Abstract
Leonardo’s Bell Ringing Jacquemart (c. 1510) represents the last and most highly developed of his automata. In what follows, we see how Leonardo’s project to design a hydraulic clock that rang the hours relates to earlier renditions of hydraulic devices, fountains and water clocks.
Keywords
- Bevel Gear
- Cable System
- Alarm Clock
- Lower Float
- Ancient Model
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References
Derek De Solla Price, Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera Mechanism. A Calendar Computer from ca. 80 B.C., New York, Science History Publications, 1975, pp. 51–62. As Price relates: “The Tower of Winds, located in the Roman Agora in the heart of Athens, was built by Andronicus Kyrrhestes of Macedonia about the second quarter of the first century B.C. It was a monument designed in accord with the science of the day with an especially complicated sundial on each face of its octagonal tower, a wind vane and a frieze of the gods of the prevailing wind above that, and a whole series of marvelous astronomical and probably other showpieces inside. It was a sort of Zeiss planetarium of the classical world”.
Derek De Solla Price, Athens’ Tower of the Winds. National Geographic, CXXXI, no. 4, April 1967, pp. 586–596.
Derek De Solla Price, op. cit. in note 2 above, p. 591.
Donald R. Hill, The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices by Ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari, Boston, D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1974, pp. 42–50.
Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. IV:2, London, Cambridge University Press, 1965, pp. 435–481.
Carlo Pedretti, “Rimini. Una fontana per Leonardo”, introductory text to the exhibition catalogue Leonardo. Machiavelli. Cesare Borgia. Arte storia e scienza in Romagna, 1500–1503, (Rimini, Castel Sismondo, 1 March-15 June 2003), Rome, De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2003, pp. 11–21.
Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, Descizione delle felicissime nozze della Cristianissima Maesta’ di Madama Maria de’ Medici Regina di Francia e di Navarra, Florence, Giorgio Marescotti, 1600, p. 10, describes a mechanical lion produced at a banquet and acknowledges the Leonardo antecedent. Cf. Pedretti, Leonardo architetto, Milan 1978 (English edition, London 1986, and NY 1991), pp. 319-322, figs. 506 and 507. For an overview of late sixteenth-century robotic devices applied to a natural setting, see the special research conducted by Professor Marcello Fagiolo of the University of Rome, Natura e artificio. L’ordine rustico, le fontane, gli automi nella cultura del Manierismo europeo, Rome, Officina Edizioni, 1979, particularly for the second part on pp. 137–258 on ‘Il giardino: la grotta, l’acqua, gli automi’.
The play staged might have been Politianus’ Orpheus or an adaptation of it. Cf. Pedretti, Leonardo architetto, Milan, 1978 (English edition, London, 1986, and New York, 1991), pp. 293–295. See also Richter Commentary, note to §678.
In addition to a fragmentary sheet at Windsor reconstructed by Carlo Pedretti with fragments 12716 and 12688, the bell ringer project has survived in several sheets scattered throughout the Codex Atlanticus, e.g. f. 65 v [20 v-b], which in turn is the parent sheet of Windsor fragments 12480 and 12718 r. Cf. Leonardo da Vinci, Fragments at Windsor Castle from the Codex Atlanticus, Carlo Pedretti (ed.) London, Phaidon, 1957, pp. 38, 41, and pl. 2. See also my paper “Leonardo’s Lost Robot”, in Achademia Leonardi Vinci, XI, 1996, pp. 99–110, in particular p. 100 and fig. 2.
Vasari. Lives of Seventy of the most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects by Giorgio Vasari, vol. II, p. 255. New York, Charles Scribners’s Sons, 1896. Cfr. Achademia Leonardi Vinci, X, 1997, pp. 273–274.
Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. III, London, Cambridge Universtiy Press, 1959, pp. 315–329.
Joseph Needham, op. cit. (as in note 14 above) plates XLIV and XLV.
J. G. Landels, Engineering in the Ancient World, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1978. There is an excellent description of Archimedean siphons on pp. 192–194.
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(2006). Leonardo’s Bell Ringer. In: Leonardo’s Lost Robots. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28497-4_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28497-4_4
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