Leonardo Da Vinci’s To-Do Listing from 1490: The Plan of a Renaissance Man

Most individuals’s to-do lists are, virtually by def­i­n­i­tion, pret­ty boring, full of these quo­tid­i­an lit­tle duties that have a tendency to slide out of our minds. Decide up the laun­dry. Get that factor for the child. Purchase milk, canned yams and kumquats on the native mar­ket.

Leonar­do Da Vin­ci was, how­ev­er, no ordi­nary per­son. And his to-do lists have been any­factor however boring.

Da Vin­ci would automobile­ry round a observe­ebook, the place he would write and draw any­factor that moved him. “It’s use­ful,” Leonar­do as soon as wrote, to “con­stant­ly observe, observe, and con­sid­er.” Buried in certainly one of these books, dat­ing again to across the 1490s, is a to-do listing. And what a to-do listing.

NPR’s Robert Krul­wich had it direct­ly trans­lat­ed. And whereas all the listing won’t be imme­di­ate­ly clear, remem­ber that Da Vin­ci nev­er intend­ed for it to be learn by internet surfers 500  years sooner or later.

[Cal­cu­late] the mea­certain­ment of Milan and Sub­urbs

[Find] a ebook that treats of Milan and its church­es, which is available on the stationer’s on the best way to Cor­du­sio

[Dis­cov­er] the mea­certain­ment of Corte Vec­chio (the court docket­yard within the duke’s palace).

[Dis­cov­er] the mea­certain­ment of the castel­lo (the duke’s palace itself)

Get the mas­ter of arith­metic to point out you how you can sq. a tri­an­gle.

Get Mess­er Fazio (a professional­fes­sor of med­i­cine and legislation in Pavia) to point out you about professional­por­tion.

Get the Brera Fri­ar (on the Bene­dic­tine Monastery to Milan) to point out you De Pon­deribus (a medieval textual content on mechan­ics)

[Talk to] Gian­ni­no, the Bom­bardier, re. the means by which the tow­er of Fer­rara is walled with­out loop­holes (nobody actual­ly is aware of what Da Vin­ci meant by this)

Ask Benedet­to Poti­nari (A Flo­ren­tine Mer­chant) by what means they go on ice in Flan­ders

Draw Milan

Ask Mae­stro Anto­nio how mor­tars are posi­tioned on bas­tions by day or night time.

[Exam­ine] the Cross­bow of Mas­tro Gian­web­to

Discover a mas­ter of hydraulics and get him to let you know how you can restore a lock, canal and mill within the Lom­bard man­ner

[Ask about] the mea­certain­ment of the solar promised me by Mae­stro Gio­van­ni Francese

Attempt to get Vitolone (the medieval writer of a textual content on optics), which is within the Library at Pavia, which offers with the mathematics­e­mat­ic.

You may simply really feel Da Vinci’s vora­cious curios­i­ty and intel­lec­tu­al relaxation­much less­ness. Be aware how most of the entries are about get­ting an skilled to show him some­factor, be it math­e­mat­ics, physics or astron­o­my. Additionally who casu­al­ly lists “draw Milan” as an ambi­tion?

Lat­er to-do lists, dat­ing round 1510, appeared to deal with Da Vinci’s develop­ing fas­ci­na­tion with anato­my. In a observe­ebook full of beau­ti­ful­ly ren­dered draw­ings of bones and vis­cera, he rat­tles off extra duties that must get carried out. Issues like get a cranium, describe the jaw of a croc­o­dile and tongue of a wooden­peck­er, assess a corpse utilizing his fin­ger as a unit of mea­certain­ment.

On that very same web page, he lists what he con­sid­ers to be impor­tant qual­i­ties of an anatom­i­cal draughts­man. A agency com­mand of per­spec­tive and a knowl­fringe of the inside work­ings of the physique are key. So is hav­ing a powerful stom­ach.

You may see a web page of Da Vinci’s observe­ebook above however be warned. Even in case you are con­ver­sant in sixteenth cen­tu­ry Ital­ian, Da Vin­ci wrote each­factor in mir­ror script.

Be aware: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this put up appeared on our website in Decem­ber, 2014.

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