Leonardo’s ‘Codex Atlanticus’ Is Complete for the First Time in 400 Years
The Galileo Museum’s Leonardotheka 2.0 reunites the artist’s landmark manuscript with the 550 pages a 16th-century sculptor cut from it.
A 400-year-old act of editorial vandalism has finally been undone online. Florence’s Galileo Museum has reunited Leonardo da Vinci‘s Codex Atlanticus with more than 500 pages that were later cut from it, restoring for the first time the full sweep of the master’s largest surviving notebook.
Today, the museum launched Leonardotheka 2.0, adding the 550-odd pages Italian sculptor Pompeo Leoni excised from the Codex Atlanticusin the late 16th century—now owned by the U.K.’s Royal Collection Trust—to the 1,119-page tome held by Milan’s Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana.
Leonardo’s Codex Atlanticus is the largest of over a dozen codices containing the thousands of pages of notes he made. Its contents, produced between the 1470s and Leonardo’s death in 1519, include some of the artist-engineer’s best-known inventions, like his flying machine and his harpsichord-viola.