Leonardo and Lucretius.pdf

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Marco Beretta

Leonardo and Lucretius *

E se lui [il poeta] parla de cieli, egli si fa astrologo e filosofo e teologo parlando delle cose di natura o di dio. Leonardo, Quaderni di anatomia, fol. 197v

Context and Text

the study and identification of the sources used by Leonardo da Vinci has always posed a difficult problem. the rare and tantalizingly vague references by the artist to the works he had read, his highly original style, and the complex re-lationship between the written word and its graphic representation in his oeuvre prompted scholars beginning in the second half of the 19th century to construct an image of Leonardo as the self-taught universal genius. this historiographic approach (which in italy had distinct nationalist connotations) was challenged at the beginning of the twentieth century by Pierre duhem who, in tudes sur Leo nard de Vinci,1 suggested that medieval authors may have provided the source for theories and notions that had up to then been considered the fruit of the art-ists prescient genius. in addition to its philological contribution, the tudes pro-foundly influenced subsequent studies on Leonardos sources, leading to a di-vergence between scholars who, like duhem, believed in the composite nature of the artists formation and others who maintained that in his studies of natural history Leonardo relied primarily on his own creative genius.

to this dilemma must be added another. By insisting on the importance of

* in the majority of cases, my citations from the works of Leonardo have been drawn from the fac simile editions published by Giunti editore. Where i have not been able to identify the original source, i have used either the anthology compiled by richter, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, compiled and edited from the original manuscripts by J. P. richter, commentary by c. Pedretti, 2 vols., oxford 1977, hereafter cited as Richter and fol-lowed by the volume and paragraph number, or the anthology by solmi (Leonardo da Vin-ci, Frammenti letterari e filosofici, a cura di e. soLMi, Firenze 1979). For the citations of Lu-cretius, unless otherwise indicated, i have used titi Lucretii cari De rerum natura libri sex, edited with Prolegomena, critical apparatus, translation, and commentary by c. BaiLey, 3 vols., oxford 1947. i would like to thank andrea Bernardoni, stefano casati, Francesco cit-ti, Paolo Galluzzi, ivan Garofalo, domenico Laurenza, daniela Majerna and carlo Pedretti for their invaluable suggestions.

1 P. duheM, tudes sur Leonard de Vinci: ceux quil a lus et ceux qui lont lu, 3 vols., Pa-ris 1906-1913.

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medieval sources in Leonardos scientific formation, duhem called into question the very assumption that the tuscan artist had participated in the renaissance and contributed to its break with tradition. the hypothesis that, for some think-ers in Florence during the cultural ferment that marked the second half of the Quattrocento, medieval sources could have exerted a greater appeal and been more accessible than the classical authors might appear quite singular today, but in fact for decades after the publication of duhems work some scholars contin-ued to argue that medieval culture would have been more consonant with the thought system of an intellectual who, due to the limits of his formation, was not able to participate fully in the humanist recovery of the classics.

the important discovery by Ladislao reti of an extensive list of books be-longing to Leonardo, dating to 1503-1504, has not helped to resolve this ques-tion, although it does furnish valuable clues regarding the artists studies that in my opinion deserve further investigation.2

aware of the difficulties that may be encountered in any research on sources, in this examination of the ties between Leonardo and Lucretius i have adopted an approach that is intended to circumvent at least some of the obstacles men-tioned above. While i have sought to identify the significant correspondences between passages written by the two, it seemed to me necessary first and fore-most to demonstrate that Lucretius was such a well-known author in the circles frequented by Leonardo in Florence and Pavia that it would have been difficult, if not impossible, for the artist to have remained unaware of the discussions of certain themes that had been sparked by the diffusion of the poem. therefore, the historical and intellectual context in which Leonardo moved will form the basis here for an interpretation of the text.

Lucretius in Florence

the period in which Leonardo conducted his work as an artist and scien-tist coincided with the rediscovery of Lucretius and various aspects of the natu-ral philosophy of epicureanism. although the text of De rerum natura had been circulating for some time in manuscript form, the editio princeps was only print-ed in 1473 in Brescia and, judging from the great rarity of the edition, in very few copies.3 other editions followed in Verona (1486) and Venice (1495), cul-

2 L. reti, The Two Unpublished Manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci in the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid, the Burlington Magazine, cX, 1968, pp. 81-91.

3 the publication date coincides with that of the first known work by Leonardo, a view of the arno valley conserved in the Galleria degli uffizi. on the circulation of printed editions of Lucretius, see a. c. Gordon, A Bibliography of Lucretius, introduction and notes by e. J. Kenney, 2nd ed., London 1985, and M. Beretta, Gli scienziati e ledizione del de rerum natura, in Lucrezio, la natura e la scienza, a cura di M. Beretta e F. citti, Firenze 2008, pp. 177-224.

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minating in 1500 with the first of two by the Venetian printer aldus Manutius, this one edited by Geronimo avancio. the first commented edition, by Giovan Battista Pio, was published in Bologna in 1511.4 it was followed one year later by an edition printed in Florence by Filippo Giunta that thanks primarily to the scrupulous work of Michele Marullo offered readers a text purged of nu-merous errors. the editor, Pier candido, dedicated his work to tommaso so-derini, a Florentine statesman who knew Machiavelli well 5 and was a great ad-mirer of Leonardo. eight years earlier, in 1504, the Florentine mathematician raffaele Francus had dedicated In Lucretium paraphrasis cum appendicem de animi immortalitatem 6 to soderini (Fig. 1). this treatise was published in Bologna by Giovanni antonio Benedetti, the father of Girolamo Benedetti, who was the printer responsible for the 1511 edition of De rerum natura by Giovan Battista Pio, as well as numerous other scientific texts.

in the annals of italian typography, the Lucretian revival concluded in 1515 with the second edition of De rerum natura printed by aldus Manutius, this one edited by andrea navagero. two years before the death of Leonardo, during a synod held in Florence in 1517 after the Fifth Lateran council, the church for-mally banned the study of Lucretius in schools.7 although this measure was less restrictive than those applying to works considered to be heretical, De rerum natura would not be published again in italy until 1647, in an edition prepared by Giovanni nardi, physician to Ferdinando ii de Medici.

no attempts to translate the text of Lucretius are known of before 1530, when the erudite scholar Gianfrancesco Muscettola of naples apparently under-took to complete one without, however, ever having it published.8

4 In Carum Lucretium poetam Commentarii a Joanne Baptista Pio editi, codice Lucretiano diligenter emendato, Bononiae, typis excussoriis editum in ergasterio Hieronymi Baptistae de Benedictis Platonici, Bononiensis anno domini MdXi [1511], kal. Maii. a second version of this edition appeared in Paris in 1514.

5 s. BerteLLi, Machiavelli and Soderini, renaissance Quarterly, XXViii, 1975, pp. 1-16.6 on this very rare work and its author see u. Pizzani, Dimensione cristiana dellUma

nesimo e messaggio lucreziano: la Paraphrasis in Lucretium di Raphael Francus, in Valdit perenne dellUmanesimo, a cura di G. tarugi, Firenze 1986, pp. 313-333.

7 Sacrorum Conciliorum. Nova et amplissima collectio, ed. G. d. Mansi, XXXV, Paris 1902, p. 270.

8 una traduzione di Lucrezio in versi sciolti avea intrapresa Gianfrancesco Muscettola, lodata in una sua lettera dal Minturno (Min. Lett. i. 5, lett. 7), che sol ne riprende il troppo saper di latino. Ma ella non venne a luce; G. tiraBoschi, Storia della letteratura Italiana, Ve-nezia, Giuseppe antonelli, 1824, Vii, p. 1797. of Muscettola we only know that he was orig-inally from naples, and according to a contemporary, had shown himself to be un uomo di belle lettere, ma di pronto e mordace ingegno, a. castaLdo, Dellistoria di notar Antonino Castaldo: libri quattro nei quali si descrivono gli avvenimenti pi memorabili succeduti nel Regno di Napoli sotto il governo del vicere Pietro di Toledo e de vicere suoi successori fino al cardinal Granvela, napoli, Giovanni Gravier, 1769, p. 71. this translation of Lucretius seems therefore to have originated in the intellectual circles of naples.

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Fig. 1. Fol. 5 recto of Francus work on Lucretius with the illuminated letter. Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, Postillati 111.


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Between 1437 the year of the death of niccol de niccoli 9 and the open-ing years of the sixteenth century, the influence of Lucretius made itself felt with particular force in Florence.10 De rerum natura was discovered by Poggio Brac-ciolini in 1417 and disseminated together with a Latin translation (commissioned toward the end of the 1430s by cosimo de Medici from ambrogio traversari) of diogenes Laertius biographical work on the philosophers of antiquity. Lucretius attracted the attention of the most prominent humanists in the tuscan capital and, with the protection of powerful members of the Medici family, scholars were able to pursue their studies of the poem despite the measures taken by the ecclesiasti-cal authorities, which were probably designed to block the dissemination of a work that was perceived to pose a serious threat to the cultural establishment.11 after all just a few years earlier, in 1494, Marcello adriani (who was appointed to the chair of poetry at the university in Florence after the death of angelo Poliziano) had publicly defended for the first time in early modern history Lucretius atomic theory of the universe, his vision of progress and civilization as presented in Book V, and his determined campaign against astrology and superstition.12

some decades earlier Florentine humanists scrupulously avoided endorsing the tenets of a poem that inspired the greatest admiration, but was considered so dangerous that it could only be read from a prudently critical position. em-bracing the atomic theory of epicurianism meant rejecting the notion that a di-vine act was responsible for the creation of the universe and negating the exist-ence of a beneficent Providence and, therefore, a vision of nature with man at its centre. Lucretius poem delineated an infinitely large cosmos made up of a countless number of worlds that were all destined to pass away and envisaged

9 in 1418 Poggio Bracciolini entrusted the manuscript that he had discovered in Ger-many the year before to the humanist niccolo de nicoli; the latter conserved this work until his death and during this period no copies were made for circulation. on the history of the manuscript copies of Lucretius in Florence and italy, see the study by M. d. reeVe, The Italian Tradition of Lucretius, italia Medioevale e umanistica, XXiii, 1980, pp. 27-48.

