followed; while much, it is evident, was lost for good. In 1796
Napoleon swept away to Paris, along with the other art treasures
of Italy, the whole of the Leonardo MSS. at the Ambrosiana:
only the Codice Atlantico was afterwards restored, the other volumes
remaining the property of the Institut de France. These also have
had their adventures, two of them having been stolen by Count
Libri and passed temporarily into the collection of Lord Ashburnham,
whence they were in recent years made over again to the Institute.
The first important step towards a better knowledge of the MSS.
was made by the beginning, in 1880, of the great series of publications
from the MSS. of the Institut de France undertaken by C. Ravaisson-Mollien;
the next by the publication in 1883 of Dr J. P. Richter’s
Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci (see Bibliography): this work
included, besides a history and analytical index of the MSS.,
facsimiles of a number of selected pages containing matter of
autobiographical, artistic, or literary interest, with transcripts and
translations of their MS. contexts. Since then much progress has
been made in the publication of the complete MSS., scientific and
other, whether with adequate critical apparatus or in the form of
mere facsimile without transliteration or comment.
A brief statement follows of the present distribution of the several MSS. and of the form in which they are severally published:—
England.—Windsor: Nine MSS., chiefly on anatomy, published entire in simple facsimile by Rouveyre (Paris, 1901); partially, with transliterations and introduction by Piumati and Sabachnikoff (Paris, 1898, foll.); British Museum: one MS., miscellaneous, unpublished; Victoria and Albert Museum: ten note-books bound in 3 vols.; facsimile by Rouveyre, Holkham (collection of Lord Leicester), 1 vol., on hydraulics and the action of water; published in facsimile with transliteration and notes by Gerolamo Calvi. France.—Institut de France: seventeen MSS., all published with transliteration and notes by C. Ravaisson-Mollien (6 vols., Paris, 1880–1891). Italy.—Milan, Ambrosiana: the Codice Atlantico, the huge miscellany, of vital importance for the study of the master, put together by Pompeo Leoni; published in facsimile, with transliteration, by the Accademia dei Lincei (1894, foll.); Milan: collection of Count Trivulzio; 1 vol., miscellaneous; published and edited by L. Beltrami (1892); Rome: collection of Count Marszolini; Treatise on the Flight of Birds, published and edited by Piumati and Sabachnikoff (Paris, 1492).
Bibliography.—The principal authorities are:—“Il libro di Antonio Billi,” edited from MS. by G. de Fabriazy in Archivio Storico Ital. ser. v. vol. 7; “Breve vita di Leonardo da Vinci, scritto da un adnonimo del 1500” (known as the Anonimo Gaddiano), printed by G. Milanesi in Archivio Storico Ital. t. xvi. (1872), translated with notes by H. P. Horne in series published by the Unicorn Library (1903); Paolo Giovio, “Leonardi Vincii vita,” in his Elogia, printed in Tiraboschi, Storia della Lett. Ital. t. vii. pt. 4, and in Classici Italiani, vol. 314; Vasari, in his celebrated Lives of the Painters (1st ed., Florence, 1550; 2nd ed. ibid. 1568; ed. Milanesi, with notes and supplements, 1878–1885); Sabba da Castiglione, Ricordi (Venice, 1565); G. P. Lomazzo, Trattato dell’ arte della pittura, &c. (Milan, 1584–1585); Id., Idea del tempio della pittura (Milan, 1591); Le Père Dan, Le Trésor . . . de Fontainebleau (1642); J. B. Venturi, Essai sur les ouvrages physico-mathématiques de L. da V. (Paris, 1797); C. Amoretti, Memorie storiche sulla vita, &c. di L. da V. (Milan, 1804), a work which laid the foundation of all future researches; Giuseppe Bossi, Del Cenacolo di L. da V. (Milan, 1810); C. Fumagalli, Scuola di Leonardo da Vinci (1811); Gaye, Carteggio d’artisti (1839–1841); G. Uzielli, Ricerche intorno a L. da V., series 1, 2 (Florence, 1872; Rome, 1884; series 1 revised, Turin, 1896), documentary researches of the first importance for the study; C. L. Calvi, Notizie dei principali professori di belle arti (Milan, 1869); Arsène Houssaye, Histoire de L. de V. (Paris, 1869 and 1876, an agreeable literary biography of the pre-critical kind); Mrs Heaton, Life of L. da V. (London, 1872), a work also made obsolete by recent research; Hermann Grothe, L. da V. als Ingenieur und Philosoph (Berlin, 1874); A. Marks, the S. Anne of L. da V. (London, 1882); J. P. Richter, The Literary Works of L. da V. (2 vols., London, 1883), this is the very important and valuable history of and selection from the texts mentioned above under MSS.; Ch. Ravaisson-Mollien, Les Écrits de L. da V. (Paris, 1881); Paul Müller Walde, L. da V., Lebensskizze und Forschungen (Munich, 1889–1890); Id., “Beiträge zur Kenntniss des L. da V.,” in Jahrbuch der k. Preussischen Kunstsammlungen (1897–1899), the first immature and incomplete, the second of high value: the whole life of this writer has been devoted to the study of L. da V., but it is uncertain whether the vast mass of material collected by him will ever take shape or see the light; G. Gronau, L. da V. (London, 1902); Bernhard Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters (London, 1903); Edmondo Solmi, Studi sulla filosofia naturale di L. da V. (Modena, 1898); Id., Leonardo (Florence, 1st ed. 1900, 2nd ed. 1907; this last edition of Solmi’s work is by far the