Print by Leonardo da Vinci - Codex Atlanticus - Defense of the Walls - 1478-1519
Leonardo da Vinci - Codex Atlanticus - Defense of the Walls
Year: 1478-1519 - cm 43,5x64,5
Preserved at: Ambrosiana Library, Milan, Italy
The Codex Atlanticus it consists of 1,119 sheets dating back to a period ranging from 1478 to 1519 of various subjects, including studies of war machines, hydraulic pumps and engineering projects.
The Code was called "Atlantic"because of its size: when the sculptor Pompeo Leoni bound it in the sixteenth century, he glued Leonardo's original papers onto large format sheets"Atlantic", the one used to make geographic atlases.
With a deed of donation dated January 21, 1637, Galeazzo Arconati donated twelve manuscripts by Leonardo da Vinci to the Ambrosiana Library, founded by Federico Borromeo in 1609. The deed of donation reads: "The first is a large book, that is, thirteen ounces long from wood and nine and a half ounces wide, covered with red coramus stamped with two gold friezes with four eagle arms, and lions, and four flowers in cardboards both on one side and on the other outwardly, with gold letters of both sides, which say drawings of machines and secret arts, and other things by Leonardo da Vinci, collected by Pompeo Leoni, in the back there are seven gold flowers, with fourteen gold decorations, which book is of three hundred ninety-three sheets of real paper out of respect for the veneer, but there are other sheets six more than the veneer, so that they are sheets in tact num. 399 in which there are placed several papers of drawings at no. of a thousand seven hundred and fifty. "