[In the following excerpts, Pedretti discusses Leonardo as a teacher of art and analyzes the Codex Huygens,a compilation of Leonardo's writings that deals with, among other things, the form, structure, and movement of the human figure.]

The short biography of Leonardo da Vinci written by Paolo Giovio around 1527 has been well known since 1796, the date of its first publication in Tiraboschi's Storia della letteratura italiana.¹ Giovio's account of the life of Leonardo, written in Latin, is based on information that he must have obtained from Leonardo himself. It was Giovio who reported that Leonardo intended to publish his own anatomical studies by means of copper plates.² Furthermore, his report on Leonardo's studies on optics and painting is an unmistakable reference to the artist's activity after 1508. An Italian translation of Giovio's biography of Leonardo was published by Giuseppe Bossi as early as 1810.³ An English translation was included in the second edition of Richter's anthology,⁴ and again in the Goldscheider edition of Vasari's biography of Leonardo.⁵ Giovio's references to Leonardo, however, are not confined to this short biography. A passage concerning Leonardo is also in the fragment of a dialogue that Giovio wrote as an introduction to the biographies of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. This dialogue was published by Tiraboschi along with the biographies of the three artists. The Latin text of the passage concerning Leonardo was reprinted by Beltrami in 1919,⁶ with some misspelling, however, and incomplete—moreover, under the wrong date c. 1540. (Since Giovio refers to Perugino as still alive he must have written the dialogue before 1524.) But never before or since has this document been considered or translated into English.⁷

This is the only known document concerning Leonardo as a teacher of art. We are told that Leonardo's pupils under the age of twenty (and we may think of Francesco Melzi as one of them⁸) were forbidden to touch brushes and colours, and that they were taught to practise with the lead stylus, drawing from the antique⁹ and rendering the essential lines of the ‘force of nature’ (simplicissimis tractibus imitando naturae vim). Leonardo's studies on the structure and movements of the human body are mentioned again, this time as a work that was prepared for didactic purposes. Late in his life Leonardo was undoubtedly carrying on a system of teaching from which he himself had profited in the studios of Verrocchio and Pollaiuolo.¹⁰ He certainly knew of the anecdote concerning Donatello, which is not recorded by Vasari, and which Giovio places at the end of his account of Leonardo as a teacher of art. Donatello's dictum: Facere saepius atque reficere in arte proficere est may be taken to explain why on April 23, 1490, Leonardo ‘recommenced the horse’, as he mentions in the memorandum given in §720 below.

Another reference to Leonardo in Giovio's dialogue is found in the introductory passage pertaining to Perugino.¹¹ This painter is said to have acquired at one time great reputation, but the emergence of such stars as Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael was to set him aside: ‘… These, who had suddenly come out of the darkness of that age, obscured his fame and reputation with their marvellous works; and to no avail did Perugino strive to hold to his achievements by following better models: as his fantasy dried up he kept falling into the stereotyped images of his youth, hardly bearing the shame of it, while the others (Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael) represented the nude limbs of majestic figures and the compelling power of nature with an admirable variety of subjects’—quando illi augustarum imaginum nudatos artus et connitentis naturae potestates in multiplici rerum omnium genere stupenda varietate figurarent.

DIALOGUS DE VIRIS LITTERIS ILLUSTRIBUS CUI IN CALCE SUNT ADDITAE VINCII, MICHAELIS ANGELI, RAPHAELIS URBINATIS VITAE

… Adhibenda enim est cura cupidis et alacribus ingeniis, ne ut implumes aviculae non plane siccatis alis festinantius provolent, sicuti in dispari, sed non omnino dissimili facultate, carioribus discipulis praecipere erat solitus Leonardus Vincius, qui picturam aetate nostra, veterum ejus artis arcana solertissime detegendo, ad amplissimam dignitatem provexit: illis namque intra vigesimum, ut diximus, aetatis annum penicillis et coloribus penitus interdicebat, quum juberet, ut plumbeo graphio tantum vacarent, priscorum operum egregia monumenta diligenter excerpendo, et simplicissimis tractibus imitando naturae vim, & corporum lineamenta, quae sub tanta motuum varietate oculis nostris efferuntur; quin etiam volebat, ut humana cadavera dissecarent, ut tororum atque ossium flexus et origines et cordarum adjumenta considerate perspicerent, quibus de rebus ipse subtilissimum volumen adjectis singolorum artuum picturis confecerat, ne quid praeter naturam in officina sua pingeretur. Scilicet ut non prius avida juvenum ingenia penicillorum illecebris et colorum amaenitate traherentur, quam ab exercitatione longe fructuosissima commensuratas rerum effigies recte et procul ab exemplaribus exprimere didicissent. Hoc itaque directo tramite, quamquam fastidioso atque difficili, ad verum scribendi laborem, qui in fine jucundissimus efficitur, studiosis erit procedendum, ne aliquando, si haec in ipsis probatae antiquitatis authoribus indagasse, atque observare piguerit, te demum nimis cito scribere ausum fuisse poeniteat. Caeterum postea quotidianus stili usus sine controversia rectissimus atque optimus bene scribendi magister existimatur, sicuti in aliis quoque artibus id verum esse liquido perspicimus. Ferunt Donatellum Florentinum, cuius est cum insignis artis gloria in Foro Patavino statue Gatamellatae aenea equestris, quum de summa discendae artis ratione ex arcano sententiam rogaret,¹² respondere solitum: Facere saepius atque reficere in arte proficere est.

DIALOGUE ON ILLUSTRIOUS MEN OF LETTERS, AT THE END OF WHICH ARE PLACED THE LIVES OF LEONARDO, MICHAELANGELO, AND RAPHAEL

… Again, one ought to watch that alert and keen youths do not do as fledglings do, which fly up too hastily with their wings still wet. A similar principle of teaching was adopted by Leonardo da Vinci, who in our time has raised painting to great dignity, and with great subtlety has revealed the mysteries of this art in the works of the ancients. He would forbid youths under the age of twenty to touch brushes and colours, and would have them practise only with the lead stylus, after the best examples left of the ancients, to become able to show the force of nature by means of essential lines, and the aspect of the human body in its great variety of movements. And he wanted that bodies be dissected to reveal the structure of flesh and bones, and the origin and function of each muscle. On this subject he had prepared a most accurate book in which each joint was explained with figures, because he did not want anything painted in his studio that did not conform to nature. Thus the talented but impatient youth was not to be seduced by the attraction of brushes and by the charm of colour before he could achieve the right understanding of the proportions of figures through a long and profitable study, and until he was able to render such figures without the help of a model. Painstaking and difficult as it might be, it is the right path that students should follow in their practice of writing. At the end it will become quite pleasant. Indeed, one should not disregard to investigate the works of ancient excellence, taking them as models, else one may regret having dared to begin writing too soon. Again, he who goes through an everyday practice of writing will undoubtedly master his art and become a proficient and accomplished writer. And the same is true of the other arts. It is said of Donatello the Florentine, whose bronze equestrian statue of Gattamelata at Padua is a glorious testimony to supreme art, that when he was to ask himself how best to acquire proficiency he used to reply: ‘To make and to remake in art is to progress.’

.....

A. HISTORY

The Codex Huygens in the Morgan Library, New York (MS. M.A. 1139), takes its name from its former owner Constantine Huygens, the brother of the famous physicist Christiaan and the secretary to King William III of England. Huygens records having acquired the book on March 2, 1690, from Mrs. Remy, ‘a woman from Brabant whose husband had been a painter at the time of van Dyck’.¹³ She has been identified with the widow of the Flemish painter Remy (Remigius) van Leemput, called ‘Remy’ or ‘Remee’. As Erwin Panofsky has shown in the introduction to his edition of the codex, Remy was born in Antwerp, and had come to London during the reign of Charles I. He is best known for his collection of prints and drawings, which was sold by his heirs in 1677, the year of his death.

