The new digital platform containing Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus is online

All Leonardo da Vinci’s “hard-earned papers” can be consulted on the web. From today the “Leonardo//thek@” is online, a digital platform to explore Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus. The project was developed by the Museo Galileo of Florence in collaboration with the Vinciana Commission, the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana of Milan, the Royal Library of Windsor, the Biblioteca Leonardiana of Vinci and the Ente Collezione Vinciana.

The presentation to the press took place today, in conjunction with the launch of the online platform, at the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, in the presence of Alessandro Aresu, head of the technical secretariat of the Ministry of University and Research representing the minister Anna Maria Bernini, held in Rome for the Council of Ministers. Paolo Galluzzi, president of the national committee for the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Leonardo da Vinci; Pietro Marani, president of the Vinciana Collection Body and Andrea Bernardoni, University of L’Aquila.

The Codex Atlanticus, as Marani explains, is the largest collection of Leonardo da Vinci’s papers, created at the end of the 16th century by the sculptor Pompeo Leoni who, however, dismembered numerous autograph manuscripts and distributed them, together with innumerable loose leaves, in two large albums : the Codex Atlanticus, conserved in the Milanese library, in which he inserted papers and fragments of technical and scientific interest, and the collection now conserved in the Royal Library of Windsor, in which he included documents of figurative interest.

It is a huge work in terms of size, over 1100 sheets (over 2200 pages), and for the chaotic sequence. For this, the consultation is not easy.

In the Codex Atlanticus Leonardo recorded thoughts and memos, expense notes, drawings of machines and technical solutions of the most disparate nature, reflections on natural phenomena, sketches of faces and landscapes, evocations of personal facts, drafts of indexes of ambitious treatises that he planned to write , etc.

Even years later, he returned to previously compiled papers, pouring new annotations and drawings. Result: it is extremely difficult to establish the sequence of drafting of the sheets present in the Ambrosian album and, above all, to connect them to the testimonies on the whole of his artistic, technical-scientific and literary production and on the biographical and historical context attested by the autograph codes that have come down to us in the state in which they were at Leonardo’s death.

Starting from the many difficulties of consultation, the Leonardo digital archive project was born. And to overcome the impervious difficulties presented by consulting the Codex Atlanticus, the Multimedia Laboratory of the Museo Galileo has developed the IT platform that houses the digital library.

Thanks to the collaboration established with the Royal Collection Trust, the inclusion in the Leonardo//thek@ of the digital reproductions of the folios conserved in the Royal Library of Windsor – the twin album of the Codex Atlanticus – and of the information generated on each of them is at an advanced stage over two centuries of research. It will thus be possible to face the challenge, fundamental for the progress of Vinci’s studies, of the virtual reconstruction of the state of Leonardo’s manuscripts before Pompeo Leoni’s intervention. When the work is completed, Leonardo//thek@ will allow access both separately and in an integrated manner to the current state of knowledge on the impressive resources of Leonardo da Vinci’s Biblioteca Ambrosiana and the Royal

Collection. Scholars will also be able to interact with the digital platform by depositing observations, comments, proposed corrections, bibliographic updates, etc., thus contributing to its continuous updating.

One last piece seems short-lived: the integration in Leonardo//thek@ of two very important new archives, the first with digital images (acquired from high definition) of the entire Codex Atlanticus, which will finally make timely information available on the watermarks present in the sheets of the Codex and on the material structure of the individual papers; while the second will allow viewing of over 6,000 photographic plates made between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century in view of the creation of the first printed facsimiles of Leonardo’s manuscripts.