Come, oh men, to see the miracles that such studies will disclose to nature.
The codices are an extraordinary glimpse into the mind of Leonardo, his life, his discoveries and his emotions, and are all that remains of the genius from Vinci, in addition to his paintings.
Of Leonardo’s vast and incessant output throughout his life, over five thousand pages of notes – approximately one fifth of the total according to historians – have come down to us, created in his characteristic “mirror-image” hand-writing, which runs from right to left.

The Codex Atlanticus is the largest existing collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci, which were organized in the late sixteenth century by the sculptor Pompeo Leoni, who disassembled many original documents, intending to separate the artistic drawings from the technical drawings and unite the scientific pages.
Between 1637 and 1796, part of the manuscripts were kept in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. Soon after Napoleon’s arrival in Milan, however, he ordered their removal to Paris. After half a century, only part of these had been returned to Milan, while some remained in Paris and others in Spain, where several were discovered only in 1966 in the archives of Madrid’s National Library. The Codex takes its name from its large size, 650 x 440 mm, used at the time for Geographic Atlases. In its current configuration, after restoration and division into 12 volumes in the 1960s and recent separation, the Codex now consists of 1,119 individual pages.

The material embraces the entire intellectual life of Leonardo for a period of over forty years, from 1478 to 1519. It contains 1,750 drawings and contributions to every form of knowledge, from mechanics, mathematics, astronomy, botany and geography to town planning projects and architecture, studies for paintings and sculpture, optics and perspective. His drawings of devices of war, machines for descending to the bottom of the sea or for flying are well known to all and reproduced on many objects of design or posters. The Codex also contains numerous personal notes by Leonardo, fables and philosophical reflections.