The first description of the contents of the codex is in a letter that Constantine Huygens wrote to his brother Christiaan on March 3, 1690. He says that the book is in-quarto and is written and drawn by Leonardo da Vinci: ‘It deals with the design of nude figures of men, female and infants, and contains also something about horses and perspective. The figures are for the greater part simply outlined, the muscles are lightly indicated, but these figures are extremely beautiful, as one may expect from a great hand. The purpose of the author is to explain all the proportions of members and parts of the body. I have paid 3[frac12] guineas for it, but I would not sell it for four times that price.’¹⁴

An entry in Huygens' Diary, under the date September 1, 1690, records that the Queen had sent for him in order to show him the books of drawings of Leonardo and Holbein. This is undoubtedly the first mention of the Leonardo drawings in the Royal collection, not of the Codex Huygens as Panofsky suggests with his paraphrase of the entry (‘the Queen sent for him in order to be shown the precious volume’). The Leoni volume, which was acquired by Charles I about 1630, was described for the first time by Rogers in 1778, but nearly a century earlier Queen Mary was fully aware of its existence.

The Codex Huygens reappeared about 1915 and was acquired by the Morgan Library in the 1930s.

B. THE COOPER ENGRAVINGS

We know from Huygens' Journal that between November 26 and December 27, 1690, he had taken apart the codex in his possession in order to have its sheets carefully restored and inserted between the pages of a volume of blank folios. Then we are told that he gave the loose sheets to a dealer in prints called Cooper for mending and mounting, and examined Cooper's work on December 27.¹⁵

In Verga's Bibliografia Vinciana, under the date ‘1720 circa’, is mentioned a set of nine engravings after Leonardo's drawings on human movement published in London by the print dealer Edward Cooper. The engravings are so rare that they are known only through eighteenth-century descriptions. In fact, Verga's source is the well known letter of Mariette to Count de Caylus.¹⁶ His search for the engravings in various libraries of Europe was unsuccessful, and he had to admit reluctantly that not even the British Museum had a set of them.

The curious mystery was discussed by Gustavo Uzielli in 1884.¹⁷ He reported Amoretti's hypothesis that the Cooper engravings were reproductions of originals in the possession of Cardinal Silvio Valenti. This hypothesis proved to be wrong.¹⁸ Uzielli suggested that the drawings reproduced by Cooper were probably those in the Royal collection at Windsor Castle.

For some unknown reason the Cooper engravings went out of circulation quite soon. In 1797 Giovan Battista Venturi mentioned them in his Essai,¹⁹ but it does not seem that he had ever seen them, as we can infer from one of his letters to Giuseppe Bossi.²⁰ In fact for two centuries no one has been able to see them, otherwise the text of the Leonardo notes, which was even translated into English, would have reproduced in some later publication. On the other hand, there are indications that the Cooper engravings were not reproductions of drawings in the Royal collection. In fact, in 1730, Mariette described them as follows:

Fragment d'un Traité sur les mouvemens du corps humain & de la maniere de dessiner les figures suivant des regles geometriques. Cet ouvrage qui a été mis a jour à Londres depuis quelques années par E. Cooper, ne consiste qu'en neuf planches sans le titre. Quelques-unes son de démonstrations avec des explications en Italien, données par Leonard, auxquelles on a joint la traduction Angloise. D'autres representent des figures d'hommes & des femmes au trait. Elles sont executées avec esprit, & forment un très-petit cahier in-folio.²¹

This description fits precisely the type of figures and notes in the first part of the Codex Huygens. No original drawing of Leonardo, explaining the ‘maniere de dessiner les figures suivant des regles geometriques’, was ever reported in England, and only Federico Zuccaro seems to have seen some of them in Italy.²² It is reasonable to assume that Edward Cooper was the same print dealer who restored the Codex Huygens in 1690.

In 1767 a second edition of Caylus' Recueil de Charges was issued in Paris, and Mariette's letter was given according to the text revised by the author. The paragraph concerning the Cooper engravings is somewhat expanded. Mariette now describes figures that are undoubtedly those of the Codex Huygens. He also specifies that the plates are nine plus the title page (before he had said ‘neuf planches sans le titre’, and it was not clear whether the title page was also a plate or whether the nine plates came without any title page); and finally that the date of publication was ‘vers l'année 1720’:

Fragment d'un traité sur les mouvemens du corps humain & la maniere de dessiner les figures humaines suivant des regles géometriques. Cet ouvrage qui a été mis au jour à Londres vers l'année 1720, par E. Cooper, ne consiste qu'en dix planc. y compris celle du frontispice, dont les plus importantes sont des démonstrations d'un systême, à l'aide duquel on voit que Léonard prétendoit assujettir à des regles invariables les mouvemens des membres qui entrent dans la composition du corps humain. Dans d'autres planches sont représentées des figures d'hommes & de femmes de différentes proportions: tout cela est entremêlé de quelque écrits italiens, tels qu'ils étoient sur les desseins, suivis de la traduction en anglois; ce petit cahier in-folio est curieux. Celui qui a gravé les plances y a mis de l'esprit.²³

A set of Cooper's engravings reached Italy as early as 1732. It was Mariette himself who sent them, in 1731, to his friend Niccolò Gaburri in Florence:

Io ho il libro che ha dato alla luce Cooper da' disegni di Leonardo, e fate già conto, che sia vostro, ed averlo in vostro potere, perché ve lo manderò per la prima occasione.

(I have the book published by Cooper with engravings after Leonardo's drawings. Consider it already yours, because I propose to send it to you at the first opportunity.)²⁴

In a letter of January 28, 1732, Mariette announced that the book was on its way to Florence.²⁵ On October 4 of the same year Gaburri acknowledged receipt of it:

… Per ultimo mi son riservato a discorrervi del libro di Leonardo da Vinci delle proporzioni del corpo umano, per dirvi, che questo mi è stato caro al segno maggiore; principalmente perché è rarissimo, ed io non l'aveva mai veduto: in secondo luogo perché voi ne parlate in quella vostra lettera, che va avanti alle teste di caricature di Leonardo intagliate dal suddetto signor Conte [of Caylus]. La medesima lettera mi diede lume, che un disegno, che io posseggo già da gran tempo di quello autore, attenente alle sopradette proporzioni, potesse essere un foglio di quel libro stesso, che fu venduto alla spicciolata da chi non ne conosceva punto nè poco il merito; ed avendo confrontato il disegno istesso colle stampe del libro mandatomi, ho trovato, che è della stessa misura tanto per l'altezza, che per la larghezza. Io ne ho fatto fare una copia più esatta, che è stato possibile da un giovane diligente, e che disegna bene, e questa mi fo ardito di mandarvela …

(… I have left it till last to mention the book by Leonardo da Vinci on the proportions of the human body, as I want you to know that I consider this the most precious gift you sent me; first because it is extremely rare, for I have never seen it before; second, because you mentioned it in that letter you published as an introduction to the series of Leonardo caricatures engraved by the above mentioned signor Conte [of Caylus]. That letter gave me the idea that a Leonardo drawing on proportions, which I had for long time, could have been a sheet of the same book, since that book might have been sold sheet by sheet by someone unaware of its value. Now, comparing this drawing with the engravings you sent me, I find that their measurements are exactly identical, both in height and width. I am sending a copy of it to you …)²⁶

In the introduction to the Florentine edition of Leonardo's Treatise on Painting, published in 1792, the statement that Leonardo composed ‘un'opera sulla Meccanica del corpo umano’ is based on the information that a fragment of it had been published by Cooper in London. But it is doubtful that the engravings were known in Florence. The set which belonged to Gaburri, as well as the drawing which he owned and which was probably a missing folio of the Codex Huygens, were apparently already out of reach. In fact they must have been unknown even to the well informed Monsignor Bottari, if he could suggest that the Cooper engravings could have been after the codex that a ‘signore Inglese’ brought to Florence in 1717, that is, the Codex Leicester.²⁷

After several years of search (see my note in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXVIII, 1965, pp. 336-8), and when the present Commentary was going to press, in the Fall of 1970, I was able to locate a set of the Cooper engravings in the library of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth. This is listed in J. P. Lacaita's Catalogue of the Library at Chatsworth (London, 1879) under Cooper, but not under Leonardo. It measures 22.5 by 35.7 cm., and is composed of nine plates plus the title-page, which is also engraved. The title-page carries the dedication to ‘the R.^t Hon.^ble Tho: Coke Vice Chamberlain to his Most Sacred Maj.^ty King George’. This is not the same Thomas Coke, afterwards Lord Leicester, who purchased the Leonardo codex on water in Florence in 1717. Mr W. O. Hassall of the Bodleian Library kindly informs me that the first Lord Leicester is often confused with another Thomas Coke (of Melbourne Hall), who was no relation but was vice-chamberlain to Queen Anne, obviously the same person to whom the Cooper's engravings are dedicated.

