Leonardo and Lucretius PDF

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 relationship 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
Leonard 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 artists prescient genius. In addition to its philological contribution, the tudes profoundly influenced subsequent studies on Leonardos sources, leading to a divergence 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 Liter
ary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, compiled and edited from the original manuscripts by J. P.
R ichter, commentary by C. Pedretti, 2 vols., Oxford 1977, hereafter cited as Richter and followed by the volume and paragraph number, or the anthology by Solmi (Leonardo da Vinci, Frammenti letterari e filosofici, a cura di E. Solmi, Firenze 1979). For the citations of Lucretius, 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 Citti, Paolo Galluzzi, Ivan Garofalo, Domenico Laurenza, Daniela Majerna and Carlo Pedretti
for their invaluable suggestions.
1
P. Duhem, Etudes sur Leonard de Vinci: ceux quil a lus et ceux qui lont lu, 3 vols., Paris 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 thinkers 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 continued 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 belonging to Leonardo, dating to 1503-1504, has not helped to resolve this question, 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 mentioned above. While I have sought to identify the significant correspondences
between passages written by the two, it seemed to me necessary first and foremost 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 scientist coincided with the rediscovery of Lucretius and various aspects of the natural philosophy of Epicureanism. Although the text of De rerum natura had been
circulating for some time in manuscript form, the editio princeps was only printed 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), cul2
L. Reti, The Two Unpublished Manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci in the Biblioteca Na
cional 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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Leonardo and Lucretius

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 numerous errors. The editor, Pier Candido, dedicated his work to Tommaso Soderini, a Florentine statesman who knew Machiavelli well5 and was a great admirer of Leonardo. Eight years earlier, in 1504, the Florentine mathematician
Raffaele Francus had dedicated In Lucretium paraphrasis cum appendicem de an
imi immortalitatem6 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 formally 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 nat
ura 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 undertook 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 pe
renne 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, Venezia, Giuseppe Antonelli, 1824, VII, p. 1797. Of Muscettola we only know that he was originally 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 Antoni
no Castaldo: libri quattro nei quali si descrivono gli avvenimenti pi memorabili succeduti nel
Regno di Napoli sotto il governo del vicer Pietro di Toledo e de vicer 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 Niccoli9 and the opening 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 Bracciolini 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 ecclesiastical 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. Embracing the atomic theory of Epicurianism meant rejecting the notion that a divine act was responsible for the creation of the universe and negating the existence 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 Germany 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 Ital
ian 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 posie 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 Renaissan
ce Humanism: Marcello Adriani and the Recovery of Lucretius, in Interpretations of Renaissan
ce 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 universe, man could not claim a role different from that of the other natural entities 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 mortal and the gods were powerless to oppose the autonomy of a force that Lucretius 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 introduced 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 pernicious doctrine regarding the mortality of the soul. All the same, Bonincontri incorporates 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 astrology 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 morality, but also as was consonant with his scientific interests14 the study of natural philosophy. Indeed, Bonincontri utilized such terms as machina mundi, semi
na 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 Bonin
contri 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 Lucretium meis quae puer adhuc nescio commentabar deinde perceperim, haec enim sicut et Plato tragoedias elegiasque suas Vulcano dedi; cit. in P. O. Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinia
num, 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 glance16 and that the ideas of Lucretius bolstered a new vision of the world, making its influence felt even in philosophical circles that were apparently poles apart from the Epicurean credo.
One example was the scholar and poet Angelo Poliziano, who officially supported 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 Biblioteca 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 pathological 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, Botticellis 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 enthusiasm 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 Ri
nascimento Italiano, Firenze 1992, p. 85.
17
A. Poliziano, Rusticus (1483), 210-221. In Nutricia, the last book of Sylvae, Poliziano 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: Fici
no, 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. Poliziano, 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 Rena
scences 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 study of M. Levi DAncona, Botticellis Primavera. A Botanical Interpretation Including Astrolo
gy, 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 Leonardo 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 contain explicit references to the problematic vision of progress delineated by Lucretius 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 Piero 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 confronted 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 knowing how to read, he plays the commentator to Dante and takes his name in vain?; G. Vasari, 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 Vin
ci 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 compositions, 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 Dionysos; 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 contemplation of his overgrown garden26 brings to mind the aphorism of Leonardo
savage he is who saves himself27 which captures in a nutshell the proud
contention of the unlettered that it was they, rather than the humanists, who retained the primacy in terms of their knowledge of nature and the ability to portray 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 omitted 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 Epicurean doctrine, whose cornerstone was the study of physics with the aim of freeing 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
Vasari, Le Vite, cit., p. 588.
