Leonardo as Military Engineer

Abstract

The recent discovery of two codexes written in the hand of Leonardo da Vinci, comprising some 700 pages, was a most welcome event to the historian of technology and to the expanding number of Vincian scholars. The ’loss’ of these important texts was, in a way, a blessing because when exposed, they showed Leonardo’s notes and drawings in a state of freshness no longer evident¹ in most of the nearly 6000 pages that have survived of the four or more times that number that Leonardo entrusted to his favorite pupil, Francesco Melzi, at the time of his death in 1519. The delicate drawings in pencil and chalk would have been obliterated by casual handling during a period of less concern with the conservation of such material. Since their rediscovery, the Madrid drawings have been copied in color and their life and original brightness extended by photography and printing.