The engravings do indeed reproduce as I suspected a selection of pages of the Codex Huygens, some with texts which are transcribed and translated into English. It is therefore the earliest example of an English edition of Leonardo's writings according to a system that was to be adopted by Richter about two hundred years later. I am grateful to His Grace the Duke of Devonshire for permission to reproduce the Cooper engravings. …

C. STRUCTURE AND CONTENTS

The ‘codex’ consists of 128 loose sheets inserted between the blank pages of a book bound in red morocco. Huygens himself informs us that he personally took the book apart in order to have it arranged as it is to-day, that is, as a collection of loose sheets. These all measure about 13-13.5 by 18 cm, with the exception of seven double sheets. Huygens gives no information as to the original structure of the book, but states that he had the print dealer Cooper restore the sheets (‘on op te placken’, rendered by Panofsky as ‘mending and mounting’). Panofsky points out that all the small sheets, as well as the halves of the larger ones, are reinforced at the edges by narrow strips of paper, and states that this was obviously done by Cooper in order to prevent the edges from fraying. I have reasons to suspect that Cooper's work was less elaborate, and that the narrow strips of paper are the left-over of the margins of a previous mount that Cooper might in fact have tried to remove.²⁸ It is what the folios of the Codex Atlanticus would look like were they separated from the original mount by cutting them along their margins.²⁹ Thus the sheets of the Codex Huygens must have been mounted originally on the sheets of a larger book, and in fact Huygens refers to it as a book in-quarto, whereas the individual sheets can be more properly designated as being in-ottavo.

There is no doubt that the 128 sheets represent only a fragment of a larger work. The way they were mounted originally may even suggest that they had been kept loose until they came into the hands of a collector, probably Leoni himself. It is only conjectural but quite probable that they had come from the same source as the bulk of the Leonardo manuscripts, that is, from the Melzi estate.

Huygens does not question the attribution of the book to Leonardo, yet drawings and handwriting are unlike anything produced by Leonardo. Probably the previous binding or mounts included some information about a traditional attribution to Leonardo in the sense of a compilation based on Leonardo material. There seems to be no doubt, however, that Federico Zuccaro had seen the original manuscript from which the Codex Huygens was copied. Not only does he speak of the manuscript as being written backwards, but he identifies it as Leonardo's ‘regola del disegno’, which is the same title of the Codex Huygens (Le Regole del Disegno). It may be surmised that Zuccaro had seen it in Rome, probably the book brought there by the anonymous Milanese painter who had visited Vasari shortly before 1564. (Vasari refers to that painter as the owner of ‘alcuni scritti di Lionardo, pur di caratteri scritti con la mancina a rovescio, che trattano della pittura e de' modi del disegno, e colorire’.) This would suggest a reason for a copy of them to originate in Milan and remain there, probably in Melzi's hands. A reexamination of the contents of the Codex Huygens as suggested by Irma A. Richter may reveal that the material is much closer to Leonardo than one may be inclined to believe.³⁰ And one may add that even its structure, although the mere fragment of a greater work, probably reflects a Leonardo plan.

The codex is an unfinished treatise on design by a Milanese painter active in the later half of the sixteenth century. The paper has watermarks pointing to a date around 1560-70, and it is reasonable to assume that the compiler had access to the Leonardo material when it was still kept all together in one place, thus before Melzi's death in 1570. In fact the originals which have been identified as some of his sources are now at Windsor, at Paris, and in Venice. His compilation is only a fragment of a greater work which was to comprise fourteen ‘regole’ or ‘libri’, of which only the first five are included in the codex, and these are in an uneven and confused form. They are almost all on the human figure. The first book deals with its form and structure; the second with its movements; the third with methods of transforming the profile elevation of the human figure into front and rear elevations; the fourth with proportions of the human figure and of the horse; and the fifth with perspective.

The Leonardo sources still in existence are the Windsor folios with studies of proportions of the human figure and the horse; the pertinent section in the Codex Huygens includes copies of drawings which must have belonged to the same series and which therefore reproduce Leonardo material now lost. Of special importance is that the original notes and drawings are countersigned by a small circle slashed through: as the same signet occurs next to the notes on painting transcribed in the Codex Urbinas, one may conclude that the author of the Codex Huygens copied directly from the original manuscripts at the same time as Melzi was compiling the Treatise on Painting. They were probably working together, and it is even possible that the author of the Codex Huygens had something to do with the Codex Urbinas, since his handwriting resembles closely that of the mysterious Manus 3 in the Vatican manuscript. Furthermore, the Windsor drawing no. 12293a, proportions of the horse's forelegs, hints at Melzi's role in the compilation of the Codex Huygens. In fact, the drawings on the left half of the folio are Melzi's tracings of the Leonardo drawings on the right half (note the vertical fold in between). The Melzi tracings complement the annotations of Leonardo (top centre), in that they are accompanied by the actual equations (left margin, in Melzi's handwriting) according to the ‘minuti’ system.³¹ The author of the Codex Huygens copied only the Melzi equations, including the one near the right margin, and not the notes by Leonardo which deal with the increase and decrease of the thickness and the length of certain parts of the leg as it bends or stretches.³²

Irma A. Richter has followed up Panofsky's suggestion that the author of the Codex Huygens had access to the Leonardo papers, and has pointed out a number of cases in which Leonardo's writings can be sensed as a direct source. In particular she stresses the importance of the Venice drawing illustrating the Vitruvian proportions of man: its inherent kinetic element is fully developed in a series of drawings in the Codex Huygens. According to Miss Richter, Leonardo had developed his theory in the last years of his first Milanese period, in a book to which Pacioli refers in 1498 as being completed: ‘… havendo con tutta diligentia al degno libro di pittura e movimenti humani posto fine’.³³ It is indeed revealing that Pacioli's remark occurs in a work, the Divina proportione, which is based on the thirteenth book of Euclid's Elements and which deals with the five regular solids, for which Leonardo drew the illustrations. Miss Richter then suggests that the drawing on fol. 7a of the Codex Huygens …, showing the human figure related to two circles, a square, equilateral triangles, and to various regular polygons, was not necessarily inspired by Gothic architectural geometry, as Panofsky suggests (p. 22), and may have no direct connection with Cesariano's well-known cross-section of Milan Cathedral, where the geometrical pattern is based on a square and on a scheme of equilateral triangles. ‘Our drawings,’ concludes Miss Richter, ‘where the proportions of the figure and the gyratory movements of its limbs are related to the sides and angles of a square, of three regular polygons, and of three equilateral triangles, is so closely connected with the drawings by Leonardo in Venice that it may derive from a lost design by Leonardo, made at a time when he was writing the degno libro di pittura e movimenti umani, and when his interest in Euclidean geometry had been aroused by his friend Fra Luca Pacioli, i.e. before 1498.’