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.
25
26
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used the same expression (delle cose naturali) in a reference to Lucretius30 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 reference to Leonardos Epicureanism but also because, among the numerous studies that have appeared on the sources used by Leonardo, very few have entertained 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 philosophy 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
See infra.
[] 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 thorie corpuscolaire de Lonard de Vinci, in Lonard de Vinci et lex
prience scientifique au XVIe 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, Lipo
tesi 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 offer a divergent range of views. Hooykaas categorically affirms that Leonardo lut certainement Lucrce, but does not offer any evidence in support of his assertion, preferring to retrace 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 delle 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 Wind
sor, 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 antichi. 165. Ancora usavano per stendardo uno fasciculo derba legato a una pertica; Leonar30
31
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However, as Edmondo Solmi noted at the beginning of the last century, this
quotation was actually drawn from a secondary source37 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 inclined 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 another 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 possession 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 reading.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
Vinci, I manoscritti dellInstitut de France, Il Manoscritto B, ed. by A. Marinoni, formerly 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 different opinion and argues that Leonardo is quoting directly Lucretius according to his memory 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, Raccolta Vinciana, XXII, 1987, pp. 291-342. A balanced consideration of the list in the Madrid Codex 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 Leo
nardo. Nel laboratorio del Genio Universale, a cura di P. Galluzzi, Firenze 2006, pp. 123-149.
do da
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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 suggested46 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 transparent glass,48 while there is no reference to Heros theory of matter in Valla.
We must conclude that Leonardos source was either Heros original treatise 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 Leonardo drew inspiration and ideas without recording the titles of their works in
the lists that have come down to us.
Solmi50 concluded that Leonardo had a direct knowledge of De rerum natu
ra based on the evidence of a single passage written around 1513:
Anaxagoras: Every thing proceeds from every thing, and every thing becomes 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 Leonardo 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 Venice some books by Archimedes and by Hero the mathematician and it is reasonable to presume 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, Firenze, 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 torna in ogni cosa; perch ci ch nelli elementi, fatto da essi elementi; Leonardo da Vinci, 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
Leonardo 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 Leonardo 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 Lucretius not yet proven, especially since in addition to Hero Leonardo was well
acquainted with Vitruvius, Ovid and Pliny, whose works are filled with Lucretian 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 translated edition by Bernardino Celerio, which appeared in Venice in 1480.57 However Celerios work, and indeed all of the vernacular versions that appeared during 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 fi
losofia 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 principally 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 plurima 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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Marco Beretta
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 nothing to say.58
It is almost certain then that the version of Diogenes Laertius Vita de filo
sofi 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 century.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 astronomy and the size of the planets. The passage that interested him, from Epicurus Letter to Pythocles (91), reads:
The size of the sun [and moon] and the other stars is for us what it appears to be; and in reality it is either [slightly] greater than what we see or slightly less or of the same size: for so too fires on earth when looked at from a distance 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 equidistant from the centre of the earth. Any one looking at it never sees it diminished in size at whatever distance.61
Ibid., c. 34v. The account of the life of Epicurus appears on 34v-35r.
I have only been able to consult the 1493 folio edition published in Venice, Pelegrinum Pasquali (Book X can be found on cc. Lxxxxix-Cxii) and the edition printed in Bologna in 1495, Iacobus de Regazonibus (Book X is on cc. Lxxxxviiiv-Cvir). Even if Traversari 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
58
59
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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 collection 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 artist is reiterating one of Lucretius key arguments against the anthropomorphization of religion, which he could not have learned of simply by reading the letters of Epicurus published by Diogenes.
Returning to Leonardos passage on astronomy, he seeks to explain Epicurus 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 perceiving that the diminution in the shadow was insensibly slight by reason of the remoteness 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 published in M. Marullo, Epigrammatum libri IV. Hymnorum naturalium libri IV, Firenze, Societas Colubris Compagnia del Drago, 26 Nov. 1497, cc. 75r-85r, a collection that Marullo dedicated 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 Marullo 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 dellom
bra 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 savvide 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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Marco Beretta
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 reflections 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, joining 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 Florence during the second half of the Quattrocento, without much curiosity as to
their original source. Leonardo uses the terms simulacri from Lucretius and ido
li 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 cannot by any means be considered a reference to the ideas in Book IV of De Re
rum 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 Lu
crezio. 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 vision, 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 notions regarding the variations in colour experienced during visual perception. Although Janis Bell has traced Leonardos theories to a careful study of the pseudo-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 Aristotle, 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 transmits 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 percussione de razzi solari []; Leonardo da Vinci, Hammer Codex, fol. 4r. (in Bell, Aristot
le as a Source for Leonardo, cit., p. 104).
