Page 60 - PROTAGONIST 117

PROTAGONIST / CELEBRATIONS

day owned by Bill Gates, which Leonardo wrote mostly between
1504 and 1508. These were years of intense artistic and scientific
activity for Leonardo, between studies of anatomy, his dream of
making man fly, the aforementioned painting the Battle of Ang-
hiari, and his attempt to make the Arno navigable.

he celebrated codex is accompanied by other priceless sci-
entific-themed sheets by Leonardo, the Del Moto et Misu-
Tra dell’Acqua from the Vatican Apostolic Library, the Co-
dex on the Flight of Birds, on loan from the Royal Library of Tu-
rin, two precious bifogli of the Arundel Codex from the British Li-
brary, with reliefs of the course of the Arno in the Florentine tract,
where the analogies between the motion of the water and wind
movements are underlined, but above all, four spectacular sheets

} Among the many
ingenious
solutions identified
by Leonardo
for the propulsion
of a vessel with
rotating paddles,
the drawing
on sheet 945 of the
Atlantic Codex
is certainly one of the
most avant-garde

of the Atlantic Codex, the codex ‘par excellence’, exceptionally
lent by the Ambrosiana Library of Milan thanks to the also-in-this-
case-all-Florentine commitment of the entrepreneur Stefano Ric-
ci. “The exhibition of Leonardo’s Leicester Codex and of the oth-
er priceless drawings and writings of the genius from Vinci,” ob-
serves Schmidt, “demonstrates our commitment to making very
complex themes of scientific research accessible, and to contex-
tualising fundamental episodes of the history of science in a com-
pletely contemporary perspective. It is a journey that offers an in-
triguing vision of the unheard vastness of the horizons explored
by Leonardo’s mind. A mind striving to grasp the most complex
challenges and to question the conclusions established by the
most accredited authors of tradition. It was compiled during the
most creative phase of his existence, in the heart of the Florence
that was then, as Benvenuto Cellini said, a genuine ‘School of
the world’. And which, thanks to those mere 50 kilometres that
separate it from Vinci, returns today to the centre of the world. VENERANDA BIBLIOTECA AMBROSIANA

Above, the Gallerie degli Uffizi in Florence seen from the outside. MONDADORI PORTFOLIO
Adjoining page, the drawing of a paddle-boat from Leonardo’s
Atlantic Codex, kept in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan since 1637.

60 PROTAGONIST / N. 117

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