Such a perceptive analysis of the drawing can be complemented by an observation on its style. It is precisely the style of a Leonardo drawing of about 1498 that it reflects. The human body is rendered with the neatness and precision of the technological drawings in the first part of the newly discovered MS. I at Madrid (MS. 8937) [Madrid Codex I], which dates from 1498-1500 and which can be taken as the counterpart of Leonardo's treatment of the human body as a machine. The anatomical drawings of about 1510, which are based on the same principles of design, reflect a later phase in the study of the kinetic aspect of the human body, indications of which are also found in notes of the Treatise of Painting which were copied from the lost Libro A of c. 1508-10.³⁴

Leonardo's sense for the kinetics of the human body can be traced back to his earliest drawings, when he begins to show it in the flashing images of figures in action from the time of the Adoration of the Magi. Such exhilarating sketches as the child affectionately clutching a cat in his early Madonna studies (Popham, pl. 13) show how a sequence of pentimenti may well become a device to convey the effect of movement. A fan-like sequence of images stresses the presence of a fulcrum as in the diagrams in the Codex Huygens, and can be profitably taken to show the spirited movement of a child's legs in the Louvre drawing of a Madonna (Popham, pl. 25), or the arm of a man hammering in a drawing at Bayonne (Popham, pl. 45). Even when his sense of form had developed, after 1500, to such a degree as to convey a greater weight and roundness to his figures, Leonardo still resorted to the early device and rendered the tossing heads of his Anghiari horses or the splashing legs of Neptune's sea-horses as in a cinematographic sequence (Popham, pls. 84 and 205). With this in mind one is prepared to understand that the kneeling Leda, with her remarkable coiling quality enhanced by the curved lines of shading (Popham, pl. 208), is in fact the image of a human body about to rise to a standing position. Just as in the theoretical drawings in the Codex Huygens, Leonardo deals here with ‘moto azionale’, that is ‘contained movement’—as opposed to ‘moto locale’, motion in space. These problems are explained in a chapter of the Treatise on Painting (Lu 304, McM 355) which I had already dated c. 1505-10:

          de li mouimenti
del huomo et altri animali

Li moti de gli animali sono di due spetie, cioé moto lochale e moto actionale, il moto lochale è quando l'animale si moue da locho a locho, el moto actionale è'l moto che fa l'animale in se medesimo senza mutation di locho e'l moto lochale é di tre spetie cioè salire, disendere, et andare per locho piano, a questi tre se n'aggiongie due cioè, tardo, e ueloce, e due altri cioè il moto retto et il tortuoso et un altro apresso cioè il saltare, ma il moto actionale è infinito, insieme coll'infinite operationi le quali non sanza suo danno spesse uolte si proccaccia l'huomo.

li moti sono di tre spetie cioe lochale, actionale semplice et il terzo è moto composto d'actionale co lochale.

Tardità et uellocità nō si debbono cōnumerare nelli moti lochali ma nelli accidenti d'essi moti——

infiniti sono li moti composti perche in quelli è balare sc

          of the movements
of man and other animals

The motions of animals are of two kinds, that is, motion in space and contained motion. Motion in space is that of the animal moving from place to place, and contained motion is that which the animal makes within itself without change of place.

Motion in space is of three kinds, that is, ascending, descending, and motion on a level, and to these three are added two qualifications: that is, slowness and rapidity, and two additional forms of motion: which are straight and tortuous motion, and then one more, that is, the motion of leaping. But contained motion is infinite, like the infinite actions in which, not without danger to himself, a man engages.

Motions are of three general kinds; that is, motion in space, simple contained motion, and the third, motion compounded of contained motion and motion in space.

Slowness and rapidity ought not to be counted among motions in space but are incidental conditions of those motions.

Compound motions are infinite, and among them are: dancing, fencing, playing, sowing, plowing, and rowing, but rowing is really a simple contained motion, because motion made by a man in rowing is not combined with man's motion in space, but with the motion of the boat.³⁵

Other references to the problems of ‘moto azionale’ are in the preceding chapters Lu 300-303, which I had also dated c. 1505-10. In chapter 300 the problem of percussion could be aptly illustrated by sketches on Windsor drawings dating from after 1505, in particular those on W. 19149b (Richter, Pl. v …), in which the figures of hammering men almost approach the type of diagram in the Codex Huygens.

Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the sketches just mentioned are on a sheet which contains studies of optics related to MS. D (c. 1508) and therefore linked to the problem of perspective treated in the ‘Fifth Book’ of the Codex Huygens. The relationship may be even closer, suggesting that the lost source of that book was actually the manuscript to which Leonardo himself refers as ‘5° di prespettiua’, and of which the present MS. D and the Windsor signature 19149-19152 were probably part.³⁶

Irma A. Richter's theory that the Codex Huygens may be a fragment of the manuscript owned by Cellini is strengthened by the general aspect of the codex and by the contents of its ‘Book Five’ in particular. Cellini describes his manuscript as follows:

Questo libro era di tanta virtù e di tanto bel modo di fare, secondo il mirabile ingegno del detto Leonardo … sopra le tre grandi arti, scultura, pittura et architettura … infra l'altre mirabil cose che erano in su esso, trovai un discorso della prospettiva, il più bello che mai fusse trovato da altro uomo al mondo, perchè le regole della prospettiva mostrano solamente lo scortare della longitudine, e non quelle della latitudine e altitudine. Il detto Leonardo aveva trovato le regole, e le dava ad intendere con tanta bella facilità et ordine, che ogni uomo che le vedeva ne era capacissimo.

(This book was of great excellency and so beautifully articulated conforming to the admirable ingenuity of the said Leonardo … It dealt with the three great arts, sculpture, painting and architecture … Among the admirable things treated in it, I found a discourse on perspective, the most beautiful a man ever made—since the rules of perspective usually explain only the foreshortening in depth, but not in width and height. The said Leonardo had found the rules [for the latter] and explained them with such a facility and order that they were comprehensible to everyone who saw them.)³⁷

Of interest is Cellini's repeated references to the notes as ‘regole’, which recalls the title of the Codex Huygens, Le Regole del Disegno. But the attractive theory is probably to be abandoned. The early origin of the Cellini manuscript (before 1542) would be conflicting with the evidence of style and water-marks of the Codex Huygens, which point to a date around 1560-70.

The ‘Fifth Book’ has been the object of much study recently, but the most lucid and perceptive analysis of it remains that by Irma A. Richter in her review of Panofsky's publication:

The rest of the fifth book is devoted to problems of linear perspective, which are described as ‘the diversity of the collocation of objects according to the angles caused by the eye and the object with reference to three principal points of view’ (p. 58). The three views are the normal view when the object is seen on a level with the beholder, the bird's-eye view, when the object is seen from above, and the worm's-eye view when it is seen from below. In the numerous illustrations the point of sight is conceived as located in the centre of a spherical field of vision whence the visual rays radiate. This is the Euclidean conception described also by Vitruvius, who speaks of the point of sight as the centre of a circle such as that formed by the horizon round the spectator; and it was a conception known also to Leonardo;³⁸ and it was therefore not as unique as Panofsky supposes (p. 99).

D. THE OXFORD SHEETS

Two unpublished sheets of the Codex Huygens series are found in the drawing collection at Christ Church, Oxford. I am grateful to Mr J. Byam Shaw, cataloguer of the drawings, for having informed me of their existence and for permission to study and publish them. Both sheets are from the Carlo Ridolfi collection (as some of the Leonardo drawings in the same Picture Gallery), and it can be shown therefore that about 1630 they were no longer part of the codex. As they have no foliation number, it is possible that they were independent of the group gathered in the Morgan manuscript. But their relation to the contents of the Codex Huygens is unmistakable.

One of the two sheets (inv. no. 0012) is of large format, about four times the size of a regular sheet of the Codex Huygens, 25.5 by 38.5 cm. … It is of a relatively strong paper with a water-mark (scales in circle) that Briquet dates no later than 1555. Close to the margins are traces of a line in pen and ink with which to frame the drawing, as well as the remainder of a previous mount. The verso is blank except for a formless scribble.