10 concerning the diffusion of the works of Lucretius in Florence during the renaissance, see the noteworthy contribution of a. Brown, Lucretius and the Epicureans in the Social and Political Context of Renaissance Florence, i tatti studies. essays in the renaissance, iX, 2001, pp. 11-62. Brown links the interest of Florentine intellectuals in Lucretius to their debates on the immortality of the soul and the evolution of primitive man rather than to any interest in scientific themes. Brown has now expanded the contents of the above mentioned essay in her recent book, The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence, cambridge, Masschusetts, 2010. in addition, see the doctoral thesis of c. P. Goddard, Epicureanism in the Poetry of Lucretius in the Renaissance, cambridge 1991, and the recent study by s. G. Longo, Savoir de la nature et poesie des choses: Lucrce et picure la Renaissance italienne, Paris 2004.

11 that the timing of these restrictive measures was not coincidental had already been noted by d. cantiMori, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento, Firenze 1939, pp. 10-12.

12 on adriani and the substance of his lectures, cf. a. Brown, Reinterpreting Renaissance Humanism: Marcello Adriani and the Recovery of Lucretius, in Interpretations of Renaissance Humanism, ed. by a. Mazzocco, Leiden-Boston 2006, pp. 267-291.

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a material substrate made up of atomic particles moving eternally in a vacuum, with no destination and above all with no predictable trajectory. in such a uni-verse, man could not claim a role different from that of the other natural enti-ties and, being composed of atoms, he was destined to suffer the same attrition that all molecular aggregates were subject to. therefore, even the soul was mor-tal and the gods were powerless to oppose the autonomy of a force that Lucre-tius was the first to give a name to the machina mundi.

in 1475, upon returning to Florence after a sojourn in naples where he had frequented the circle of Giovanni Pontano and antonio Panormita and been in-troduced to De rerum natura, Lorenzo Bonincontri wrote two didactic poems De rerum Naturalium et Divinarum and De rebus Coelestibus. it should come as no surprise that, while these works are filled with imitations of Lucretius, the tuscan astronomer was highly critical of the atomist theory and epicurus philosophy of nature.13 the first poem in particular contains an attack on atomism and its per-nicious doctrine regarding the mortality of the soul. all the same, Bonincontri in-corporates themes that are treated in De rerum natura, such as the plague and the theory of contagion, the origins of man, and how to reconcile a belief in astrolo-gy with the notion of free will. in this way he introduced radically new ideas into the discussions of the period not only on the ontological foundations of morali-ty, but also as was consonant with his scientific interests 14 the study of natu-ral philosophy. indeed, Bonincontri utilized such terms as machina mundi, semina and primoridia rerum, which in the space of a few decades would be adopted with much greater conviction and force by other renaissance naturalists.

not even the most authoritative Florentine humanist of the period, Marsilio Ficino, was immune to the charms of De rerum natura, which contained themes that were as new as they were insidious. He even wrote a philosophical comment on the poem, but his distaste for epicurean materialism and for atheists, whom he referred to by the epithet Lucretians, prompted him to consign this work to the flames.15 afterwards, however, in De voluptate he would borrow not a few of Lucretius arguments in defence of earthly happiness. noting that Ficino should not be viewed as a dogmatic Platonist unwilling to make concessions to other philosophies, Garin justly underlined that the kinship between divina voluptas

13 on these two poems, in addition to the dissertation of Goddard and the recent edition of De rebus naturalibus et divinis (De rebus naturalibus et divinis: zwei Lehrgedichte an Lorenzo de Medici und Ferdinand von Aragonien Laurentius Bonincontrius Miniatensis; Einleitung und kritische Edition von Stephan Heilen, Leipzig 1999), see the study by P. ruffo, Lorenzo Bonincontri e alcuni suoi scritti ignorati, rinascimento, ii s., V, 1965, pp. 171-194.

14 Bonincontri had studied astronomy in Pisa.15 in a letter written in 1492 Ficino declared: adeo ut neque commentariolis in Lucre-

tium meis quae puer adhuc nescio commentabar deinde perceperim, haec enim sicut et Pla-to tragoedias elegiasque suas Vulcano dedi; cit. in P. o. KristeLLer, Supplementum Ficinianum, i, Firenze 1937, p. 163.


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and universal love, between Venus Genetrix and the life force of the world, is closer than might seem at first glance 16 and that the ideas of Lucretius bol-stered a new vision of the world, making its influence felt even in philosophi-cal circles that were apparently poles apart from the epicurean credo.

one example was the scholar and poet angelo Poliziano, who officially sup-ported a philosophical faith completely opposed to the position of epicurus, but was moved to such admiration by De rerum natura that he imitated its style in various works, including Rusticus,17 Giostre,18 and above all Sylva in scabiem, his last composition. this remarkable work was discovered by Kristeller in the Bib-lioteca Palatina of Parma and published for the first time by Perosa in 1954.19 its theme was the ravages of a contagious disease, whose symptoms and path-ological evolution Poliziano describes in fascinating detail, using the epicurean theory of semina mundi i.e., atoms that were endowed with different natures and configurations to explain its effects.20 according to erwin Panofsky, Bot-ticellis famous painting Primavera which was probably commissioned for the wedding of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici celebrated on the 18th of July 1482 depicts a passage from the fifth book of De rerum natura (V, 736-745),21 and it seems to have been Poliziano who transmitted to the artist his enthusi-asm for the Lucretian vision of the nature. an episode recounted in Vite allows

16 e. Garin, Ricerche sullepicureismo del Quattrocento, in id., La cultura filosofica del Rinascimento Italiano, Firenze 1992, p. 85.

17 a. PoLiziano, Rusticus (1483), 210-221. in nutricia, the last book of Sylvae, Polizia-no considers themes from Books V and Vi of DRN, in particular Lucretius thesis regarding the evolution of primitive man.

18 a. PoLiziano, Le stanze, lOrfeo e le rime, a cura di G. carducci, Firenze, G. Barbra, 1863, pp. 33 and 68. on this, see c. storey, The Philosopher, the Poet, and the Fragment: Ficino, Poliziano, and Le stanze per la giostra, the Modern Language review, XcViii, 2003, pp. 602-619.

19 g. deL guerra, Uno sconosciuto carme sulla lue di Angelo Poliziano, Pisa 1960. the poem has recently been published in a version edited by Paolo orvieto who, among other things, challenges the thesis that the disease described by Poliziano was syphilis: a. PoLizia-no, Sylva in Scabiem, roma 1989.

20 cf. M. Beretta, The Revival of Lucretian Atomism and Contagious Diseases during the Renaissance, Medicina nei secoli. arte e scienza, XV, 2003, pp. 129-154.

21 the scenario of both compositions [Primavera and the Birth of Venus] is largely determined by the ecphrases found in Politians Giostra, a poem written in celebration of a famous tournament held by Giuliano de Medici in 1475, left unfinished when Giuliano was murdered in 1478, and replete with classical reminiscences ranging from the Homeric Hymns to ovid, Horace, tibullus, and, above all, Lucretius; e. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, stockholm 1960, pp. 192-193, and 199. even more convincing are the studies by c. deMpsey, The Sources of Botticellis Primavera, Journal of the Warburg and courtauld institutes, XXXi, 1968, pp. 251-273, and Brown, Lucretius and the Epicureans, cit. For a more ample discussion of the context of the painting, one may also consult the stu-dy of M. LeVi dancona, Botticellis Primavera. A Botanical Interpretation Including Astrology, Alchemy and the Medici, Firenze 1983.

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us to infer that Botticelli had a direct knowledge of the epicurean doctrine of the mortality of the soul, thus demonstrating how widespread the influence of De rerum natura was even among those who, like the Florentine painter, lacked a humanist background.22 Given the friendly ties that existed between Leonar-do and Botticelli,23 the testimony of Vasari is worth noting.

another artist who enjoyed even closer ties of friendship with Leonardo was Piero di cosimo, the eccentric painter who, between the late 1480s and the first years of the 1500s, completed a series of paintings for various patricians and merchants on the history of the human race, many of them focusing on its primitive phases. it was once again Panofsky who noted that those works con-tain explicit references to the problematic vision of progress delineated by Lu-cretius and Vitruvius.24

although he was never employed by the Medici family, Piero di cosimo did work for Giovanni Vespucci, whose family (including amerigo) was linked to Leonardo by bonds of friendship. Giorgio Vasari provides a vivid sketch of Pie-ro in this passage from Vite:

the strangeness of his mind and his endless search for difficult things was known even then. and so this he demonstrated even more clearly after the death of cosimo, for he would continually stay shut up and allow no one to see him work, living life as a man who was more a beast than human. He did not wish

22 it is also related that sandro, for a jest, accused a friend of his own of heresy before his vicar, and the friend, on appearing, asked who the accuser was and what the accusation; and having been told that it was sandro, who had charged him with holding the opinion of the epicureans, and believing that the soul dies with the body, he insisted on being confront-ed with the accuser before the judge. sandro therefore appeared, and the other said: it is true that i hold this opinion with regard to this mans soul, for he is an animal. nay, does it not seem to you that he is the heretic, since without a scrap of learning, and scarcely know-ing how to read, he plays the commentator to dante and takes his name in vain?; G. Vasa-ri, Le Vite de pi eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a tempi nostri, Firenze, Lorenzo torrentino, 1550, p. 495.

23 on this, see e. soLMi, Scritti vinciani. Le fonti dei manoscritti di Leonardo da Vinci e altri studi (1908-1911), reprinted, Firenze 1976, pp. 106-108. if the dating of Botticellis painting is correct, it is possible that Leonardo had already moved to Milan when the work was completed.

