Leonardotheka: Digitally Preserving Leonardo da Vinci’s Legacy

Leonardotheka, funded by Italy's Ministry of Culture & Museo Galileo, digitally preserves Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts like Codex Atlanticus. It champions intellectual ownership, enhancing research by combining folios & revealing interdisciplinary thought processes.

Half the funding for Leonardotheka originates from the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Colleges and Research. The rest is provided by the Museo Galileo, mainly via ticket revenue.

Leonardotheka: Mission & Funding

The director of the Museo Galileo, which has actually led the Leonardotheka task, states it establishes a “compelling criterion for exactly how social institutions can and have to preserve intellectual ownership of their electronic endeavours”

He adds: “It stands in calculated contrast to 2 just as reductive propensities: the expansion of common virtual libraries, which opportunity breadth of material over depth of scholarship; and the growing initiative to transform Leonardo’s legacy right into a commercial asset, spruced up under the reputable role of the so-called ‘cultural market’.”.

Matthew Landrus, a professional on Leonardo at the University of Oxford, expects the brand-new source to “aid speed up and enhance study for a wider team of people”, especially by combining the Codex Atlanticus and Windsor folios. “One benefit,” he informs The Art Newspaper, “is to see Leonardo’s thought processes, the method he utilized his sheets of paper, what sort of interdisciplinary reasoning was involved in each job, and just how hectic he was, researching for jobs, working on different jobs for numerous customers and associates at the exact same time.”.

Digitally Preserving Leonardo’s Manuscripts

When Leonardo died in 1519, his collection of manuscripts was inherited by his pupil, Francesco Melzi. Later these products ended up being the residential property of the Italian artist Pompeo Leoni, who controversially got down and cut the folios, dividing the product into two albums (one covered science and even more technological subjects, the other concentrated on Leonardo’s figurative and creative functions).

“Leonardotheka includes 50 validated web page reconstructions, in which little page pieces held at Windsor have actually been returned to the pages of the Codex Atlanticus to restore their initial context,” says a job declaration.

Among the reconstruction reunites folio 399r of the Codex Atlanticus with folio 912345r from Windsor, combining an illustration of an equine with a written message on the corresponding classic Regisole rider monolith in Pavia, near Milan.

Roberto Ferrari, the executive supervisor of the Museo Galileo, states in a declaration that the model for Leonardotheka sets a “compelling precedent for just how social institutions can and should maintain intellectual possession of their electronic efforts, resisting the temptation to hand over such responsibilities to commercial systems”.

Project Oversight & Manuscript Legacy

In the very early 17th century, Polidoro Calchi, Leoni’s son-in-law, possessed the manuscripts. He sold the Codex Atlanticus album to Count Galeazzo Arconati, who donated it to the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in 1637. The other album having the figurative jobs entered the Royal Collection around 1670, probably as a present to King Charles II.

Officials at Museo Galileo in Florence supervised Leonardotheka, a ten-year effort entailing 3 organisations: the Royal Collection Count On, the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana and the Biblioteca Leonardiana in Vinci, Tuscany.