This drawing represents a standing male figure shown in front view, the right arm stretched out. The top of the shoulder is made the point for arm-length and elbow-length openings of the compass with which to trace half circles. A full circle is traced with a compass opened from the navel to the sole of the feet; another circle, partly shown as dotted line, is made with a compass which is centered on the penis and is opened to the line of the knees. A concentric circle is traced with an opening that reaches the sole of the feet and the top of the head. The right side of the diagram shows the intention of inscribing the figure in a square, but only a straight line from the top of the shoulder to the corner of the square indicates what would have been the axis of the lifted arm. The corresponding leg would have been lifted laterally so as to bring the level of the foot to correspond with the base of the square. This intention becomes evident when considering the circle made with the penis as the centre: a straight line drawn from the centre to a point in the circle corresponding to the intersection of the base of the square indicates the lifted leg. In fact the distance from the point of intersection to the corner of the square is exactly the measure of a foot as shown in the vertical subdivisions on the left and in the second scale below. Compare also Codex Huygens, f. 7a. On the left side of the diagram the author seems to be testing the alternative solution of lifting the leg according to an axis which passes through the navel and reaches the top of the shoulder. He is dealing with a basic problem of ‘moto azionale’ within the framework of the Vitruvian configuration of the man inscribed in a circle and a square. The newly discovered sheet, which is inscribed Simetria Del Corpo Humano, serves therefore as a link between the Leonardo drawing at Venice and the elaborated illustrations in the Codex Huygens. As such it reflects the programme of the ‘Prima Regola de' lineamenti guidati dalla verità et semplicità del compasso’ (‘First Regola on the linear schematization determined by the truth and simplicity of the compass’) as presented in Codex Huygens, f. 8a. The scheme is also used to show the four systems of Vitruvian proportions which are explained in the notes as the four-cubit, six-foot, eight-head and ten-face canons. (Compare Codex Huygens, f. 1a.) These are the same as described by Venusti in 1562 as having originated from Gerolamo Figino, the Melzi pupil here identified as the author of the Codex Huygens. (See Section E below.) The Codex Huygens contains only one sheet that may be related to this, i.e. f. 3 of the First Book, which shows back, side, and front views of the same type of figure with a nine-face system of subdivision. The model is identical, but the author is trying to apply a different system of proportions, with a result which is not fully successful in the drawing and which in fact should have conformed to the description of the nine-face canon as given by Ambrogio Figino in Comanini's book of 1590. For a full comment on this problem see note to § 343 below.

The other drawing at Oxford (inv. no. 06771) is of about the size of the sheets of the Codex Huygens, 13.8 by 18.4 cm. …, and like them is of thin paper but is laid down on a sheet of heavy paper on the back of which is an old attribution to Raphael. Only a few words of an inscription on its verso are visible by holding it against a strong light: della Prospettiua … delle Regole del Disegno. The concealed inscription consists of at least six lines of writing, which may be the draft of titles of books or headings of chapters.

The drawing and the notes are so untidy that they may be taken at first as the work of a different hand, but this untidiness appear often in the Codex Huygens. The drawing of a standing male figure shown in three views which merge one into the other pertains to the subject of ‘Transformation’ as treated in the Third Book of the Codex Huygens, while the subdivision of the figure into eight parts indicates the intention of including proportions as well. The principle of parallel projection is applied to the human figure in the same way as shown in the Codex Huygens, ff. 32 and 33. A note to it, much uncertain as a draft, is nonetheless sufficiently clear for its reference to the principle of taking the side view of the human body as containing the data necessary for the representation of back and front views. This principle is applied time and again in the section on perspective in the Codex Huygens, compare e.g. the draft entitled ‘Regola di cav[a]re la faccia et parte di dietro del corpo dal pro[filo]’ on f. 100b. The example of parallel projection in W. 12605 quoted by Panofsky as an original Leonardo may well be by the same author of the Codex Huygens. On the other hand, Leonardo was certainly acquainted with the system as adopted by Piero della Francesca and by such Milanese theoreticians as Foppa and Bramantino, and eventually by Dürer. This is shown by a sketch in W. 12603b, c. 1490. Codex Atlanticus 115 v-b, c. 1515 …, contains a light profile of a head projected into a three quarter view of the same head by means of parallel lines which had been drawn with a metal point on the recto of the sheet (f. 115 r-b) as an aid to construct a foreshortened circle. …

E. THE AUTHOR

The anonymous author of the codex has been tentatively identified with Aurelio Luini by Panofsky, Ambrogio Figino by Irma A. Richter, and Bernardino Campi by A. E. Popham.³⁹ It is probably useless to speculate on attributions based only on the style of the drawings. Indeed, the author's preference was in conformity with a tendency in the Milanese school which was undoubtedly inspired by the works of Mantegna at Mantua and Padua. It is a tendency which stresses the use of the worm's-eye point of view and bold foreshortenings in the compositions, and which can be followed through the works of Bramantino, Gaudenzio Ferrari, and eventually Giulio Romano at Mantua. After some reference in Cristoforo Sorte's treatise of 1580, explaining the system of Giulio Romano's foreshortenings, the theory is fully discussed by Lomazzo in 1584 as a codification already carried out by Bramantino. Leonardo must have contributed to it, but it is impossible to determine the nature and extent of his influence. The role of Francesco Melzi as the first disseminator of Leonardo's theories is still practically unknown, so that the identification of the author of the Codex Huygens would undoubtedly throw light on his activities. This person, according to Panofsky, should be sought amongst the Milanese painters who are not on record as authors of printed books but are known to have had theoretical interests, as well as special opportunities to see drawings by Leonardo. Since the identification with Aurelio Luini is proposed by Panofsky only as a working hypothesis, one is left with the alternative that Panofsky himself was prepared to accept of ascribing the Morgan manuscript to an entirely anonymous artist. My proposed identification with Girolamo Figino is based on a portrait included in Albuzzi's Memorie and inscribed: Girolamo Figino, Miniatore discepolo di Francesco Melzi, vivente nel 1562.⁴⁰

This is a line drawing designated as having been taken from a small self-portrait owned by Count Francesco Litta of Milan, the original of which, still unpublished, is to be found in the Brera Gallery at Milan.⁴¹ The original is a beautiful, highly finished drawing which shows how much intensity of expression is lost in the copy. … It is inscribed below: Jo Girolamo Figino M.D.LXII. The script is calligraphic and yet it can be identified with reasonable certainty with that of the notes in the large sheet at Oxford. … Compare also the inscription: ‘Prima figura del moto’ in Codex Huygens, f. 12. It is surprising how the ductus of the notes in the Codex Huygens may change, but there is no doubt that it is always the same person who writes, just as it is the same person who draws the sketchy figures on f. 32 preliminary to the carefully finished drawing on f. 33. In fact at times the writing of the notes in the Codex Huygens may approach the calligraphic composure of that of the Codex Urbinas.⁴² I have already stressed the evidence that both the Codex Urbinas and the Codex Huygens originated at about the same time and that their compilers must have worked together.⁴³ The handwriting of the Oxford sheet is somewhat in the nature of a missing link, in fact it is identical to that of a number of notes in Leonardo's MS. A and in the Codex Trivulzianus and Codex Atlanticus. Such notes reflect the early project of a compilation of Leonardo's Book on Painting, as well as a compilation of Leonardo's literary writings which, if it was actually carried out, has not come down to us.⁴⁴ As a pupil of Melzi, Girolamo Figino is now to be identified not only as the author of the Codex Huygens but also as Melzi's assistant in the compilation of the Codex Urbinas. His hand can be recognized as the so-called Manus 3, the editor who is suggesting revisions in the titles or occasional changes in the sequence of the chapters. His handwriting, as shown in the Oxford sheet and in the notes in the Leonardo manuscripts (e.g. MS. A, f. 28a: ‘del ritrar li nudi’, and Triv., f. 40b: ‘motto detto da un giouane a un uechio’) is really not much different from that of Melzi, the compiler of the Codex Urbinas. And in fact the handwriting of the inscription on the Brera drawing can almost be taken as that of the Codex Urbinas. But there is indisputable evidence of Melzi's handwriting (including a sample dated 1546) which leaves no doubt that the compilation of the Codex Urbinas is by Melzi.⁴⁵ Figino may be the author of the identification of the texts copied from Libro A and Libro B and other marginal notes, e.g. the one on f. 36a. And I am now inclined to recognize his hand in the collation notes in the Leonardo manuscripts. Compare the one in MS. G⁴⁶ with the notes in the Oxford sheet. The slanting form of the ‘g’ can be singled out as a characteristic that does not occur in Melzi's handwriting. Figino's rêle in the compilation of the Codex Urbinas is best shown by the addition ‘traenti al giallo’ (note again the form of the ‘g’) to the heading ‘De lumi delle foglie di uerdura’, at the bottom of f. 256a. Only afterwards, following up his suggestion, the compiler (that is, Melzi) added the missing part of the heading, which in fact comes to be an extra line in the page as compared to the lines in the facing page.⁴⁷