24 after demonstrating the influence of Lucretius poem on some of Pieros composi-tions, Panofsky concludes: Like Lucretius, Piero conceived of human evolution as a process due to the inborn faculties and talents of race. it is in order to symbolize these faculties and talents, as well as the universal forces of nature, that his pictures glorify the classical gods and demigods who were not creators like the biblical Jehovah, but embodied and revealed the natural principles indispensable for the progress of mankind. But like Lucretius, Piero was sadly aware of the dangers entailed in this development. He joyfully sympathized with the rise of humanity beyond the bestial hardship of the stone age, but he regretted any step beyond the unsophisticated phase which he would have termed the reign of Vulcan and di-onysos; e. Panofsky, Studies in Iconology. Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance, 2nd ed., new York 1962, p. 65.


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his rooms to be swept, and chose to eat only when hunger came, and refused to allow the fruits of his garden to be hoed or pruned, rather he would leave vines to grow and shoots to spread across the ground, and his fig trees were never trimmed, nor were his other trees, instead he was content to see everything grow wild, according to its nature, insisting that things of nature should be left to her, without doing anything more.25

this picture of a disciple of the epicurean philosophy immersed in the con-templation of his overgrown garden 26 brings to mind the aphorism of Leonardo savage he is who saves himself 27 which captures in a nutshell the proud contention of the unlettered that it was they, rather than the humanists, who re-tained the primacy in terms of their knowledge of nature and the ability to por-tray it based on experience rather than book learning.

Citations from Lucretius and Epicurus

regarding the multiplicity of Leonardos interests, which distracted him many times from his true profession as an artist, Vasari wrote:

[] so many were his caprices, that philosophizing on the things of nature, hoping to understand the properties of plants, continually observing the motion of the heavens, the course of the moon, and the movements of the sun. due to which, regarding the soul he came up with a theory so heretical that it did not approach any religion, boldly placing a higher value on being a philosopher than a christian.28

this somewhat compromising evaluation,29 which out of prudence was omit-ted from subsequent editions of the Vite, underlines with disarming clarity how Leonardos reflections on natural phenomena led him away from religion, setting him down a path analogous to that prescribed, in a positive sense, by the epicu-rean doctrine, whose cornerstone was the study of physics with the aim of free-ing mankind from the source of all superstitious belief religion. it is perhaps only a coincidence, but the philosophy de le cose naturali (on natural things) to which Vasari refers is a literal translation of de rerum natura, and Leonardo

25 Vasari, Le Vite, cit., p. 588.26 as demonstrated by Brown, Lucretius and the Epicureans, cit. pp. 53-54.27 salvatico chi si salva from Il Codice di Leonardo da Vinci nella Biblioteca Trivulzia

na di Milano, a cura di a. M. Brizio, Firenze 1980, fol. 1v. (Richter, ii, , 1189).28 Vasari, Vite, cit., p. 565. 29 the meaning of which has been thoroughly documented by G. GoVi, Leonardo, lette

rato e scienziato, Milano 1872, reprinted in a. FaVaro, Gilberto Govi ed i suoi scritti intorno a Leonardo da Vinci, roma 1923, pp. 59-131, particularly on pp. 71-73.

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used the same expression (delle cose naturali) in a reference to Lucretius 30 and in the title to a work that he seems to have been contemplating.31

Vasaris commentary deserves more careful examination, not only for its ref-erence to Leonardos epicureanism but also because, among the numerous stud-ies that have appeared on the sources used by Leonardo, very few have enter-tained the possibility that he may have been influenced by De rerum natura.32 Yet Leonardo must have known the work of a poet with an interest in natural phi-losophy because, as he observes in a little known passage: and if he [the poet] speaks of the heavens, he is assuming the role of astrologer and philosopher and theologian, speaking of the things of nature or of God.33 the poet-astrologer of the heavens to whom he is referring might have been Manilio or Bonincontri or perhaps even Giovanni Pontano, whom Leonardo had met in Milan,34 but the poet Lucretius irresistibly comes to mind when the artist uses the term filosafo to refer to those who dared to speculate on the things of nature.

Leonardo cites Lucretius directly on only one occasion:

Lucretius in his third [Book] de rerum natura [de le cose naturali]: the hands, nails and teeth were the weapons of ancient man (165).35

they also used for a standard a bunch of grass tied to a pole (167).36

30 see infra.31 [] it is mentioned in Book iV 113 Delle cose naturali; Leonardo da Vinci, I ma

noscritti dellInstitut de France, Il Manoscritto E, a cura di a. Marinoni, Firenze 1989, fol. 15v (Richter, ii, 869).

32 r. Hooykaas, La theorie corpuscolaire de Leonard de Vinci, in Leonard de Vinci et lexperience scientifique au XVI e sicle, Paris 1953, pp. 163-169; J. G. Griffiths, Leonardo and the Latin Poets, classica et Mediaevalia, XVi, 1955, pp. 268-276; and F. BeLLonzi, Lipotesi di un rapporto tra Leonardo e Lucrezio, civilt delle macchine, XX, 1972, pp. 78-81; J. F. Moffitt, The Evidentia of Curling Waters and Whirling Winds: Leonardos Ekphraseis of the Latin Weathermen, achademia Leonardi Vinci, iV, 1991, pp. 11-33. these studies of-fer a divergent range of views. Hooykaas categorically affirms that Leonardo lut certaine-ment Lucrce, but does not offer any evidence in support of his assertion, preferring to re-trace in the work of Hero the handful of allusions by Leonardo to the corpuscular theory of matter. Griffiths illustrates somewhat cursorily the use by Leonardo of various Latin poets as sources, identifying a reference by Lucretius to the homoeomerias of anaxagoras. We will have occasion to discuss the significance of this passage later; solmi too identified its source as Lucretius, although Garin rejected the attribution (infra). in his essay Bellonzi notes the possible influence of Lucretius on Leonardos theory of simulacra and light. Moffitt explores Lucretius influence on Leonardos meteorological views.

33 e se lui [il poeta] parla de cieli, egli si fa astrologo e filosofo e teologo parlando del-le cose di natura o di dio, in Quaderni di anatomia, fol. 197v, in Leonardo da Vinci, Corpus degli studi anatomici nella collezione di Sua Maest la regina Elisabetta II nel Castello di Windsor, a cura di K. d. KeeLe e c. Perdetti, 3 vols., Firenze 1980-1985, iii, p. 772.

34 c. Vecce, Leonardo, roma 1998, p. 108.35 DRN (5, 1283): arma antiqua manus ungues dentesque fuerunt. 36 Lucretio nel terzo Delle cose naturali: le mani, unghie e denti furono le armi deli an-

tichi. 165. ancora usavano per stendardo uno fasciculo derba legato a una pertica; Leonar-


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However, as edmondo solmi noted at the beginning of the last century, this quotation was actually drawn from a secondary source 37 roberto Valturios De re militari libri XII 38 and there has been considerable speculation as to which edition of this work Leonardo might have read. Marinoni, who judged that there was scant evidence of a good knowledge of Latin in the artists work,39 was in-clined to think it must have been the italian translation by ramusio.40 in reality the passage represents the artists own translation of the Latin text in the treatise of Valturio, which reads: Lucretius libro tertio rerum nat. arma antiqua manus ungues dentesque fuerunt.41 solmi has furthermore demonstrated that in anoth-er instance Leonardo misunderstood the sense of some lines from De re militari based on an erroneous translation of the original text, and this would not have happened if he had been relying on the italian edition.42 Finally, Leonardo cites the title of the book in Latin and not in italian in one of his lists, a detail that is significant in this context.43 since Leonardo drew upon Valturio frequently as a source, it is possible and indeed probable that the artist had in his posses-sion both the Latin and the italian editions of De re militari, although it is worth noting that his initial reflections on the work were based on the Latin text.

Leonardos extensive library did not include a copy of De rerum natura, but scholars now agree that the lists of books that appear in the various codices fail to provide a clear, much less an exhaustive, notion of the breadth of his read-ing.44 one can often find a book mentioned in one of the artists inventories but no discussion of its contents in his notes, or vice versa an author who does not appear in any of the lists may be cited copiously. a quintessential example of this

do da Vinci, I manoscritti dellInstitut de France, Il Manoscritto B, ed. by a. Marinoni, for-merly codice ashburnham ca. 1496-99, fol. 98v (Richter, ii, 1492).

37 soLMi, Scritti vinciani, cit., p. 289. Moffitt, The Evidentia, cit., pp. 27-28, is of a dif-ferent opinion and argues that Leonardo is quoting directly Lucretius according to his me-mory of the Latin urtext.

38 the editio princeps of the first scholarly illustrated incunabulum appeared in Verona in 1472. the italian translation by Paolo ramusio was also published in Verona, in 1482.

39 Leonardo da Vinci, Scritti letterari, a cura di a. Marinoni, Milano 1980, p. 244.40 Ibid., p. 251.41 r. VaLturio, De re militari, [Verona], Johannes nicolai de Verona, 1472, c. 132v.42 soLMi, Scritti vinciani, cit., p. 18. the italian edition was entitled Opera dellarte mili

tare, Verona, Boninus de Boninis de ragusia, 17 Feb. 1483.43 de re militari, Richter, ii, par. 1469.44 in addition to the already cited volume by Marinoni (Leonardo da Vinci, Scritti let

terari, cit., pp. 239-257), see the essay by the same author, La biblioteca di Leonardo, raccol-ta Vinciana, XXii, 1987, pp. 291-342. a balanced consideration of the list in the Madrid co-dex is provided by carlo Maccagni, Leonardos List of Books, the Burlington Magazine, cX, 1968, pp. 406-410. For a recent analysis of the contents of Leonardos library, see the essay (with its exhaustive bibliography) by Fabio Frosini, Nello studio di Leonardo, in La mente di Leonardo. Nel laboratorio del Genio Universale, a cura di P. GaLLuzzi, Firenze 2006, pp. 123-149.

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is Hero of alexandrias Pneumatica, a work that is of interest because it presents a corpuscular theory of matter. it is clear from his notes that Leonardo was very familiar with Pneumatica,45 but since it is not mentioned in any of his inventories it has been suggested 46 that his knowledge of the text was based on the summary provided in Giorgio Vallas encyclopaedia.47 However, Leonardo proposes some experiments based on glass drinking horns that are described in Pneumatica but cannot be found in Vallas synopsis. the artist furthermore makes the observation that one could study movement of atoms [attimi ] in water only through trans-parent glass,48 while there is no reference to Heros theory of matter in Valla.

We must conclude that Leonardos source was either Heros original trea-tise or some other, unidentified work that provided an accurate reconstruction of the Greek engineers inventions and experiments.49 this case can doubtless be extrapolated to the many other authors, including Lucretius, from whom Le-onardo drew inspiration and ideas without recording the titles of their works in the lists that have come down to us.

solmi 50 concluded that Leonardo had a direct knowledge of De rerum natura based on the evidence of a single passage written around 1513:

anaxagoras: every thing proceeds from every thing, and every thing be-comes every thing, and every thing can be turned into every thing else, because that which exists in the elements is composed of those elements.51

Most scholars agree that this citation is too vague to allow any inferences to be drawn regarding its provenance. it is true, as Garin points out,52 that the

45 For example, the experiments with the drinking horn devised by Hero are described by Leonardo da Vinci in Il Codice Atlantico, a cura di a. Marinoni e c. Perdetti, Firenze 2000, fol. 589v.

46 M. Boas, Heros Pneumatica: A Study of Its Transmission and Influence, isis, XL, 1949, pp. 38-48: 40-41 (with bibliography).

47 G. VaLLa, De expetendis et fugiendis rebus opus, Venetiis, in aedibus aldi romani, 1501, Book X, 6.

48 si vegga li attimi nellacqua che muove; Codice Atlantico, cit., fol. 589v. Where Le-onardo uses the term attimi, he actually means atomi.

49 on this point, the testimony of Poliziano is of interest. in a letter dated 20 June 1491 and addressed to Lorenzo the Magnificent, Poliziano announces that he has found in Veni-ce some books by archimedes and by Hero the mathematician and it is reasonable to pre-sume that, as was customary, he commissioned copies of these works to bring back with him to Florence. a. PoLiziano, Prose volgari inedite e poesie latine e greche edite e inedite, Firen-ze, G. Barbra, 1867, p. 79.

50 soLMi, Scritti vinciani, cit., p. 202.51 anassagora. ogni cosa vien da ogni cosa e dogni cosa si fa ogni cosa e ogni cosa tor-

na in ogni cosa; perch ci ch nelli elementi, fatto da essi elementi; Leonardo da Vin-ci, Il Codice Atlantico, cit., fol. 1067r, formerly 386 v.c. (Richter, ii, 1473). the dating is by Vecce, Leonardo, cit., p. 293.

52 For a most trifling reference to anaxagoras, [duhem] went so far as to drag in cusa-


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doctrine of anaxagoras was amply discussed by aristotle in Physica, a work that Leo nardo knew well, but as solmi had justly noted, these lines do not correspond to any in the writings of the Greek philosopher. a variant can be found in the commentary on aristotles works by simplicius,53 but it is unlikely that Leonar-do had access to this text.

on the philosophy of anaxagoras, Lucretius writes: [He] holds that all things are mingled, though in hiding, in all things.54 there is some discrepancy between these lines and the citation in the Codice Atlantico, but Leonardo had probably combined the opening verses of De rerum natura with the exposition on anaxagoras to be found in verses 830-860. clearly, however, we still are on uncertain ground here and the thesis that Leonardo was quoting from Lucre-tius not yet proven, especially since in addition to Hero Leonardo was well acquainted with Vitruvius, ovid and Pliny, whose works are filled with Lucre-tian terms and notions.55

Before examining the passages from the corpus of Leonardos writings that allude in a more unequivocal fashion to De rerum natura, it is useful to pause briefly and consider those in which he cites epicurus.

among the authors who could have provided Leonardo with a reasonably exact idea of the philosophy of epicurus, one stands out in particular diogenes Laertius, the author of Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. solmi, and before him richter,56 have suggested that Leonardo may have read the translat-ed edition by Bernardino celerio, which appeared in Venice in 1480.57 Howev-er celerios work, and indeed all of the vernacular versions that appeared dur-ing the Quattrocento and the first two decades of the cinquecento, were not translations of the original text as claimed in celerios incipit, but rather of De vita et moribus philosophorum, a popularization of diogenes Laertiuss text by Gualtherus Burlaeus, and Leonardos detailed knowledge of epicurus could not

no and solmi Lucretius; and it has been forgotten that for example aristotles Physica, which Vinci cites many times, is one of the principle sources, and the most acute, on the thought of anaxagoras; e. Garin, Il problema delle fonti del pensiero di Leonardo, in id., La cultura filosofia del Rinascimento Italiano, cit., p. 391.

53 anaxagoras said, in fact, that in every thing there is a part of every (other) thing and every single thing consists and consisted in the most evident things that it was principal-ly made up of; siMpLicius, Comm. ad Aristoteles Physica, 27, 2.

54 Linquitur hic quaedam latitandi copia tenvis, / id quod anaxagoras sibi sumit, ut omnibus omnis / res putet inmixtas rebus latitare, sed illud / apparere unum, cuius sint plu-rima mixta / et magis in promptu primaque in fronte locata; DRN, i, 875-79.

55 it is possible, although not yet sufficiently demonstrated, that Leonardo had also read ovids Metamorphoses and Plinys Naturalis historia in translation.

56 soLMi, Scritti vinciani, cit., p. 137 and Richter, ii, 1469.57 diogene Laertio, Incomincia El libro de la vita de philosophi et delle loro elegantis

sime sententie extracto da D. Lahertio , impressum Venetiis, per Bernardinum celerium de Luere, 1480. this edition comprises 72 sheets bound in small quartos.

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have been based on the brief treatment of his works provided by Burlaeus. it also must be underlined that in this slender volume we find no reference to the theory of corpuscularism propounded by anaxagoras, by democritus (whom the author dubbed the great necromancer) and by epicurus, who was dismissed by Burlaeus as an homo idiota about whose natural philosophy he had noth-ing to say.58

it is almost certain then that the version of diogenes Laertius Vita de filosofi whose title is cited (in italian) by Leonardo in his inventory was the Latin translation by ambrogio traversari, which was first published in rome in 1472 and was followed by no less than seven other editions before the end of the cen-tury.59 as we have already noted, this translation was commissioned by cosimo de Medici during the period that De rerum natura had been rediscovered and was being studied in Florence.

epicurus is referred to more than once by Leonardo in his reflections on as-tronomy and the size of the planets. the passage that interested him, from epi-curus Letter to Pythocles (91), reads:

the size of the sun [and moon] and the other stars is for us what it ap-pears to be; and in reality it is either [slightly] greater than what we see or slight-ly less or of the same size: for so too fires on earth when looked at from a dis-tance seem to the senses.60

Leonardos comment on this can be found in Laude del Sole:

But i cannot forbear to condemn many of the ancients, who said that the sun was no larger than it appears; among these was epicurus, and i believe that he founded his reason on the effects of a light placed in our atmosphere equi-distant from the centre of the earth. any one looking at it never sees it dimin-ished in size at whatever distance.61

58 Ibid., c. 34v. the account of the life of epicurus appears on 34v-35r.59 i have only been able to consult the 1493 folio edition published in Venice, Pelegri-

num Pasquali (Book X can be found on cc. Lxxxxix-cxii) and the edition printed in Bolo-gna in 1495, iacobus de regazonibus (Book X is on cc. Lxxxxviii v-cvi r). even if traversa-ri took some liberties with the text, Leonardo would have found in Vita not only the letters and sententiae of epicurus but also a lucid compendium on atomism. Leonardos translation of the epicurean concept of atoms into atomi would lead one to believe that he did indeed find traversaris work a useful source.

60 epicurus, The Extant Remains, with short critical apparatus, translation and notes by c. BaiLey, oxford 1926, p. 61.

61 Mai non posso fare chio non biasimi molti di quelli antichi, li quali dissono che l sole non avea altra grandezza che quella che mostra, fra quali fu epicuro e credo che cavassi tale ragione da un lume posto in questa nostra aria, equidistante al centro: chi lo vede, non lo vede mai diminuito di grandezza in nessuna distanzia; Leonardo da Vinci, I manoscritti dellInstitut de France, Il Manoscritto F, ed. by a. Marinoni, Firenze 1988, fol. 5r (Richter, ii, 879). the principal source for this passage may have been Book ii of the work


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it is interesting to note en passant that Leonardo is citing in this context a hymn in praise of the sun written by Michele Marullo, a Byzantine poet living in Florence who edited Lucretius poem. in 1497 Marullo published a collec-tion of epigrams and hymns to nature, one of which was dedicated to the sun and written in a style imitating that of the Latin poet.62 it is also significant that, when criticizing those bent on worshipping men as Gods Jove, saturn, Mars and the like, Leonardo drew on empirical evidence to show that instead these men [were] mortal and putrid and corrupt in their sepulchres.63 Here the art-ist is reiterating one of Lucretius key arguments against the anthropomorphiza-tion of religion, which he could not have learned of simply by reading the let-ters of epicurus published by diogenes.

returning to Leonardos passage on astronomy, he seeks to explain epicu-rus error by means of an illustration:

epicurus perhaps saw the shadows cast by columns on the walls in front of them equal in diameter to the columns from which the shadows were cast; and the breadth of the shadows being parallel from beginning to end, he thought he might infer that the sun also was directly opposite to this parallel and that consequently its breadth was not greater than that of the column; not perceiv-ing that the diminution in the shadow was insensibly slight by reason of the re-moteness of the sun, which is evidence against epicurus who says the sun is only large as it appears.64

De mundo by cleomedes, which Giorgio Valla made available in a Latin translation at the end of the century and which was published in a collection of the writings of Valla entitled Collectio (impressum Venetiis, per simonem Papiensem dictum Biuilaquam, 30 sept. 1498). this hypothesis had already been advanced by Maccagni in his article on the Madrid codex (cited above). in fact, in Book ii cleomedes indulges in a long diatribe, refuting in detail and ridiculing the notions of the epicureans regarding the size of the sun. cleomedes is cited by name, but without further specification, in the trivulzian codex (Richter, ii, 1485).

62 La spera e Marullo laldan con molti altri esso sole, Leonardo da Vinci, I manoscritti dellInstitut de France, Il Manoscritto F, cit., fol. 4v. the poem on the sun was pu-blished in M. MaruLLo, Epigrammatum libri IV. Hymnorum naturalium libri IV, Firenze, so-cietas colubris compagnia del drago, 26 nov. 1497, cc. 75r-85r, a collection that Marullo de-dicated to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici. the epigrams and hymns contain numerous echoes of the naturalistic terminology in De rerum natura, and Lucretius is cited by Marul-lo in the epigram De poetis Latinis: natura magni versibus Lucretii (c. 5r). the Hymn to the sun is the longest poem in the collection and follows others dedicated to Jove, to the stars, to the moon, and to the earth.

63 Leonardo da Vinci, Il manoscritto F, cit., fol. 4v (Richter, ii, 879).64 Forse epicuro vide le ombre delle colonne ripercosse nelli antiposti muri essere equali

al diamitro della colonna, donde si parta tale ombra. essendo adunque il concorso dellombra paralella dal suo nascimento al suo fine, li parve da giudicare che l sole ancora lui fusse fronte di tal paralello, e per conseguenza non essere pi grosso di tal colonna, e non savvi-de che tal diminuzione dombra era insensibile per la lunga distanzia del sole. se l sole fussi minore della terra, le stelle di gran parte del nostro emisperio sarebbon senza lume contro a epicuro che dice: tanto grande il sole, quanto e pare; ibid., fol. 6r (Richter, ii, 881).

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it is highly significant that Lucretius too employs an architectural analogy that cannot be found in epicurus, but which can be felicitously linked to the reflec-tions of Leonardo, in his explanation of the optical illusion created by shadows:

though a colonnade runs on straight lines all the way, and stands resting on equal columns from end to end, yet when its whole length is seen from the top end, little by little it contracts to the pointed head of a narrow cone, join-ing roof with floor, and all the right hand with the left, until it has brought all together into the point of a cone that passes out of sight.65

Lucretius thoughts on perspective constitute one of the rare considerations of this problem by a classical author and must have circulated widely in Flor-ence during the second half of the Quattrocento, without much curiosity as to their original source. Leonardo uses the terms simulacri from Lucretius and idoli from epicurus to designate the images that are received by the eye, but since these words had already been introduced into circulation by alberti,66 they can-not by any means be considered a reference to the ideas in Book iV of De Rerum Natura. indeed, it is important to recall that Lucretius offered a qualitative explanation of vision quite different from the geometric theory that Leonardo was working on with such absorption.67

65 Porticus aequali quamvis est denique ductu / stansque in perpetuum paribus suffulta columnis, / longa tamen parte ab summa cum tota videtur, / paulatim trahit angusti fastigia coni, / tecta solo iungens atque omnia dextera laevis / donec in obscurum coni conduxit acumen; DRN, 4, 426-31. this example would be taken up by seneca in Naturales Quaestiones (i, 3, 9).

66 Leon Battista alberti was not only an erudite scholar of Lucretius, but also translated some of his verses into italian, as susanna Gambino has demonstrated, Alberti lettore di Lucrezio. Motivi lucreziani nel theogenius, albertiana, iV, 2001, pp. 69-84.

67 J. s. ackerMan, Leonardos Eye, Journal of the Warburg and courtald institutes, XLi, 1978, pp. 108-146: 123. Writing on this same topic, Martin Kemp is even less inclined to accept the epicurean notion of atomism as a possible source for Leonardos theory of vi-sion, Leonardo and the Visual Pyramid, Journal of the Warburg and courtald institutes, XL,


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if anything, the artist might have found food for thought in Lucretius no-tions regarding the variations in colour experienced during visual perception. al-though Janis Bell has traced Leonardos theories to a careful study of the pseu-do-aristotelian treatise on colours,68 two passages from his notebooks point more convincingly to a direct knowledge of De rerum natura. For example, to explain why the sky appears to be blue, he writes: i say that the blue colour that the air appears to be is not its true colour, but is caused by the hot moisture having evaporated into very minute, imperceptible atoms.69 His reasoning here, based on the corpuscular theory, cannot be traced exclusively to the study of aristo-tle, and the expression insensibili atomi (imperceptible atoms) recalls one of the terms used by Lucretius to designate the invisible action of atoms.70

elsewhere, Leonardo turns decidedly to the corpuscular hypothesis when discussing the action of light on bodies in the dark:

that side of an object in light and shade which is towards the light trans-mits the images of its particles [particule] more distinctly and immediately to the eye than the side which is in shadow.71

the references to the philosophy of epicurus are therefore numerous but not sufficient to demonstrate that in addition to reading Book X of diogenes

1977, pp. 128-149. therefore, the hypothesis proposed by Bellonzi in the article cited above, that Leonardo drew his inspiration from Book iV of DRN, is less than convincing.

68 J. BeLL, Aristotle as a Source for Leonardos Theory of Color Perspective after 1500, Journal of the Warburg and courtald institutes, LVi, 1993, pp. 100-118.

69 dico lazzurro in che si mostra laria non essere suo proprio colore, ma causato da umidit calda vaporata in minutissimi e insensibili atomi, la quale piglia dopo di s la per-cussione de razzi solari []; Leonardo da Vinci, Hammer codex, fol. 4r. (in BeLL, Aristotle as a Source for Leonardo, cit., p. 104).

70 nunc ea quae sentire videmus cumque necessest / ex insensilibus tamen omnia confi-teare / principiis constare. neque id manufesta refutant / nec contra pugnant, in promptu co-gnita quae sunt, / sed magis ipsa manu ducunt et credere cogunt / ex insensilibus, quod dico, animalia gigni. / quippe videre licet vivos existere vermes / stercore de taetro, putorem cum sibi nacta est / intempestivis ex imbribus umida tellus; DRN, 2, 865-73 (italics mine). simi-larly, Lucretius often used the adjective minutis when referring to these atoms (e.g., 3, 425-26). the term corpora caeca appears with equal frequency.

71 Quella parte del corpo ombroso che fia illuminata, mander allocchio la similitu-dine delle sue particule pi discernibili e spedite, che quella che si trover in nellombra; Leonardo da Vinci, I manoscritti dellInstitut de France, Il Manoscritto A, trascrizione diplo-matica e critica di a. Marinoni, Firenze 1990, fol. 20r (Richter, i, 282). in the Leicester co-dex (Il codice di Leonardo da Vinci della biblioteca di Lord Leicester, reprint, Firenze 1980, fol. 20ra) Leonardo explains an analogous phenomenon in the following way: come la chiarez-za dellaria nascie dallacqua che in quella s risoluta e fattasi in sesbili graniculi, li quali, preso il lume del sole dallopposita parte, redono la chiarezza che in essa aria si dimonstra [] [ Just as the brightness of the air springs from the water that is dissolved in it and for-med into discernable particles which, in the light of the sun on the other hand, return to it the brightness that is demonstrated by this air ] (Richter, ii, 995).

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Laertius Vitae and spending time in the company of humanists who had stud-ied Lucretius Leonardo had also studied the poem De rerum natura.


although Leonardo found many stimulating notions in De rerum natura, it is necessary to keep in mind the distance that separated the epicurean philos-ophy which was designed to offer a coherent and omni-comprehensive alter-native to the aristotelian system and the fragmented, sometimes contradictory mlange of ideas in the head of Leonardo. Furthermore, the artists credo that no science was true if its tenets could not be mathematically demonstrated 72 con-trasted with the natural philosophy of epicurus, who retained that mathematics or indeed any attempt to impose a geometric order on the universe constituted an artificial filter that prevented man from reaching a correct understanding of natural phenomena through reasoning and the senses. Furthermore, Leonardos conception of matter presupposed a structure that was, at least in most cases, incompatible with that of atomism: since every continuous quantity is divisi-ble to infinity, if a quantity of wine be placed in a vessel through which water is continually passing it will never come about that the water which is in the ves-sel will be without wine.73 Finally, in his writings on anatomy Leonardo rarely attempted to describe bodily structures in corpuscular terms, preferring the the-ories of Galen who, as is well known, vehemently attacked the physician ascle-piades of Bithynia (125-40 Bc) and the atomists in general for their attempts to apply corpuscular models to the science of medicine.

at the same time the almost extreme emphasis placed on the veracity of the senses, and the primacy ascribed to the sense of sight were characteristic not only of the philosophy of epicurus and Lucretius, but also that of Leonardo, who de-plored the fact that: Men wrongly complain of experience; with great abuse they accuse her of leading them astray, but they set experience aside,74 because in reality [] experience, the interpreter between industrious nature [lartificiosa

72 Leonardo da Vinci, Frammenti letterari e filosofici, a cura di e. soLMi, Firenze 1979, p. 89.

73 [] perchogni quantit continua divisibile in infinito, una quantit di vino mess n vaso dove sempre passi acqua, mai si trover che lacqua che sta nel vaso, sia senza vino; Codice Atlantico, cit., 585r, formerly 218rb. english translation The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, arranged and rendered into english by e. Maccurdy, new York 1954, p. 785. Lucre-tius, on the contrary, believed in the reversibility of the composition of mixed bodies and, with regard to the example described by Leonardo, would have stated without hesitation that, just as atoms of wine could combine with those of water, in the same way using appropriate procedures they could be separated again.

74 a torto si lamentan li omini della esperienza, la quale con somme rampogne, quella accusano esser fallace; Leonardo da Vinci, Frammenti letterari e filosofici, cit., p. 89.


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natura] and the human race, teaches how nature acts among mortals.75 He con-cludes: all our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.76 While Leonar-dos faith in knowledge based on the senses, the viaticum for any research on le cose naturali, can be traced back to aristotle (although the Greek philoso-pher did not place the same weight on this point), the notion that the signore de sensi (master of the senses) 77 was the eye, or more exactly the sight, was a cornerstone of the epicurean philosophy.78 Lucretius believed that the sense of sight was nothing other than a variation of the sense of touch and that it was generated by the collision of the images of bodies against the pupil of the eye.79 although equally invisible, compared to the atoms striking the other senses the simulacri had the advantage of providing the eye with fully formed images of material bodies and therefore of rendering a more complete perception of ex-ternal reality. the eye registered the continual mutations in natural phenomena with passive objectivity, so that even illusions were not to be blamed on the or-gan of sight but rather on errors in the mind.80 the eyes were for Lucretius the apertures through which the soul could view the world,81 just as Leonardo wrote that the eye is called the window of the soul.82

although the artist did not embrace the corpuscular theory of matter, he frequently borrowed terms and ideas originating from atomism to explain cer-tain specific and circumscribed phenomena. in addition to simulacri and idoli, we find Leonardo referring to the invisible particles that make up matter as semenze (seeds), insensibili granicoli (imperceptible grains), minutissime parti

75 [] ogni nostra cognizione principia da sentimenti; Codice Atlantico, cit., 234r (Richter, ii, 1149).

76 Il Codice di Leonardo da Vinci nella Biblioteca Trivulziana di Milano, cit., fol. 20v, and Leonardo da Vinci, Frammenti letterari e filosofici, cit., p. 94.

77 Ibid. 78 as paradoxical as it might seem in a philosophy centered on the motion of invisi-

ble particles, Lucretius often used the expressions nonne vides ?, videbis or cernimus ante oculos when referring to the evidence that is manifested by the macroscopic effects of this motion.

79 [] corpora quae feriant oculos visumque lacessant; DRN, iV, 217.80 nec tamen hic oculos falli concedimus hilum (DRN, iV, 379), and proinde animi

vitium hoc oculis adfingere noli (DRN, iV, 386).81 dicere porro oculos nullam rem cernere posse, / sed per eos animum ut foribus spec-

tare reclusis, / difficilest, contra cum sensus ducat eorum; DRN, iii, 359-361. 82 Locchio finestra dellanima; Leonardo da Vinci, Frammenti letterari e filosofici,

cit., p. 110 (Richter, i, 653). inspired by Lucretius imagery, Lucius caelius Lactantius was the first to use the metaphor of the eye as the window of the soul: Veris et manifestius est mentem esse quae per oculos ea quae sunt opposita transpiciat quasi per fenestras perlucen-te vitro aut speculari lapide obuctas (De Opificio Dei, 8, 11). While it appears that Lactan-tius was a source known to Leonardo (Richter, ii, 1438), scholars have not found any men-tion of his work in Leonardos notes and this fact, at least with regard to the passage under consideration here, points to Lucretius as the more probable source.

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cule (minute particles), particole (particles), attimi and attomi (atoms), and fi-nally elementi (elements). not all of these designations were drawn from Lucre-tius who, as is well known, never used the word atom. all the same Leonardo could have picked up this term from his perusal of the letters of epicurus in traversaris Latin translation of diogenes Laertius Vitae, or from other sourc-es such as cicero and (more probably) aristotle. the equating of a point in space with a point in time was a common notion in natural philosophy, al-though only Leonardo equated the terms attomi and attimi. this was based on a somewhat far-fetched etymological association that nonetheless reflected the artists attempt to define the relationship both linguistic and conceptu-al between time and matter, both of which were in constant motion, and to do so within a uniform theoretical framework in which there was a correspond-ence between atomi and attimi, between fragments of matter and fragments of time.

a typically Lucretian term was semina rerum or the seeds of things, for which Leonardo proposed the translation semenze delle cose and his own vari-ant granicoli. in a note dating perhaps to the spring of 1490 on the claims of alchemists that they were able to transmute substances, Leonardo observes:

the false interpreters of nature declare that quicksilver is the common seed of every metal, not remembering that nature varies the seeds according to the variety of the things she desires to produce in the world.83

in addition to his literal translation of semina, the Lucretian term for atoms, we can also detect the poets influence in Leonardos assertion that variations in these atoms were the necessary cause of the infinite variety seen in nature. to underline this causality, Lucretius coined the term variantia,84 always followed by rerum,85 which Leonardo translated directly into italian, as he had done with semina. the context of this particular passage by Leonardo is important, because unlike the aristotelian theory of matter, which was used by alchemists to jus-tify their hopes of achieving the transmutation of substances Lucretius phi-losophy provided an explanation for microscopic reactions according to which changes in the material substrate could only occur through the combination of

83 i bugiardi interpriti di natura affermano lo argento vivo essere comune semenza a tutti i metalli, non si ricordando che la natura varia le semenze secondo la diversit del-le cose che essa vole produrre al mondo; Leonardo da Vinci, Il Codice Atlantico, cit., fol. 207v, formerly 76va (Richter, ii, 1207). at the bottom of the sheet appears the date: a d 23 daprile, 1490.

84 see the essay by F. citti, Piero recubans Lucretius antro. Sulla fortuna umanistica di Lucrezio, in Lucrezio. La natura e la scienza, cit., p. 115 and ff.

85 amplius hoc fieri nihil est quod posse rearis / talibus in causis, ne dum variantia re-rum / tanta queat densis rarisque ex ignibus esse; DRN, i, 652-654.


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two or more distinct substances.86 in his cosmos there was no universal semenza that would allow the passage of a substance from one form into another; metals differ because they are made up of different molecules or sememze, and there-fore it is not possible to turn base metal into gold.

Leonardos debt to the atomic theory of Lucretius is reflected in another cru-cial point. the Latin poet, while hypothesizing that atoms are endowed with a limited number of different forms, was not particularly interested in explaining their morphology. He simply assumed that the atoms of solid bodies are some-how knitted up in such a way as to create the hardness of iron or diamonds, the dentated form of the snowflake, the impalpability of the suns rays and so on, for all the semina in the world. one exception to this general rule of indetermi-nate forms was water, whose atoms have a precise form, i.e. spherical.87 in the same way, to explain the rising motion of graniculi umidi and the falling of rain-drops Leonardo writes:

But one may wonder why there is greater perfection in the smallest sphere of liquid than in the large. Here one may respond that the smallest drop has a lightness more similar to the air surrounding it than the large drop and, due to this slight difference, it is more easily pushed downward by those larger parti-cles of air. and as proof of this, the smallest drops will join together, they that are so small in size that they are almost invisible by themselves, but when many in number are visible: and these are the component particles of the clouds and fog.88

Without entering into specifics regarding the form of atoms, at times even Leonardo seems to be convinced that matter is composed of particulate tissues whose structure is hidden from our eyes by nature. He evokes the Lucretian conceit 89 of a sunbeam crossing a dark room that reveals a vortex of tiny parti-

86 M. Beretta, Lucrezio e la chimica, automata. Journal of nature, science and tech-nology in the ancient World, ii, 2007, pp. 39-56.

87 illa quidem debent e levibus atque rutundis / esse magis, fluvido quae corpore liquida constant. / namque papaveris haustus itemst facilis quod aquarum; / nec retinentur enim inter se glomeramina quaeque / et perculsus item proclive volubilis exstat; DRN, ii, 451-455.

88 Ma dimanderen perch pi perfezione nella minima spera del liquido che nella grande. Qui si risponde che la minima gocciola ha levit pi simile allaria che la circunda, che la gocciola grande e, per la poca differenzia, pi sostenuta nel mezzo in gi da essa aria grande. e per prova di questo sallegher le minime gocciole, che son di tanta minima figu-ra, chelle son quasi invisibile per s, ma molte in quantit son visibile: e queste son le parti-cole componitrici de nugoli e delle nebbie; Leonardo da Vinci, Il Codice Atlantico, cit., fol. 205r, formerly 75va. in the arundel codex (Il Codice Arundel 263 nella British Library, tra-scrizione e note critiche di c. Vecce, a cura di c. Pedretti, Firenze 1998, P 25r: f. 57r), the artist uses the expression: Piccole granicole dacqua.

89 contemplator enim, cum solis lumina cumque / inserti fundunt radii per opaca do-morum: / multa minuta modis multis per inane videbis / corpora misceri radiorum lumine in

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cles: the atoms which are found in the circular rays of the sun when they pen-etrate through some window into a dark place.90 it was perhaps the image of the window that led Martin Kemp 91 to link this passage to isidore of sevilles Etymologiae (Xiii, ii, 1).92 However, not even the erudite spanish bishops en-cyclopaedia appears in any of the artists lists, and in our view his succinct ex-position on atomism could not have provided a sufficient context for the varie-ty of passages in which De rerum natura was taken by Leonardo as a functional example of his own research. other ideas in these passages cannot be connected in any way with isidore, and therefore point to Lucretius as their only possible source.

as has recently been underlined,93 Leonardos writings express an ambiva-lent conception of nature; on the one hand he glorified its generative force and on the other he readily admitted its terrible destructive power. this vision of na-ture balanced in a precarious equilibrium, with opposing forces locked in eternal combat, could not have sprung from a providentialist view of the cosmos. rath-er, in keeping with those studies that had already demonstrated to him the infi-nite mutability of nature, it derived from a materialist vision that Leonardo would certainly have had no difficulty in recognizing in the verses of Lucretius.

in various fragments that can be dated to Leonardos first Florentine period

ipso / et vel ut aeterno certamine proelia pugnas / edere turmatim certantia nec dare pausam, / conciliis et discidiis exercita crebris; / conicere ut possis ex hoc, primordia rerum / qua-le sit in magno iactari semper inani. / dum taxat, rerum magnarum parva potest res / exem-plare dare et vestigia notitiai. / Hoc etiam magis haec animum te advertere par est / corpora quae in solis radiis turbare videntur, / quod tales turbae motus quoque materiai / significant clandestinos caecosque subesse; DRN, ii, 114-128.

90 Laria che successivamente circunda il mobile che per essa si move, fa in s vari moti. Questo si vede nelli attimi che si trovan nella spera del sole, quando per qualche finestra pe-netran in loco oscuro, nelli quali attimi tratto un sasso, per la lunghezza del razzo solare si vede li attimi raggirarsi intorno al sito, donde dallaria fu riempiuto la strada in essa aria fat-ta dal mobbile []; Leonardo da Vinci, Il manoscritto F, cit., fol. 74v.

91 there is no evidence that Leonardo ever seriously considered adopting the basic te-nets of classical atomism, and the form of this analogy suggests that his actual source was isidore de sevilles popular seventh-century encyclopedia, the Etymologiae; M. KeMp, Leonardo da Vinci. The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man, oxford 20062, p. 300.

92 atomos philosophi vocant quasdam in mundo corporum partes tam minutissimas, ut nec visui pateant, nec tomn, id est, sectionem recipiant, unde et atomoi dicti sunt. Hi per ina-ne totius mundi irrequietis motibus volitare, et huc atque illuc ferri dicuntur, sicut tenuissi-mi pulveres, qui infusis per fenestras radiis solis videntur, ex iis arbores, et herbas, et fruges omnes oriri, et ex iis ignem, et aquam, et universa gigni, atque constare quidam philosophi gentium putaverunt. in Lactantius (De ira dei, 10,9) a similar passage can be found: Haec, inquit, per inane inrequetis motibus volitant et huc atque illuc feruntur, sicut pulveris minu-tias videmus in sole, cum per fenestram radiosa ac lumen inmiserit.

93 P. GaLLuzzi, Leonardo da Vincis Concept of Nature. More Cruel Stepmother than Mother, in Aurora Torealis. Studies in the History of Science and Ideas in Honor of Tore Frngsmyr, ed. by M. Beretta, K. Grandin, and s. LindqVist, sagamore Beach 2008, pp. 13-30.


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(1478-1480), typically Lucretian expressions and images appear. in a passage on the phenomenon of thunderbolts the artist writes:

o mighty and once living instrument of industrious nature [arteficiosa natura]. incapable of availing thyself of thy vast strength thou hast to abandon a life of stillness and to obey the law which God and time gave to procreative na-ture [gienitrice natura].94

in De rerum natura Lucretius refers to Mother nature as Daedala (V, 234) and genetrix (V, 783) in order to underline two qualities industry and fecundi-ty that characterize her as a fully self-sufficient entity. in his turn Leonardo al-ludes, just after the passage cited above, to the power of nature to create won-drous forms words that evoke the spawning of monsters and prodigious life forms described by Lucretius in Book V.95

However, just as in the vision of the world proposed by Lucretius, Leonar-do believed that the fecundity of nature was opposed by an equally potent force which together with its silent accomplice, time, the consumer of all things 96 could weaken and dissipate the generative energy of the cosmos. the result of this clash of forces is evinced in the following passage:

the watery element was left enclosed between the raised banks of the rivers, and the sea was seen between the uplifted earth and the surrounding air which has to envelop and enclose the complicated machine of the earth [macchina della terra], and whose mass, standing between the water and the element of fire, remained much restricted and deprived of its indispensable moisture; the riv-ers will be deprived of their waters, the fruitful earth will put forth no more her light verdure; the fields will no more be decked with waving corn; all the ani-mals, finding no fresh grass for pasture, will die and food will then be lacking to the lions and wolves and other beasts of prey, and to men who after many efforts will be compelled to abandon their life, and the human race will die out. in this way the fertile and fruitful earth will remain deserted, arid and sterile from the water being shut up in its interior, and from the activity of nature it will con-tinue a little time to increase until the cold and subtle air being gone, it will be forced to end with the element of fire; and then its surface will be left burnt up to cinder and this will be the end of all terrestrial nature.97

94 o potente e gi animato strumento dellarteficiosa natura, a te non valendo le tue gran forze, ti convenne abandonare la tranquila vita, obidire alla legie che l, che dio e l ten-po di alla gienitrice natura, a te tte non valse; Leonardo da Vinci, Il codice Arundel 263 nella British library, cit., P 1r: f. 156r (Richter, ii, 1217).

95 Multaque tum tellus etiam portenta creare / conatast mira facie membrisque coor-ta; DRN, V, 837-838.

96 Leonardo da Vinci, Il codice Arundel 263 nella British library, cit., P 1r: f. 156r. 97 [r]imaso lo elemento de la acqua rinchiuso infra le cressiute argine de fiumi e rive

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in addition to using the expression macchina della terra, a direct translation of Lucretius machina mundi (drn, V, 96), Leonardo describes the decay of a once fertile, but now barren earth as if it were a mother grown old with too much child-bearing, echoing the image that appears in Book ii and, even more striking-ly, in Book V of De rerum natura.98 thus, like Lucretius who opens his poem with Venus Genetrix and the portrayal of a lush, fruitful earth, but closes with the de-scription of a desolate wasteland and the progressive breakdown of natures equi-libriums, Leonardo found himself suspended between these two extremes.

the dating of these passages makes it plausible that Leonardo was intro-duced to Lucretius poem during his first Florentine period, and if he did indeed attend the lectures of Lorenzo Bonincontri in 1475 as Mario Baratta sustains,99 he would have had no difficulty in familiarizing himself with the principal themes in the poem. in fact, it was Book V that most attracted the attention of human-ists in this period, and Leonardo seems to have shared this interest if we are to judge from another passage in which, after describing in admiring terms the in-finite potential of language, he notes, like Lucretius, that this versatile instrument was of relatively recent invention:

since things are much more ancient than letters, it is no marvel if, in our day, no records exist of these seas having covered so many countries; and if, moreo-

del mare, infra ila cressciuta tera, conver che n la circundatrice aria, avendo a ffasciare e circoscrivere la moltiplicata macchina della terra, che la sua quantit e grosseza, che sstava fra llaqua e lo elemento del fuoco, rimanga molto sottile ristretta e privata de la bisogniosa ac-qua. i fiumi rimaranno senza le loro acque, la fertile terra non mander pi le germoglianti fronde, non fieno pi i campi adorni delle ricasscanti biade. turi li animali, non trovando da pascere le fresche erbe, morano, e mancher il cibo a rapaci lioni e llup e altri animali che vivano di rato; e agli omini, dopo molti ripari, conver abandonare la loro vita, e manche-r la generazione umana. e a questo modo la tera la fertile e fruttuosa tera abandonata ri-mar issterile rida e ssterile, io e per rinchiuso omore dellacqua rinchiusa nel suo ventre e per la vivace natura osserver alquanto dello suo accresscimento, tanto che, passata la fred-da e ssottile aria, fia cosstretta a terminare co lo elemento del fuoco; ibid., P 1r: f. 155v (Richter, ii, 1218). the links between Leonardo and Lucretius on the theme of the decay of nature are highlighted in an excellent study by J. Gantner, Leonardos Visionen. Von der Sintflut und vom Untergang der Welt. Geschichte einer knstlerischen Idee, Bern 1958, pp. 202-216.

98 iamque adeo fracta est aetas effetaque tellus / vix animalia parva creat, quae cuncta creavit / saecla deditque ferarum ingentia corpora partu; DRN, 2, 1150-1153. But above all, cf. the verses: Quare etiam atque etiam maternum nomen adepta / terra tenet merito, quo-niam genus ipsa creavit / humanum atque animal prope certo tempore fudit / omne quod in magnis bacchatur montibus passim, / ariasque simul volucres variantibus formis. / sed quia finem aliquam pariendi debet habere, / destitit, ut mulier spatio defessa vetusto. / mutat enim mundi naturam totius aetas / ex alioque alius status excipere omnia debet / nec manet ulla sui similis res: omnia migrant, / omnia commutat natura et vertere cogit; DRN, 5, 821-831(italics mine). cf. also verses 783-820 in Book V.

99 With every probability Leonardo also had occasion to frequent the lessons that Lo-renzo Bonincontri inaugurated at the university in Florence around the year 1475; M. Ba-ratta, Leonardo da Vinci ed il problema della terra, Milano 1903, p. 3.


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ver, some records had existed, war and conflagrations, the deluge of waters, the changes of languages and of laws have consumed every thing ancient. But suffi-cient for us is the testimony of things created in the salt waters, and found again in high mountains far from the seas.100

Furthermore, like everything else, language was destined one day to perish:

and the languages themselves are subjected to oblivion; they are mortal like all created things; and if we concede that our world is eternal we shall say that these languages have been, and still must be, of infinite variety, through the in-finite centuries, which are contained in infinite time.101

these two themes the creation of things and their passing away can be linked to the history of civilization described by Lucretius in Book V, and to the parallel drawn by the poet between the evolution of the cosmos and the biolog-ical evolution of man.102

another subject that could be tied to the Lucretian equilibrium between generation and destruction was nutrition, which Leonardo discusses in his note-books on anatomy:

the body of anything which is nourished continually dies and it is con-tinually reborn, for nourishment cannot enter except into those places where past nourishment has been exhausted, and if it has been exhausted it no longer (nourishes) or has life. unless, therefore, you supply nourishment equal to the nourishment that has departed, life loses its vigour, and if you take away nour-ishment life is totally destroyed. But if you supply just as much nourishment as is destroyed daily, then as much life is reborn as is consumed just as the light of a candle [].103

100 Perch molto son pi antiche le cose che le lettere, non maraviglia, se alii nostri giorni non apparisce sc[r]iptura delli predetti mari essere occupatori di tanti paesi [] e se pure alcuna scrittura apparia, le guerre, lincendi, le mutationi delle lingue e delle leggi, li diluvi dellacque nno consumato ogni antichit: ma a noi basta le testimonianze delle cose nate nelle acque salse rit[r]ovarsi nelli alti monti, lontani dalli mari talor; Leonardo da Vin-ci, Codice Leicester, cit., fol. 31r (Richter, ii, 984).