most complete and satisfactory critical biography of the master which yet exists); A. Rosenberg, L. da V., in Knackfuss’s series of art biographies (Leipzig, 1898); Gabriel Séailles, L. da V. l’artiste et le savant (1st ed. 1892, 2nd ed. 1906), a lucid and careful general estimate of great value, especially in reference to Leonardo’s relations to modern science; Edward McCurdy, L. da V., in Bell’s “Great Masters” series (1904 and 1907), a very sound and trustworthy summary of the master’s career as an artist; Id., L. da V.’s Note-Books (1908), a selection from the passages of chief general interest in the master’s MSS., very well chosen, arranged, and translated, with a useful history of the MSS. prefixed, Le Vicende del Cenacolo di L. da V. nel secolo XIX. (Milan, 1906), an official account of the later history and vicissitudes of the “Last Supper” previous to its final repair; Luca Beltrami, Il Castello di Milano (1894); Id., L. da V. et la Sala dell’ Asse (1902); Id., “Il Cenacolo di Leonardo,” in Raccolta Vinciana (Milan, 1908), the official account of the successful work of repair carried out by Signor Cavenaghi in the preceding years; Woldemar von Seidlitz, Leonardo da Vinci, der Wendepunkt der Renaissance (2 vols., 1909), a comprehensive and careful work by an accomplished and veteran critic, inclined to give perhaps an excessive share in the reputed works of Leonardo to a single pupil, Ambrogio Preda. It seems needless to give references to the voluminous discussion in newspapers and periodicals concerning the authenticity of a wax bust of Flora acquired in 1909 for the Berlin Museum and unfortunately ascribed to Leonardo da Vinci, its real author having been proved by external and internal evidence to be the Englishman Richard Cockle Lucas, and its date 1846. (S. C.)
LEONARDO OF PISA (Leonardus Pisanus or Fibonacci),
Italian mathematician of the 13th century. Of his personal
history few particulars are known. His father was called
Bonaccio, most probably a nickname with the ironical meaning
of “a good, stupid fellow,” while to Leonardo himself another
nickname, Bigollone (dunce, blockhead), seems to have been
given. The father was secretary in one of the numerous factories
erected on the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean
by the warlike and enterprising merchants of Pisa. Leonardo
was educated at Bugia, and afterwards toured the Mediterranean.
In 1202 he was again in Italy and published his great work,
Liber abaci, which probably procured him access to the learned
and refined court of the emperor Frederick II. Leonardo
certainly was in relation with some persons belonging to that
circle when he published in 1220 another more extensive work,
De practica geometriae, which he dedicated to the imperial
astronomer Dominicus Hispanus. Some years afterwards
(perhaps in 1228) Leonardo dedicated to the well-known astrologer
Michael Scott the second edition of his Liber abaci, which
was printed with Leonardo’s other works by Prince Bald.
Boncompagni (Rome, 1857–1862, 2 vols.). The other works
consist of the Practica geometriae and some most striking
papers of the greatest scientific importance, amongst which the
Liber quadratorum may be specially signalized. It bears the
notice that the author wrote it in 1225, and in the introduction
Leonardo tells us the occasion of its being written. Dominicus
had presented Leonardo to Frederick II. The presentation was
accompanied by a kind of mathematical performance, in which
Leonardo solved several hard problems proposed to him by John
of Palermo, an imperial notary, whose name is met with in
several documents dated between 1221 and 1240. The methods
which Leonardo made use of in solving those problems fill the
Liber quadratorum, the Flos, and a Letter to Magister Theodore.
All these treatises seem to have been written nearly at the same
period, and certainly before the publication of the second edition
of the Liber abaci, in which the Liber quadratorum is expressly
mentioned. We know nothing of Leonardo’s fate after he issued
that second edition.
Leonardo’s works are mainly developments of the results obtained by his predecessors; the influences of Greek, Arabian, and Indian mathematicians may be clearly discerned in his methods. In his Practica geometriae plain traces of the use of the Roman agrimensores are met with; in his Liber abaci old Egyptian problems reveal their origin by the reappearance of the very numbers in which the problem is given, though one cannot guess through what channel they came to Leonardo’s knowledge. Leonardo cannot be regarded as the inventor of that very great variety of truths for which he mentions no earlier source.
The Liber abaci, which fills 459 printed pages, contains the most perfect methods of calculating with whole numbers and with fractions, practice, extraction of the square and cube roots, proportion, chain rule, finding of proportional parts, averages, progressions, even compound interest, just as in the completest mercantile arithmetics of our days. They teach further the solution of problems leading to equations of the first and second degree, to determinate and indeterminate equations, not by single and double position only, but by real algebra, proved by means of geometric constructions, and including the use of letters as symbols for known numbers, the unknown quantity being called res and its square census.
