The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions are as renowned as his paintings. We’re fortunate that he consistently kept a pen handy to record his ideas, filling thousands of pages with his insightful thoughts on a wide range of subjects, including nature, astronomy, painting, architecture, mathematics, the human body, and bird flight. Following are a few of the best original images from my collection of Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo’s drawing of a lung. On the right, he labels separate organs: spine, lung, diaphragm, spleen, stomach and liver. It is thought that his subject was a pig.

Fortunately for us, Leonardo da Vinci sought to understand the world by meticulously describing his observations in writing. His notebooks, or codices, showcase a brilliant blend of an artist’s eye and a scientist’s curiosity. One of his greatest passions was the miracle of flight. He created 500 sketches and wrote 35,000 words about how birds glide, using their wings and tail for balance. He envisioned flying machines without engines, where a human pilot controlled the flapping of the wings.

Many of Leonardo’s drawings delve into the concept of flight. On the left, there’s a sketch of a flying machine powered by a human. On the right, there’s a design for a propeller.

Nearly 400 years later, the Wright brothers made the first successful flight. They paid tribute to Leonardo’s vision, calling him “one of the greatest artists and engineers of all time.”

Scholars believe that Leonardo’s early life had a profound impact on his genius. Born in 1452 as the illegitimate son of a Florentine notary, Leonardo was largely self-educated. Recognizing his artistic talents, his father apprenticed him at the age of 15 to the painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. Verrocchio emphasized the importance of understanding human anatomy, leading Leonardo to become adept at drawing limbs, muscles, and other body parts. He was granted permission to dissect human corpses in Florence, Milan, and Rome, where he later resided. Leonardo’s notebooks contain over 240 detailed anatomical drawings and 13,000 words on the subject.

This drawing, widely believed to be a self-portrait of Leonardo, was created in red chalk. It is currently housed in Turin’s Royal Library and is rarely displayed due to its fragile condition. Fortunately, the chalk remains largely undisturbed in the places preserving the subject’s identity.

Leonardo’s studies of the fetus and an arm demonstrate his advanced understanding of the human body. He is credited as the first to accurately depict an embryo.

As Leonardo grew older, he devoted less time to painting and focused more on his “studies.” It is likely that he intended to publish his notes, as many of his observations on specific subjects are meticulously organized on single pages. Unfortunately, Leonardo passed away in 1519 at the age of 67, before his notebooks could be published. He willed them to his devoted follower (and possible lover), Francesco Melzi, who managed to compile Leonardo’s thoughts on painting into the Treatise on Painting, but did little else with the remaining notes. It wasn’t until over 200 years after Leonardo’s death that his notebooks gained public attention. Today, 7,000 pages are known to have survived, spread across 17 notebooks — about 20 percent of the material this Renaissance visionary produced. With one exception, these notebooks are housed in museums in Italy, Spain, France, and Britain. The only privately owned copy belongs to Bill Gates, who digitized some of its pages as a screen saver for his Microsoft operating system.

To me, Leonardo is more than a treasure; he is one of the great heroes in the history of human creativity.

Tyler Wall is the founder of Cyber NOW Education by night and works full time in the cybersecurity industry as his day job. He creates cybersecurity training material in his free time, often after feeling the need to shout what he’s just learned and also because a little bit of passive income never hurt anyone.

He holds bills for a Master of Science from Purdue University, and also CISSP, CCSK, CFSR, CEH, Sec+, Net+, A+ certifications

You can connect with him on LinkedIn.