The identification of Girolamo Figino as the author of the Codex Huygens is confirmed by his notes on proportions as reported by Venusti in 1562 (the same year as Figino's self-portrait), which correspond exactly to the illustration in the large sheet at Oxford.⁴⁸ It is certainly ironic that one should know even his face and still know next to nothing about his life and activities.⁴⁹ His self-portrait shows that he must have been in his forties in 1562. He was certainly famous at his time (at least as famous as Ambrogio Figino, who was probably his relation), but he was soon to fall into oblivion. The sonnet that Lomazzo dedicates to him (Rime, 1587, p. 113) implies that he had much reputation amongst his contemporaries, and indicates a date, 1560, which is significantly close to that of the self-portrait:

                              di girolamo figino
Scrivea de la virtù che tale e tanta
          Splendea nel Figin nostro Milanese;
          Poi che non senze lode à molte imprese
          Attende, pinge, suona, e in lira canta:
Quando …
                    …
          Ciò fù nel anno mille cinquecento
          Sessanta: hor per gl'occhi mi lamento.

Lomazzo refers again to Girolamo on p. 423 of the Rime, mentioning him only by the curious and somewhat revealing nick-name ‘Fatuttonulla’ (‘He-does-everything-and-nothing’), a sort of affectionate scolding, which is not a derogatory remark but probably a way to point out how dangerous is to take the illustrious precedent of Leonardo as a model. There is no doubt that he writes about Figino: not only is the page number given in the index under Girolamo Figino, but the words are almost the same as in the preceding sonnet, except that Lomazzo changes the sentence ‘à molte imprese attende’ to ‘a molte imprese si caccia’, and specifies that he is writing the biography of Figino. He gives again the date 1560:

Nel anno mille cinquecent sessanta
          Alli diciotto del primiero mese
Fù, quando il sonno à cinque hore scortese
          Mi saltò in capo, doue ancor sen' vanta.
Ch'all'hor scriuea l'historia tutta quanta
          D'vn famoso e honorato Milanese,
          Detto il Fatuttonulla, che à più imprese
          Si caccia, pinge, scriue, e in lira canta.
Pe 'l qual doppo dormendo hebbi in visione
          Del gran palazzo del Duca Marino
          Ogni Architraue, fregio e cornigione.
Ma quando fu l'hora del Mattino,
          Mi risuegliai, vedendo la struttione
          Futura contra i detti di Pasquino.

Another reference to Figino in Lomazzo's Trattato (1584), p. 336, well applies to the author of the Codex Huygens. Girolamo is in fact mentioned for his proficiency in perspective, in that he is said to have produced anamorphical representations of horses according to a Leonardo precedent as reported by Melzi:

Con la medesima via riferi / Francesco Melzo che Leonardo fece vn Drago, che combatteua / con vn Leone, cosa molto mirabile à vedere, & parimenti i caualli che fece per donare à Francesco Valesio Rè di Francia; la qual'arte / fù molto intesa da Girolamo Ficino nell'esprimere i cavalli.

(Francesco Melzi reported that Leonardo with the same technique [i.e. anamorphosis] made a dragon shown as fighting a lion, a most admirable subject, as well as the horses which were to be presented to Francis I, King of France; this technique was well understood by Girolamo Figino in representing horses.)

Venusti mentions that Figino was also a poet. Three sonnets in a Miscellanea Maglibechi in the National Library at Florence are identified as being by a Girolamo Figino, but their date would suggest that in 1610 he was still alive.⁵⁰ Venusti also mentions that he was a medallist, and this is confirmed by a medal which reproduces Figino's profile (bust to left, bearded) with an inscription which bears again the date 1562: hieronimvs · figinvs · mdlxii.⁵¹ One may wonder how important a date this could have been in his life. According to L. Forrer,⁵² Girolamo Figino was mint-master at Rome in the second half of the sixteenth century. The source of this information is still unknown to me, but the information could be of great importance when taken in conjunction with Vasari's statement about a Milanese painter who went to visit him (sometime between 1550 and 1568) on his way to Rome, seeking a publisher for certain Leonardo writings that he was carrying along. Was he carrying only an original Leonardo manuscript or did he also have a compilation ready for the printer, perhaps an extract from the Codex Urbinas, that is, the abridged version of the Treatise on Painting? It is impossible to answer this question. But shortly afterwards copies of the abridged version of the Treatise on Painting began to appear in Florence. And not long afterwards Federico Zuccaro, who had spent much time in Rome, was to record the original Leonardo drawings of the Codex Huygens type.

Notes

1. G. Tiraboschi, Storia della letteratura italiana, Venice, 1796, Tomo VII, Part IV, p. 1641ff.

2. Libro A, pp. 140, 146. As a physician Giovio was in relation with Marco Antonio della Torre when the latter was associated with Leonardo. Cf. K. D. Keele, ‘Leonardo da Vinci's Influence on Renaissance Anatomy’, Medical History, VIII, 1964, p. 365.

3. G. Bossi, Del Cenacolo di Leonardo da Vinci, Milan, 1810, pp. 19-22.

4. Vol. I, pp. 2-3.

5. L. Goldscheider, pp. 28-29.

6. Beltrami, Documenti, no. 256.

7. As early as 1776 Count Giovan Battista Giovio referred to this Dialogue in his Discorso sopra la pittura, London, 1776, p. XLIX, as a manuscript in his library. All the Giovio texts pertaining to art are now given in Scritti d'arte del Cinquecento, ed. by Paola Barocchi, Tomo I, Milan-Naples, 1971, pp. 7-23. See also J. Schlosser Magnino, La letteratura artistica, Florence, 1956, p. 196: ‘L'antico modello è evidente. Precisamente come nel X libro della Retorica di Quintilliano ha tentato qui in un leggiadro e ricercato latino umanistico una breve esposizione dello stile dei maestri viventi e il confronto con lo stile letterarío.’

8. Giovan Francesco Melzi entered Leonardo's studio c. 1508, about seventeen years of age. His drawing in the Ambrosian Library, which is dated 1510, is inscribed as his first copy from a relief: ‘1510 adi 14 Augusto prima cauata de releuo.’ Cf. Libro A, pl. 13.

9. Giovio's Dialogue is evidence of Leonardo's admiration for the Antique, as confirmed by Leonardo's own statement in Piattino Piatti's epigram for the Sforza Monument (1489):

   Sum Florentinus Leonardus, Vincia proles:
   Mirator veterum discipulusque memor.

