Leonardo da Vinci’s Visionary Notebooks Now Online: Browse 570 Digitized Pages

Quick, what do you know about Leonar­do da Vin­ci? He paint­ed the Mona Lisa! He wrote his notes back­wards! He designed super­cool bridges and fly­ing machines! He was a genius about, um… a lot of oth­er… things… and, um, stuff…

Okay, I’m sure you know a bit more than that, but unless you’re a Renais­sance schol­ar, you’re cer­tain to find your­self amazed and sur­prised at how much you didn’t know about the quin­tes­sen­tial Renais­sance man when you encounter a com­pi­la­tion of his note­books—Codex Arun­del—which has been dig­i­tized by the British Library and made avail­able to the pub­lic.

The note­book, writes Jonathan Jones at The Guardian, rep­re­sents “the liv­ing record of a uni­ver­sal mind.” And yet, though a “technophile” him­self, “when it came to pub­li­ca­tion, Leonar­do was a lud­dite…. He made no effort to get his notes pub­lished.”

For hun­dreds of years, the huge, secre­tive col­lec­tion of man­u­scripts remained most­ly unseen by all but the most rar­i­fied of col­lec­tors. After Leonar­do’s death in France, writes the British Library, his stu­dent Francesco Melzi “brought many of his man­u­scripts and draw­ings back to Italy. Melzi’s heirs, who had no idea of the impor­tance of the man­u­scripts, grad­u­al­ly dis­posed of them.” Nonethe­less, over 5,000 pages of notes “still exist in Leonardo’s ‘mir­ror writ­ing’, from right to left.” In the note­books, da Vin­ci drew “visions of the aero­plane, the heli­copter, the para­chute, the sub­ma­rine and the car. It was more than 300 years before many of his ideas were improved upon.”

The dig­i­tized note­books debuted in 2007 as a joint project of the British Library and Microsoft called “Turn­ing the Pages 2.0,” an inter­ac­tive fea­ture that allows view­ers to “turn” the pages of the note­books with ani­ma­tions. Onscreen gloss­es explain the con­tent of the cryp­tic notes sur­round­ing the many tech­ni­cal draw­ings, dia­grams, and schemat­ics (see a selec­tion of the note­books in this ani­mat­ed for­mat here). For an over­whelm­ing amount of Leonar­do, you can look through 570 dig­i­tized pages of Codex Arun­del here. For a slight­ly more digestible, and read­able, amount of Leonar­do, see the British Library’s brief series on his life and work, includ­ing expla­na­tions of his div­ing appa­ra­tus, para­chute, and glid­er.

And for much more on the man—including evi­dence of his sar­to­r­i­al “pref­er­ence for pink tights” and his shop­ping lists—see Jonathan Jones’ Guardian piece, which links to oth­er note­book col­lec­tions and resources. The artist and self-taught poly­math made an impres­sive effort to keep his ideas from pry­ing eyes. Now, thanks to dig­i­tized col­lec­tions like those at the British Library, “any­one can study the mind of Leonar­do.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To Do List (Cir­ca 1490) Is Much Cool­er Than Yours

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

Down­load the Sub­lime Anato­my Draw­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Avail­able Online, or in a Great iPad App

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness