The Santini Codex, a fifteenth century illustrated manuscript of machines, has been acquired by the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche and has returned to its first dwelling, the Ducal Palace in Urbino. It’s the solely manuscript from the gathering first amassed by the good Renaissance humanist and navy chief Federico III da Montefeltro (1422-1482) to flee the looting of the library by Pope Alexander VII in 1657, the codex was welcomed again final week by the librarians of the Ducal Palace.
The manuscript has 136 pages of drawings and diagrams of navy and civilian machines:
- 51 winches, cranes, column lifts, pile drivers
- 29 hydraulic pumps, mills, wells, fountains, siphons
- 23 siege and protection machines, together with battering rams, catapults, movable bridges, amphibian autos
- 11 transport and work carts
- 9 vessels and programs for crossing waterways, together with ships and moveable bridges
7 instruments and utensils, together with pliers and drills- 4 trusses, brackets, picket grafts
- 2 detection programs for tunnel excavations
- 1 alarm clock
The pages are made from high-quality, thick parchment with marked shade variations between the flesh aspect and the hair aspect of the web page. It’s the solely machine codex of the interval that also retains its unique leather-based binding. The standard of the craftsmanship, parchment and binding are so excessive that it’s probably the e-book was a customized creation commissioned for the ducal library, or a really costly present.
Its writer and date have lengthy been topic of scholarly debate. It was definitely made by somebody within the circle of machine engineer Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1501) within the late 1400s or early 1500s. Thirty of the designs are copied from Martini’s Opusculum de architectura (ca. 1475), a watershed of Renaissance engineering that the writer devoted to his patron, Duke Federico da Montefeltro.
The Santini Codex entered the gathering of the dukes of Urbino after 1498 and final seems listed on the stock of the Montefeltro and Della Rovere dukes in 1632. Nevertheless, in that 1632 stock, the phrase “manca” (“lacking”) is written subsequent to the Santini Codex entry, which suggests the record was copied from an earlier iteration and that in 1632, the librarian checking the stock had been unable to search out the quantity. The way it disappeared and the place it went is unknown, but it surely didn’t go far. The Codex was handed down by within the noble households of Pesaro and Urbino for generations till in 2024, the homeowners, scions of the De Pretis household of Urbino, determined to promote it.
It went below the hammer in Milan on February 27, 2024, with a hefty presale estimate of €380,000 – 450,000 ($398,000-472,000). The Ministry of Tradition funded the museum’s profitable bid.
