Leonardo. Codices & Machines

One of the most fascinating aspects of the study of Leonardo today - and after all, it has always been so - is identified in all that in his codices refers to technology, that is to say to his work as an inventor. Carlo Starnazzi, renowned connoisseur of Leonardo, presents the models of some of the most interesting machines realized for the itinerant exhibition of the Michelangiolo Gallery of Via Cavour in Florence. For many years, the Gallery has been divulging in Italy and in the world the widest display of the vincian technological conceptions by means of models addressed to a public wider and wider, even though not always prepared to comprehend its complex historical and cultural context, of which it is nonetheless an eloquent document.
This volume is not only a guide to the exhibition, but the strongly divulging character of the text makes it an authentic instrument of consultation that carries out the purpose to bring new contributions to the study of Leonardo and his time through careful and appropriate updates.
The machines are actually presented by following a subdivision that differentiates them in four great typologies beginning with the civil machines (for example the wagon with differential gear, the goldbeater, the press for oil, the automaton or robot, the bearing with spheres). The catalogue continues with the machines for water (Archimedes's screw, life jacket, mobile bridge), with those for the flight (glider, parachute, flapping wing) to arrive then to the military machines (as is the case of the 'circumfolgore', of the bombard, of the naval cannon or of the mowing wagon with scythes). Each entry presents the image of the project as devised and drawn by Leonardo da Vinci and the model built on the basis of the vincian scheme.