101 e li medesimi linguaggi son sottoposti alla obblivione e son mortali come laltre cose create. e, se noi concedereno il nostro mondo essere eterno, noi diren tali linguaggi essere stati e ancora dovere essere dinfinit variet, mediante linfiniti secoli che nello infinito tem-po si contengano, ec.; Leonardo da Vinci, Corpus degli Studi Anatomici, cit., fol. 50v.

102 M. Beretta, Enlightenment in Antiquity? Evolution and Progress in the Fifth Book of Lucretius de rerum natura, in Aurora Torealis, cit., pp. 1-12.

103 il corpo di qualunche cosa la qual si nutrica, al continuo muore e al continuo ri-nasce, perch entrare non pu nutrimento se non in quelli lochi dove il passato nutrimento spirato, e selli spirato elli pi non vita. e se tu non li rendi nutrimento, equale al nu-trimento partito, allora la vita manca di sua valitudine, e se tu levi esso nutrimento la vita in tutto resta destrutta. Ma se tu ne rendi tanto quanto se ne destrugge alla giornata, allora tan-

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in accordance with Galen, life is described by Leonardo as an endless cy-cle in which matter is consumed and renewed but always conserved, thus ensur-ing the equilibrium of the process. the way in which the concept is presented, however, suggests a familiarity with the Lucretian principle of the conservation of matter.104 that a knowledge of De rerum natura lay behind the composition of the passage is confirmed by the artists assertion that the soul could not ex-ist among the elements without a body.105 Furthermore, even nutrition is ex-plained by Leonardo in terms of particles:

air enters and exits by the mouth (d ) and when food passes over the bridge (dn) [indicated in the anatomical drawing by the oral cavity] there is the possibil-ity that some particles may fall from the mouth (d ), and pass via (c), which would be fatal. But nature has provided small sacs (ab) to receive these particles.106

the mouth therefore is configured in such a way as to receive particles of air and food through different orifices without their intermingling, a process that Lucretius elucidates in his description of the functioning of the senses. the ex-change between organic and inorganic matter, and the self-sufficient, chemical regulation of the processes of life and death are described by Leonardo in Lucre-tian terms when he writes: in dead matter there remains insensate life, which on being united to the stomachs of living things, resumes a life of the senses and the intellect.107 this materialist conception of the cosmos had nonetheless a moral dimension for Leonardo, as it did for Lucretius. the inherent transience of man and his final destiny, which was to perish one day, should not lead him to despair but rather to the full realization and acceptance of his role in nature:

to rinasce di vita quanto se ne cosuma []; Leonardo da Vinci, Corpus degli studi anatomici, cit., fol. 50r. in a prophecy, Leonardo stated: a great portion of bodies that have been alive will pass into the bodies of other animals; which is as much as to say, that the desert-ed tenements will pass piecemeal into the inhabited ones, furnishing them with good things, and carrying with them their evils. that is to say the life of man is formed from things eat-en, and these carry with them that part of man which dies (Richter, ii, 1293).

104 the hypothesis advanced by F. Bottazzi and then taken up by Giuseppe Favaro, that this concept can be retraced to the anatomy of alcmeone of crotone, is by now entirely out-dated. cf. G. FaVaro, Leonardo da Vinci e la medicina, roma 1923, pp. 28-29.

105 Leonardo da Vinci, Corpus degli studi anatomici, cit., fol. 49r. one of the most hot-ly debated issues among philosophers at the end of the Quattrocento was the question of the mortality of the soul, and the rediscovery of Lucretius and the theory expounded in Book iii of De rerum natura that the soul was composed of tiny particles gave rise to a stream of philosophical treatises, especially in Florence and Padua.

106 entra ed esce laria per la bocca d e quando il cibo passa sopra il ponte dn [indica-to nel disegno anatomico della cavit orale] e potrebbe cadere qualche particula per la boc-ca d, e passare per c, che sarebbe mortale. Ma la natura ha ordinato li sacculi ab, li quali ri-cevano essa particula; ibid., fol. 134r.

107 The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, cit., p. 203.


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now you see that the hope and the desire of returning home and to ones former state is like the moth to the light, and that the man who with constant longing awaits with joy each new spring time, each new summer, each new month and new year deeming that the things he longs for are ever too late in coming does not perceive that he is longing for his own destruction. But this desire is the very quintessence, the spirit of the elements, which finding itself imprisoned with the soul is ever longing to return from the human body to its giver. and you must know that this same longing is that quintessence, inseparable from na-ture, and that man is the image of the world.108

While such passages point unmistakeably to De rerum natura as the source for some of Leonardos ideas, in other cases the link is less direct. the artists ide-as on motion, for example, have been retraced to the medieval theory of impetus, although it is likely that he also found cues in Lucretius remarks on the inertia of physical bodies. the passage every motion will follow so much the path of its course in a straight line, as far as will endure in itself the nature of the vio-lence made by its motion 109 recalls the exposition by the poet in Book ii of De rerum natura (238-239 and 296-298) where, after demonstrating that the motion of bodies is linear,110 Lucretius affirms that all things must need be borne on

108 or vedi la speranza e il desiderio del ripatriarsi e ritornare nel primo chaos fa a si-militudine della farfalla al lume delluomo che con continui desideri sempre con festa aspet-ta la nuova primavera []. e non si avvede che desidera la sua disfazione. Ma questo desi-derio ne in quella quintessenza, spirito degli elementi, che trovandosi rinchiusa per anima dello umano corpo desidera sempre ritornare al suo mandatario. e vo che sappi che questo medesimo desiderio n quella quintessenza, compagna della natura, e luomo il model-lo del mondo; Leonardo da Vinci, Il codice Arundel 263 nella British library, cit., ii, P 1v (Richter, ii, 1162). in the same works Leonardo endorses his lucretian vision with the fol-lowing worda: contra: perch la natura non ordin che luno animale non vivessi della mor-te dellaltro? Pro: La natura essendo vaga e pigliando piacere del creare e fare continue vite e forme, perch cognoscie che sono accrescimento della sua terrestre materia, volenterosa e pi presta col suo creare che il tempo col consumare e per ha ordinato che molti anima-li sieno cibo luno dellaltro. e non soddisfaciendo questo a simile desiderio, ispesso manda fuori certi avvelenati vapori e pestilenti e continua peste sopra le gran moltiplicazioni e con-gregazioni danimali e massime sopra gli omini, che fanno grande accrescimento, perch altri animali non si cibano di loro. e tolte via le cagioni, mancheranno gli effetti.

contra: adunque questa terra cierca di mancare di sua vita desiderando la continua mol-tiplicazione []. spesso gli effetti somigliano le loro cagioni. Gli animali sono esempio de la vita mondiale; ibid. (Richter, ii, 1219).

109 ogni moto seguiter tanto la via del suo corso per retta linia, quanto durer in esso la natura della violenza fatta dal suo motore; Leonardo da Vinci, Il Codice Atlantico, cit., fol. 303r, formerly 109ra. cf. Codice sul volo degli uccelli, fol. 12r.

110 to explain the phenomena of molecular motion and aggregation, Lucretius stated that at indeterminate moments and places, atoms might deviate from their trajectory to a small de-gree, only to pursue their rectilinear motion along a different path. For a recent and innova-tive interpretation of the Lucretian theory of motion, see the monograph by d. fowLer, Lucretius on Atomic Motion. A Commentary on de rerum natura 2.1332, oxford 2002.

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through the calm void, moving at equal rate with unequal weights [] where-fore the bodies of the first-beginnings [atoms] in the ages past moved with the same motion as now, and hereafter will be borne on for ever in the same way. in addition, Leonardos theory that the earth was not at the centre of the uni-verse 111 echoes Lucretius conviction that there could be no centre to the cos-mos (De rerum natura, i, 1070-71).

Leonardo and the Lucretians

now that Leonardos direct knowledge of De rerum natura has been veri-fied, the origins and chronology of his interest remain to be determined. if the dating of the manuscript on chemistry cited in note 83 is correct, it is difficult to imagine that Leonardo would have been able to consult the first edition of the poem, which was published in very few copies in 1473. it is more probable that his first exposure to Lucretius was through a manuscript copy of the poem or through his numerous contacts with humanists and naturalistis.

all the same, the initial question regarding the artists knowledge of Latin remains. according to Laurenza, Leonardo was almost completely ignorant of Latin 112 up to the age of 35, that is, up to the second half of the 1480s. How-ever, considering that the vast majority of the works from which he had obtained the rudiments of science and technology (including, as we have seen, the texts of diogenes Laertius and roberto Valturio) were written in Latin, the artist could not have remained unversed in the language for so long.

one can easily imagine that spending time in the company of such bril-liant intellectuals as Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni argiropulo, Machiavelli, amerigo Vespucci, Paolo dal Pozzo toscanelli,113 and perhaps Bonincontri, would have kindled in the young artist the desire to learn the language of the classical au-thorities in order to be able to probe more deeply into the secrets of nature. in any case, at least a nodding acquaintance with the motifs and themes of antiq-uity was de rigeur for a painter

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