   The Classical principle of a common foundation for the styles of painting and literature, as suggested by Giovio, is indeed shared by Leonardo. Cf. W. 19021b (B. 4), c. 1506-8, given by MacCurdy, Anatomy: ‘This demonstration is as necessary for good draughtsmen as the derivation from Latin words is to good grammarians …’ See also K.³ 110b, c. 1506-7 (Richter, §657): ‘Men and words are actual, and you, painter, if you do not know how to execute your figures will be like an orator who does not know how to use his words.’

10. An echo of Leonardo's method of teaching is in Vasari's Introduction to the Lives (1550 and 1568). Cf. Vasari On Technique, pp. 209-210. It was in fact Giovio who suggested to Vasari to write the biographies of the artists. Leonardo must have had his studio equipped with didactic material of the kind suggested by Vasari, including plaster casts on which the much scorned activities of the seventeeth-century academies were based. As it was inherited by Melzi together with the manuscripts (compare Leonardo's Last Will, given in §1566), it must have been kept in the Villa at Vaprio as long as Melzi lived (c. 1570). Mazzenta's report of the dispersion of the Leonardo manuscripts after Melzi's death refers to the material that was originally part of the Leonardo studio: ‘… molti andarono dal medesimo dottore Melzi, e ne buscorno disegni, modelli, plastice, anatomie, con molte preziose reliquie del studio di Leonardo.’ Lomazzo, who was in direct contact with Melzi, writes in his Trattato, p. 160, that Leonardo ‘non meno seppe fare che insegnare.’

11. Leonardo and Perugino are mentioned as most promising and congenial youths in Giovanni Santi's Rhyming Chronicle as early as 1475. They appear together in the 1504 commission for the installation of Michelangelo's David, and, the same year, are both engaged by Isabella d'Este. They are mentioned again by Giovanni Battista Caporali in his commentary to Vitruvius (Perugia, 1536, f. 16a) for their proficiency in perspective, but Perugino is singled out as one who did not write any book. For Lodovico Sforza's attempt to summon Perugino to Milan from Venice in 1496 see Beltrami, Documenti, no. 70.

12. The original MS. had probably rogaret

13. Panofsky, Codex Huygens (see List of Abbreviations), p. 9.

14. Ibid., p. 11. The Codex Huygens was first discussed by M. W. M. Mensing, ‘De Leonardo's van Constantijn Huygens den Zoon’, Feestbundel Dr. Abrahm Bredius aangebooden, Amsterdam, 1915, pp. 186ff. This publication is not listed in Verga's Bibliografia Vinciana, nor in the year-books of the Raccolta Vinciana. This has undoubtedly contributed to what Panofsky calls ‘a little comedy of errors’, as the Leonardo scholars were not informed about the connection between the Morgan MS. and the codex described by Huygens in the letter reproduced by A. Favaro in Raccolta Vinciana, VIII, 1912-13, pp. 176ff. Cf. O. Kurz, ‘A Contribution to the History of the Leonardo Drawings’, Burlington Magazine, LXIX, 1936, pp. 135ff. See also Richter's account in Vol. II, p. 398, note 5.

15. Panofsky, Codex Huygens, p. 11.

16. E. Verga, Bibliografia Vinciana, Bologna, 1931, pp. 85-6.

17. Uzielli, Ricerche (1884), pp. 415-416, and 421.

18. Ibid., pp. 360-1. The drawings in the collection of Cardinal Valenti were caricatures identical to those reproduced by Count de Caylus. Cf. G. Bottari, Raccolta di lettere sulla pittura …, Rome, 1757, vol. II, p. 170. C. Amoretti, Memorie (1804), p. 169 (177), mistakes Cooper for Caylus: ‘Altri ne incise Cooper in nove tavole, per lo più relativi ai movimenti del corpo umano. Il sig. card. Silvio Valenti compronne poi gli originali, almeno in parte.’ The Valenti caricatures are probably those which are now in the Chatsworth collection. Amoretti's mistake is repeated by Rigollot, Catalogue de l'œuvre de Léonard de Vinci, Paris, 1849, p. xxxiv.

19. J. B. Venturi, Essai sur les ouvrages physicomathématiques de Léonard de Vinci …, Paris, 1797, p. 52: ‘Edw. Cooper grava vers 1720, en Angleterre, le fragment d'un Traité de Vinci sur les mouvemens du corps humain; et sur la manière de dessiner les figures suivant les règles géométriques. (Dix planches in-fol. y compris le frontispice).’

20. On December 15, 1807, Bossi wrote to Venturi as follows: ‘Mi avevate in altro tempo scritto che avevate fatto acquisto di molte stampe di Hollar. Sonvi fra queste delle cose leonardesche? Le cose sopra Leonardo del Conte di Caylus le avete? E quelle di Cooper?’ On May 4, 1808, Venturi replied to all the questions but the one concerning the Cooper engravings He says that ‘le stampe che cito nel mio Saggio, le ho vedute allora nel Gabinetto R. delle Stampe a Parigi’, but as he does not have at the moment his publication at hand he cannot remember which prints he had mentioned in it. See Raccolta Vinciana, XI, 1920-2, p. 233, and G. B. De Toni, G. B. Venturi e la sua opera Vinciana …, Rome, 1924, p. 224.

21. [J. P. Mariette] ‘Lettre sur Leonard de Vinci, peintre Florentin, a Monsieur le c.[omte] de C.[aylus]’ in Recueil de Testes de Caractère & de Charges dessinées par Léonard de Vinci …, Paris, 1730, p. 23. See also p. 10, note (c): ‘M. Cooper, Marchant d'Estampes à Londres, en a donné depuis quelques années un essay. Ce n'est qu'un fragment d'un plus grant ouvrage sur la mécanique du corps humain …’ Mariette's letter was translated in Italian in Bottari's Raccolta di lettere sulla pittura, cit., pp. 168-200.

22. F. Zuccaro, L'Idea de' pittori, scultori ed architetti …, Turin, 1607, p. 31. (Not in Verga's Bibliografia Vinciana. Reprinted in Bottari, op. cit., vol. VI, pp. 33-199; see p. 135.) I give the text direct from the first edition: ‘Parimente di poco frutto fu, e di poca sostanza, l'altra [regola] che lasciò disegnata con scritti alla rovescia altro pur valent'huomo di professione, ma troppo sofistico anch'egli, in lasciare precetti pur mathematici a muouere e torcere la figura, con linee perpendicolari, con squadra, e compassi: cose tutte d'ingegno si, ma fantastico, & senza frutto di sostanza: pur come altri se la intendino, ciascuno può a suo gusto operare. Diro bene che queste regole mathematiche si deuono lasciare a quelle sciēze, e professioni speculatiue della Geometria, Astrologia, Arithmetica, e simili, che con le proue loro acquietano l'intelletto: ma noi altri professori del Disegno non habb iamo bisogno di altre regole, che quelle che la natura stessa ne dà, per quella imitare’. Cf. Libro A, pp. 72, 241, 258.

23. Curiously enough, this second edition of Caylus' Recueil (Paris, Jombert, 1767) is not in Verga's Bibliografia Vinciana, but its title page is even reproduced in the volume Leonardo da Vinci, a cura della Mostra, Novara, 1939, p. 516. The passage is on pp. 14-15. A reprint of the second edition of Mariette's letter is in Abecedario de P. J. Mariette, ed. by P. de Chennevières and A. de Montaiglon, Paris, 1854-6, vol. III, pp. 139ff. Cf. K. T. Steinitz, P. J. Mariette, Los Angeles, 1974, pp. 14, 21.

24. Bottari, op. cit., p. 228.

25. Ibid., p. 266.

26. Ibid., p. 289.

27. Leonardo da Vinci, Trattato della Pittura, ed. by F. Fontani, Florence, 1792, p. xv, note 26. See also Bottari, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 179-80, note 4.

28. Cf. Windsor Catalogue, p. xiii, note 5.

29. As in the Codex Atlanticus, the double sheets would have been mounted with a portion hanging loose and folded back as a flap—hence the presence of a strip of mount across the middle of the double sheet. See my Romorantin Palace, illustration on p. 141.

