Leonardo’s Notebook
Leonardo da Vinci was possibly the most widely talented person ever to live. Painter of The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, engineer, architect, anatomist, he defined Renaissance Man like no other.Codex Arundel is a collection of notes made between 1480 and 1518, dealing mainly with mechanics and geometry. Amongst the highlights are studies on the moons reflection of light, the movement of water, observations on the production of sound and light, and designs for diving apparatus. In the notebook we clearly see Leonardo’s mind at work on a dizzying variety of subjects, and we can trace the evolution of ideas through his words and sketches.
The notebook is written in Leonardo’s distinctive “mirror writing” possibly to preserve his secrets, possibly just because he was left-handed. The eBookTreasures version contains a tool to flip this writing back through 180 degrees.
The collection of notes were bought by Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel in the 17th century, were bound and became known as Codex Arundel. The codex then passed to the Royal Society before coming to rest around 1831 in the British Museum Library, now known as the British Library.
These iBooks contain the complete manuscript or selected highlights along with text and audio commentary and the ability to reverse Leonardo’s mirror writing.
Click on the thumbnails below to see more.
