Leonardo’s human anatomy notebooks, 15th C

Vitruvian Man

Fetus and womb, ca.1510

Female genito-urinary system

 

As I'm staying this week in Florence -the key city on the Renaissance- I couldn't avoid to write a post about Leonardo Da Vinci: His earliest studies recorded were of topographical anatomy carried out in Milan starting around 1485. A decade later he returned to the subject, having access to cadavers at the Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, where it appears he collaborated with the young anatomist Marcantonio della Torre. His final period, at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Rome, started in 1513 only to be cut short by papal decree three years later.

Leonardo was an Aristotelian, and later a Galenist, and the accuracy of his anatomical sketches vary widely. Some are clearly direct observations: e. g., he was the first to draw the coronary arteries. Others were based on animal anatomy. 

Excellent photos of this post were taken by Luc Viatour from the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the Basilique de Koekelberg in September 2007. More photos of the exhibition (link provided)

For sure this will not be the last post about the Great Leonardo in facsimilium... 

De re militari (15th Century)

Armored ship

Roberto Valturio (Rimini, Italy, 1405-1475), author, dedicated this military treatise to his Patron and Condottiero, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta - popularly known as the “Wolf of Rimini”- and considered by his contemporaries as one of the most daring military leaders in Italy. Malatesta commanded Venetia military forces against the Ottonian Imperium. When the treatise was finished by Valturio, around 1465, Malatesta distributed copies to European and relevant rulers like Louis XI, Francesco Sforza, Lorenzo de Medici, etc. The codex served as compilation for war recommendable strategies, some of them really new and ingenious, like a draft for a four propellers submarine boat (first submarine designs were engineered more than 200 years later) or an inflatable device to avoid a soldier get sink when crossing defensive inundated pits. Valturio’s submarine proposal, on 15th Century, was probably the most striking drawing of this fascinating codex for me.

Only twenty-two handwritten copies survive to our days. Leonardo da Vinci was the owner of one manuscript, and based some of his drawings about military technology on this codex.

Over wheels attack "dragon-tower" equiped with canyons, based on trojan horse design

Combat wagon

four propeller submarine boat designed by Roberto Valturio

inflatable device to avoid a soldier get sink when crossing defensive inundated pits