30. Art Bulletin, XXIII, 1941, pp. 335-8

31. For an explanation of this system cf. Panofsky, Codex Huygens, pp. 51-4. Compare § 708 below, to which see note.

32. The problem is related to the subject of Libro A 108. Folio 74a is described but not reproduced by Panofsky, Codex Huygens, p. 55.

33. Pacioli, Divina proportione, Venice, 1509, fol. 1a. Cf. Uzielli, Ricerche (1884), p. 369.

34. Cf. Libro A 39, 85. See also notes to §§ 353 and 355 below.

35. As I specify in my comment (Libro A, p. 190) a date in the Sforza period is also possible on account of Pacioli's report referring to 1498. However, the concluding reference to the motion of the boat may be linked to Leonardo's extensive experiments in Piombino in 1504, as shown by Madrid MS. II. See also the text in W. 19106b given in note to § 1130 B below.

36. Cf. Lu 741 (McM 806) and my note to it in Libro A, p. 211.

37. B. Cellini, Discorso dell'architettura, published by J. Morelli, I codici manoscritti della Libreria Naniana, Venice, 1776, p. 155-9. See also Vol. II, p. 395 below.

38. Irma A. Richter suggests to compare Codex Huygens, ff. 93-7 with the Leonardo texts reproduced by Richter, §§ 86, 107, 108. The latter are the well known notes from MS. E, ff. 16a-b, which have been taken (J. White) as evidence of a system of ‘curvilinear perspective’ developed by Leonardo in the late period of his activity. For a different interpretation of these texts see my notes to the corresponding paragraphs.

39. A. E. Popham, ‘On a Book of Drawings by Ambrogio Figino’, Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, XX, 1958, p. 274, note 3.

    Panofsky, op. cit., p. 86, quickly rules out Bernardino Campi as a candidate on the ground that Campi in his short treatise Parere sopra la Pittura (1584) postulates the use of small wax models as an aid to the painter's compositions, a practice that the author of the Codex Huygens rejects. It should be mentioned, however, that at the end of Campi's treatise is a reproduction of side and front views of a human figure squared for proportion, which does not reflect the style of the illustrations of the Codex Huygens. Campi does not explain these figures but his Parere ends up with a reference to a section that was not included in the publication: ‘… ed il mio Parere della Misura è questa segnata qui dietro, osservando però, che le figure di Ercole, ed altri Eroi vogliono essere più piene, e le figure delle Donne vogliono avere le mani, e i piedi alquanto più piccoli, e le unghie lunghe’. Some relationship may therefore be detected between Campi's principles and those of the author of the Codex Huygens. But the handwriting of Bernardino Campi, which is very similar to that of the apograph of the Treatise on Painting at Bologna (Studi Vinciani, fig. 55), does not correspond to that of the Codex Huygens. Compare his letters dated 1588 and 1590 in the Piancastelli collection, Biblioteca Comunale, Forlì.

40. Cf. L'Arte, LV, 1956, p. 111, and illustration on p. 50. (In the editor's comment Girolamo is mistaken for Ambrogio Figino.) Albuzzi, who writes about 1775-6, does not reveal the source of his information about Figino having been a pupil of Melzi. For other pupils of Melzi see Lomazzo, Rime (1587), as excerpted in Raccolta Vinciana, XX, 1964, p. 374, note.

41. Metioned but not reproduced by G. A. Dell'Acqua, ‘Disegni inediti della R. Pinacoteca di Brera’, L'Arte, XL, 1937, pp. 138-9.

42. Copare Codex Huygens, f. 2, and especially f. 12 (Panofsky, pls. 2 and 7). See Libro A, pp. 90, and 263-4.

43. Se Libro A, pp. 104-5.

44. Se my article in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, XXXI, 1968, pp. 201-202 which includes (Appendix E) a list of the sixteenth-century notes in the Leonardo manuscripts. See also note to § 1565 below.

45. Libro A, pp. 260-4 and figs. on p. 262.

46. Reproduced in Libro A, pl. 16b. In my article quoted on p. 72 note 5 above, p. 200, I had already suggested that the word ‘Milano’ and the collation marks on the last sheet of the Codex Trivulzianus were probably by the same sixteenth-century hand.

47. Mcahon, note 7 on p. 312, does not explain the anomaly and states simply that the words ‘traenti al giallo’ (‘tending towards yellow’) have been added a second time, besides the first line of the heading.

48. See note to § 343 below.

49. He is praised as a painter and a miniaturist by P. Morigi, La nobiltà di Milano (col “supplemento” di G. Borsieri), Milan, 1619, p. 469. Cf. R. P. Ciardi, Giovan Ambrogio Figino, Florence, 1968, p. 44, note 6.

    There is no record of any of Figino's works as a painter, but the notes in the Codex Huygens are indirect evidence of his activity as such. It is also remarkable that the distinctive style of his drawings in the Codex Huygens should not find a parallel in drawings in other collections. I fear that the comparison proposed by Panofsky with drawings by Aurelio Luini is far from convincing. In the Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana at Los Angeles there is a sixteenth-century drawing after Leonardo's Last Supper which looks very close in style to the drawings in the Codex Huygens. Furthermore, the paper is of the identical size and quality as several sheets of the Morgan manuscript and like them is bordered by the remainder of a previous mount (cf. Windsor Catalogue, p. xiii, note 5). On the verso of the Belt sheet is a drawing of one of the Dioscuri of Monte Cavallo and a detail of a twisted column, both elements pointing to the presence of the anonymous author in Rome. There is some evidence that Girolamo Figino went to Rome. See note 40 below. A drawing of a Last Supper (not after Leonardo) in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge (no. 3015: Anonymous North Italian of the sixteenth century) may also be attributed to Girolamo Figino for its general character of style and for the particular expression of the faces, which have the same cadaverousness as the figures in the Codex Huygens (cf. f. 43a).

50. Cod. Magl. II. IV. 16, ff. 201b 203a. The first sonnet has the title: ‘Nella nascita feliciss.^a del Seren.^mo Principe di Parma 3. Alless.^o 2. Di Girol.^o Figini. 1610.’ The same sonnets are copied in another Miscellanea (Magl. VII. 345, ff. 449a-450b), but no date is given.

    A search undertaken in the Municipal archives at Milan has had no positive results, except for a document of June 23, 1553 (Archivio Storico, Castello Sforzesco, Famiglie, Cart. 659, no. 967), which is a brief notation about some transaction bearing the signature ‘Hier^o figino M[anu] p[ropria] affermo vts[upr]^a’. The handwriting does recall that of the Codex Huygens, but there is no certainty that the Figino of the document is the painter.

51. Cf. G. F. Hill, Portrait Medals of Italian Artists of the Renaissance, London, 1912, pp. 63-4, pl. XXVI, no. 43; and by the same author, The Gustave Dreyfus Collection. Renaissance Medals, London, 1931, pl. XXVIII, which includes a reproduction of the verso of the medal.

52. L. Forrer, Biographical Dictionary of Medallists, London, 1904, vol. II, p. 92. In 1560, the date of Lomazzo's sonnets, Figino was probably still in Milan. The date 1562 on his self-portrait as well as on the medal may be that of his journey to Rome, but his name does not appear in the documents published in such standard works as A. Bertolotti, Artisti Lombardi a Roma, Milan, 1881 (2 vols.) and E. Martinori, Annali della Zecca di Roma, Rome, 1917-18. Professor Eugenio Battisti kindly informs me that Lomazzo's unpublished manuscript I Sogni preserved in the British Museum does not contain the biography of Girolamo Figino. (The manuscript is now published in G. P. Lomazzo, Scritti sulle arti, ed. by Roberto Paolo Ciardi, Florence, 1973, Vol. I, pp. 1-270. See also Vol. II [Florence, 1974], p. 291, note 3, for the reference to Gerolamo Figino in Lomazzo's Trattato.)