base.
There can be no doubt that Leonardo, like Bramante, but unlike
Michael Angelo, brought infinite delicacy of motive and execution to
bear on the details of his work._
_XIV._
_Anatomy, Zoology and Physiology._
_Leonardo's eminent place in the history of medicine, as a pioneer
in the sciences of Anatomy and Physiology, will never be appreciated
till it is possible to publish the mass of manuscripts in which he
largely treated of these two branches of learning. In the present
work I must necessarily limit myself to giving the reader a general
view of these labours, by publishing his introductory notes to the
various books on anatomical subjects. I have added some extracts,
and such observations as are scattered incidentally through these
treatises, as serving to throw a light on Leonardo's scientific
attitude, besides having an interest for a wider circle than that of
specialists only._
_VASARI expressly mentions Leonardo's anatomical studies, having had
occasion to examine the manuscript books which refer to them.
According to him Leonardo studied Anatomy in the companionship of
Marc Antonio della Torre_ "aiutato e scambievolmente
aiutando."_--This learned Anatomist taught the science in the
universities first of Padua and then of Pavia, and at Pavia he and
Leonardo may have worked and studied together. We have no clue to
any exact dates, but in the year 1506 Marc Antonio della Torre seems
to have not yet left Padua. He was scarcely thirty years old when he
died in 1512, and his writings on anatomy have not only never been
published, but no manuscript copy of them is known to exist._
_This is not the place to enlarge on the connection between Leonardo
and Marc Antonio della Torre. I may however observe that I have not
been able to discover in Leonardo's manuscripts on anatomy any
mention of his younger contemporary. The few quotations which occur
from writers on medicine--either of antiquity or of the middle ages
are printed in Section XXII. Here and there in the manuscripts
mention is made of an anonymous "adversary"_ (avversario) _whose
views are opposed and refuted by Leonardo, but there is no ground
for supposing that Marc Antonio della Torre should have been this
"adversary"._
_Only a very small selection from the mass of anatomical drawings
left by Leonardo have been published here in facsimile, but to form
any adequate idea of their scientific merit they should be compared
with the coarse and inadequate figures given in the published books
of the early part of the XVI. century.
William Hunter, the great surgeon--a competent judge--who had an
opportunity in the time of George III. of seeing the originals in
the King's Library, has thus recorded his opinion: "I expected to
see little more than such designs in Anatomy as might be useful to a
painter in his own profession. But I saw, and indeed with
astonishment, that Leonardo had been a general and deep student.
When I consider what pains he has taken upon every part of the body,
the superiority of his universal genius, his particular excellence
in mechanics and hydraulics, and the attention with which such a man
would examine and see objects which he has to draw, I am fully
persuaded that Leonardo was the best Anatomist, at that time, in the
world ... Leonardo was certainly the first man, we know of, who
introduced the practice of making anatomical drawings" (Two
introductory letters. London 1784, pages 37 and 39).
The illustrious German Naturalist Johan Friedrich Blumenback
esteemed them no less highly; he was one of the privileged few who,
after Hunter, had the chance of seeing these Manuscripts. He writes:
_Der Scharfblick dieses grossen Forschers und Darstellers der Natur
hat schon auf Dinge geachtet, die noch Jahrhunderte nachher
unbemerkt geblieben sind_" (see _Blumenbach's medicinische
Bibliothek_, Vol. 3, St. 4, 1795. page 728).
These opinions were founded on the drawings alone. Up to the present
day hardly anything has been made known of the text, and, for the
reasons I have given, it is my intention to reproduce here no more
than a selection of extracts which I have made from the originals at
Windsor Castle and elsewhere. In the Bibliography of the
Manuscripts, at the end of this volume a short review is given of
the valuable contents of these Anatomical note books which are at
present almost all in the possession of her Majesty the Queen of
England. It is, I believe, possible to assign the date with
approximate accuracy to almost all the fragments, and I am thus led
to conclude that the greater part of Leonardo's anatomical
investigations were carried out after the death of della Torre.
Merely in reading the introductory notes to his various books on
Anatomy which are here printed it is impossible to resist the
impression that the Master's anatomical studies bear to a very great
extent the stamp of originality and independent thought.
I.
ANATOMY.
796.
A general introduction
I wish to work miracles;--it may be that I shall possess less than
other men of more peaceful lives, or than those who want to grow
rich in a day. I may live for a long time in great poverty, as
always happens, and to all eternity will happen, to alchemists, the
would-be creators of gold and silver, and to engineers who would
have dead water stir itself into life and perpetual motion, and to
those supreme fools, the necromancer and the enchanter.
[Footnote 23: The following seems to be directed against students of
painting and young artists rather than against medical men and
anatomists.]
