Leonardo Davinci Notebooks

oxford world’s classics

NOTEBOOKS
Leonardo da Vinci was born in Tuscany in 1452, the illegitimate son of a Florentine notary. By the age of 20 he was in Florence where he became a pupil of Verrocchio. Around 1482 he left Florence for Milan, where he was to live for the next seventeen years. It was here that he undertook many of his scientific investigations and painted many of his greatestpictures, including The Last Supper. He returned to Florence in 1500 and stayed there for several years, during which time he painted the Mona Lisa. He returned to Milan where he stayed until 1513 when he went to Rome. His final years were spent in France, where he died in 1519. As well as a great artist, Leonardo was a deeply curious scientist and passionately interested in all branches ofknowledge. His notebooks—covered in sketches of flowers, clouds, birds, human anatomy, and designs for flying machines, fortifications, and waterways— testify to his unquenchable curiosity and restless, acute intelligence. Irma A. Richter was the daughter of Jean Paul Richter, who first translated Leonardo’s writings in The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci. Thereza Wells is a Research Fellow at theUniversity of the Arts, London. She has worked on exhibitions at a number of museums in Britain and America, and was associate curator of the V&A’s exhibition, Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, and Design. She is one of the founders, with Martin Kemp, of the Universal Leonardo project. Martin Kemp is Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Leonardo,and Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man and the driving force behind the Universal Leonardo project.

oxford world’s classics
For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics have brought readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over 700 titles—from the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century’s greatest novels—the series makes availablelesser-known as well as celebrated writing. The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading. Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry, religion, philosophy and politics. Each editionincludes perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers.

OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Notebooks
Selected by IRMA A. RICHTER Edited with an Introduction and Notes by THEREZA WELLS Preface by MARTIN KEMP

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