The scientific study of the mechanics of flight begins with Leonardo’s investigations on birds, undertaken during his attempts to build a flying machine. At the time of publication Sabachnikoff owned the manuscript. After publishing this facsimile he donated the original to Umberto I, who turned it over to the Royal Library of Torino. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Includes folios A & B of his anatomical MSS. Text in French and Italian.

Leonardo, “the greatest artist and scientist of the Italian Renaissance, was the founder of iconographic and physiologic anatomy” (Garrison). He made over 750 sketches of all the principal organs of the body, drawings which were adequately reproduced only in recent times. His notes accompanying the drawings are in mirror-writing. Text in Italian, English, and German.

For more about Leonardo's anatomical work see a short essay I wrote on HistoryofInformation.com at this link.

2nd edition, 1956 (reprinted London, Cape, 1977).

Includes 215 plates.

Splendid edition reproducing all of the drawings in color, and with the original chronology and integrity of the drawings restored. Text provides transliteration of Leonardo’s notes in the original Italian plus English translation, commentary, etc. Combines material previously published less elegantly and accurately in Nos. 364 & 365. For a scientific analysis of Leonardo’s medical writings see K.D. Keele’s Leonardo da Vinci’s elements of the science of man, New York, Academic Press, 1983. For Leonardo’s contributions to neuroanatomy see E.M. Todd, The neuroanatomy of Leonardo da Vinci, Santa Barbara, Capra Press, [1983]. For his work on vision see D.S. Strong, Leonardo on the eye, An English translation and critical commentary on Ms. D. in the Bibliothèque Nationale… New York, Garland, 1979.

For more information on Leonardo's anatomical work see a short essay that I wrote on HistoryofInformation.com at this link.