And you, who say that it would be better to watch an anatomist at
work than to see these drawings, you would be right, if it were
possible to observe all the things which are demonstrated in such
drawings in a single figure, in which you, with all your cleverness,
will not see nor obtain knowledge of more than some few veins, to
obtain a true and perfect knowledge of which I have dissected more
than ten human bodies, destroying all the other members, and
removing the very minutest particles of the flesh by which these
veins are surrounded, without causing them to bleed, excepting the
insensible bleeding of the capillary veins; and as one single body
would not last so long, since it was necessary to proceed with
several bodies by degrees, until I came to an end and had a complete
knowledge; this I repeated twice, to learn the differences [59].
[Footnote: Lines 1-59 and 60-89 are written in two parallel columns.
When we here find Leonardo putting himself in the same category as
the Alchemists and Necromancers, whom he elsewhere mocks at so
bitterly, it is evidently meant ironically. In the same way
Leonardo, in the introduction to the Books on Perspective sets
himself with transparent satire on a level with other writers on the
subject.]
And if you should have a love for such things you might be prevented
by loathing, and if that did not prevent you, you might be deterred
by the fear of living in the night hours in the company of those
corpses, quartered and flayed and horrible to see. And if this did
not prevent you, perhaps you might not be able to draw so well as is
necessary for such a demonstration; or, if you had the skill in
drawing, it might not be combined with knowledge of perspective; and
if it were so, you might not understand the methods of geometrical
demonstration and the method of the calculation of forces and of the
strength of the muscles; patience also may be wanting, so that you
lack perseverance. As to whether all these things were found in me
or not [Footnote 84: Leonardo frequently, and perhaps habitually,
wrote in note books of a very small size and only moderately thick;
in most of those which have been preserved undivided, each contains
less than fifty leaves. Thus a considerable number of such volumes
must have gone to make up a volume of the bulk of the '_Codex
Atlanticus_' which now contains nearly 1200 detached leaves. In the
passage under consideration, which was evidently written at a late
period of his life, Leonardo speaks of his Manuscript note-books as
numbering 12O; but we should hardly be justified in concluding from
this passage that the greater part of his Manuscripts were now
missing (see _Prolegomena_, Vol. I, pp. 5-7).], the hundred and
twenty books composed by me will give verdict Yes or No. In these I
have been hindered neither by avarice nor negligence, but simply by
want of time. Farewell [89].
Plans and suggestions for the arrangement of materials (797-802).
797.
OF THE ORDER OF THE BOOK.
This work must begin with the conception of man, and describe the
nature of the womb and how the foetus lives in it, up to what stage
it resides there, and in what way it quickens into life and feeds.
Also its growth and what interval there is between one stage of
growth and another. What it is that forces it out from the body of
the mother, and for what reasons it sometimes comes out of the
mother's womb before the due time.
Then I will describe which are the members, which, after the boy is
born, grow more than the others, and determine the proportions of a
boy of one year.
Then describe the fully grown man and woman, with their proportions,
and the nature of their complexions, colour, and physiognomy.
Then how they are composed of veins, tendons, muscles and bones.
This I shall do at the end of the book. Then, in four drawings,
represent four universal conditions of men. That is, Mirth, with
various acts of laughter, and describe the cause of laughter.
Weeping in various aspects with its causes. Contention, with various
acts of killing; flight, fear, ferocity, boldness, murder and every
thing pertaining to such cases. Then represent Labour, with pulling,
thrusting, carrying, stopping, supporting and such like things.
Further I would describe attitudes and movements. Then perspective,
concerning the functions and effects of the eye; and of
hearing--here I will speak of music--, and treat of the other
senses.
And then describe the nature of the senses.
This mechanism of man we will demonstrate in ... figures; of which
the three first will show the ramification of the bones; that is:
first one to show their height and position and shape: the second
will be seen in profile and will show the depth of the whole and of
the parts, and their position. The third figure will be a
demonstration of the bones of the backparts. Then I will make three
other figures from the same point of view, with the bones sawn
across, in which will be shown their thickness and hollowness. Three
other figures of the bones complete, and of the nerves which rise
from the nape of the neck, and in what limbs they ramify. And three
others of the bones and veins, and where they ramify. Then three
figures with the muscles and three with the skin, and their proper
proportions; and three of woman, to illustrate the womb and the
menstrual veins which go to the breasts.
[Footnote: The meaning of the word _nervo_ varies in different
passages, being sometimes used for _muscolo_ (muscle).]
798.
THE ORDER OF THE BOOK.
This depicting of mine of the human body will be as clear to you as
if you had the natural man before you; and the reason is that if you
wish thoroughly to know the parts of man, anatomically, you--or your
eye--require to see it from different aspects, considering it from
below and from above and from its sides, turning it about and