The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
Compiled and edited from the original manuscripts by Jean Paul Richer in Two Volumes
Volume II
I
Anatomy
796
[A general introduction] I wish to work miracles – it may be that I shall possess less than other men of more peaceful lives, or than those who want to grow rich in a day. I may live for a long time in great poverty, as always happens and always will happen to alchemists, the would-be creators of gold and silver, and engineers who would have dead water stir itself into life and perpetual motion, and to those supreme fools, the necromancer and the enchanter.[1]
[23] And you [2] who say that it would be better to watch an anatomist at work than to see these drawings, you would be right, if it were possible to observe all the things which are demonstrated in such drawings in a single figure, in which you, with all your cleverness will not see or obtain knowledge of more than a few veins, to obtain a true and perfect knowledge of which I have dissected more than 10 human bodies, destroying all the other members , removing the very minutest particles of flesh by which these veins are surrounded without causing them to bleed, excepting the insensible bleeding of the capillary veins; as one single body would not last so long, since it was necessary to proceed with several bodies by degrees, until I came to and end and had complete knowledge; this I repeated twice to learn the differences.
And if you should have a love of such things you might be prevented by loathing, and if that did not prevent you, you might be deterred by the fear of living in the night hours in the company of those corpses, quartered and flayed and horrible to see. And if this did not prevent you, perhaps you might not be able to draw so well as necessary for such a demonstration; or if you had the skill of drawing it might not be combined with knowledge of perspective; and if it were so you might not understand the methods of geometrical demonstration and the method of calculation of forces and of the strength of muscles; patience might also be wanting, so you lack perseverance. As to whether these were found in me or not, the hundred and twenty books composed by me will give a verdict Yes or No.[3] In these I have been hindered by neither avarice nor negligence but simply by want of time. Farewell.
797
Of the order of the book
This work must begin with the conception of man, and describe the nature of the womb and how the fetus lives in it, up to what stage it resides there, and in what way it quickens and what interval there is between one stage of growth and another. What is it that forces it out from the body of the mother, and for what reasons it sometimes comes out of the mother’s womb before the due time.
Then I will describe which are the members, which after the boy is born, grow more than the others, and determine the proper proportions of a boy of one year.
Then describe the fully grown man and woman and the nature of their complexions, color, and physiognomy.
Then how they are composed of veins, tendons, muscles, and bones. This I shall do at the end of the book. Then in four drawings, represent the 4 universal conditions of men. That is Mirth, with various acts of laughter, and describe the cause of laughter. Weeping in various aspects with its causes. Contention with various acts of killing; flight, fear, ferocity, boldness, murder and everything pertaining to such cases. Then represent Labor, with pulling and thrusting, carrying, stopping, and supporting and such like things.
Furthermore I would describe attitudes and movements. Then perspective, concerning the functions and effects of the eye; and of hearing – here I shall speak of music – and treat of the other senses.
And describe the nature of the senses.
This mechanism of man we will demonstrate in…figures; of which the 3 of the 1st will show the ramification of the bones; that is to show their height, position, and shape; the second will be seen in profile and will show the depth of the whole and of the parts, and their position. The 3rd figure will be a demonstration of the bones of the back parts. Then I will make 3 other figures from the same point of view, with the bones sawn across, in which will be shown their thickness and hollowness. Three other figures of the bones complete, and of the nerves which arise from the nape of the neck, and in what limbs they ramify. Then three figures with muscles and 3 with the skin, and their proper proportions; and 3 of women to illustrate the womb and the menstrual veins that go to the breasts.
798
The order of the book
This depicting of mine of the human body will be as clear to you as if you had the natural man before you; and the reason is that if you wish thoroughly to know the parts of man, anatomically, you – or your eye – require to see it from different aspects, considering it from below and from above and from its sides, turning it about and seeking the origin of each member; and in this way the natural anatomy is sufficient for your comprehension. But you must understand that this amount of knowledge will not continue to satisfy you; seeing the very great confusion that must result from the combination of tissues, with veins, arteries, nerves, sinews, muscles, bones, and blood, which of itself, tinges every part the same color. And the veins, which discharge this blood, are not discerned by reason of their smallness. Moreover integrity of the tissues, in the process of investigating the parts within them, is inevitably destroyed, and their transparent substance being tinged with blood does not allow you to recognize the parts covered by them, from the similarity of their blood-stained hue; and you cannot know everything of the one without confusing and destroying the other. Hence, some further anatomy drawings become necessary. Of which you want three to give full knowledge of the veins and arteries, everything else being destroyed with the greatest care. And three others to display the tissues; and three others for the muscles and ligaments; and three for the bones and cartilages; and three for the anatomy of the bones, which have to be sawn to show which are hollow and which are not, which have marrow and which are spongy, and which are thick from the outside inwards, and which are thin. And some are extremely thin in some parts and thick in others, and some parts hollow or filled up with bone, or full of marrow, or spongy. And all these conditions are sometimes found in one and the same bone, and in some bones none of them. And three you must have for the woman, in which there is much that is mysterious by reason of the womb and the fetus. Therefore by my drawings every part will become known to you, and by all means of demonstrations from three different points of view of each part; for when you have seen a limb from the front, with any muscles, sinews, or veins which take their rise from the opposite side, the same limb will be shown to you in a same side view or from behind, exactly as if you had that same limb in your hand and were turning it from side to side until you had acquired a full comprehension of all you wished to know. In the same way there will be put before you three or four demonstrations of each limb, from various pints of view, so that you will be left with a true and complete knowledge of all you wish to learn of the human figure.[4]
[1] When here we find Leonardo putting himself in the same category as the Alchemists and Necromancers, whom he elsewhere mocks so bitterly, it is evidently meant ironically. In the same way Leonardo, in the introduction to the books on perspective sets himself with transparent satire on a level with other writers on the subject.
[2] Line 23 and following seem to be directed against students of painting and young artists rather than against medical men and anatomists.
[3] Leonardo frequently and perhaps habitually
wrote in note books of very small size and only moderately thick; in most of
those that have been preserved undivided, each contains less than fifty leaves. Thus a considerable number of such volumes
must have gone to make up a volume of the Codex Atlanticus which now
contains nearly 1200 detached leaves. In
the passage under consideration, which was evidently written at a late part of
his life, Leonardo speaks of his manuscript notebooks as numbering 120, but we
should hardly be justified in concluding from this passage that the greater
part of his manuscripts were now missing. (See Prolegomena, vol. 1, pp.
5-7)
[4] Compare
with Pl. CVII. The original drawing at