70
Nunc ea quae sentire videmus cumque necessest / ex insensilibus tamen omnia confiteare / principiis constare. neque id manufesta refutant / nec contra pugnant, in promptu cognita 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). Similarly, Lucretius often used the adjective minutis when referring to these atoms (e.g., 3, 42526). The term corpora caeca appears with equal frequency.
71
Quella parte del corpo ombroso che fia illuminata, mander allocchio la similitudine 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 diplomatica e critica di A. Marinoni, Firenze 1990, fol. 20r (Richter, I, 282). In the Leicester Codex (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 chiarezza dellaria nascie dallacqua che in quella s risoluta e fattasi in ses bili graniculi, li quali,
preso il lume del sole dallopposita parte, re dono 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 formed 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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Marco Beretta
Laertius Vitae and spending time in the company of humanists who had studied 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 philosophy which was designed to offer a coherent and omni-comprehensive alternative 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 demonstrated72 contrasted 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 divisible 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 vessel will be without wine.73 Finally, in his writings on anatomy Leonardo rarely
attempted to describe bodily structures in corpuscular terms, preferring the theories of Galen who, as is well known, vehemently attacked the physician Asclepiades 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 deplored 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
Leonardo
72
p. 89.
da
Vinci, Frammenti letterari e filosofici, a cura di E. Solmi, Firenze 1979,
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. Lucretius, 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.
~ 358 ~

natura] and the human race, teaches how nature acts among mortals.75 He concludes: All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.76 While Leonardos 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 philosopher 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 external reality. The eye registered the continual mutations in natural phenomena
with passive objectivity, so that even illusions were not to be blamed on the organ 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 certain specific and circumscribed phenomena. In addition to simulacri and ido
li, 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 invisible 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 spectare 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 perlucente vitro aut speculari lapide obuctas (De Opificio Dei, 8, 11). While it appears that Lactantius was a source known to Leonardo (Richter, II, 1438), scholars have not found any mention 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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Marco Beretta
cule (minute particles), particole (particles), attimi and attomi (atoms), and finally elementi (elements). Not all of these designations were drawn from Lucretius 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 sources 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, although 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 conceptual 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 correspondence 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 variant 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 justify their hopes of achieving the transmutation of substances Lucretius philosophy 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 delle 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 rerum / 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 therefore it is not possible to turn base metal into gold.
Leonardos debt to the atomic theory of Lucretius is reflected in another crucial 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 somehow 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 indeterminate 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 raindrops 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 particles 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
conceit89 of a sunbeam crossing a dark room that reveals a vortex of tiny parti86
M. Beretta, Lucrezio e la chimica, Automata. Journal of Nature, Science and Technology 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 figura, chelle son quasi invisibile per s, ma molte in quantit son visibile: e queste son le particole 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, trascrizione 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 domorum: / 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 penetrate through some window into a dark place.90 It was perhaps the image of
the window that led Martin Kemp91 to link this passage to Isidore of Sevilles
Etymologiae (XIII, II, 1).92 However, not even the erudite Spanish bishops encyclopaedia appears in any of the artists lists, and in our view his succinct exposition on atomism could not have provided a sufficient context for the variety 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 ambivalent 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 nature balanced in a precarious equilibrium, with opposing forces locked in eternal
combat, could not have sprung from a providentialist view of the cosmos. Rather, in keeping with those studies that had already demonstrated to him the infinite 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 / quale sit in magno iactari semper inani. / dum taxat, rerum magnarum parva potest res / exemplare 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 penetran 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 fatta dal mobbile []; Leonardo da Vinci, Il manoscritto F, cit., fol. 74v.
91
There is no evidence that Leonardo ever seriously considered adopting the basic tenets 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, Leo
nardo 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 inane totius mundi irrequietis motibus volitare, et huc atque illuc ferri dicuntur, sicut tenuissimi 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 minutias videmus in sole, cum per fenestram radiosa ac lumen inmiserit.
93
P. Galluzzi, Leonardo da Vincis Concept of Nature. More Cruel Stepmother than Moth
er, 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 nat
ura]. 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 nature [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 fecundity that characterize her as a fully self-sufficient entity. In his turn Leonardo alludes, just after the passage cited above, to the power of nature to create wondrous 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, Leonardo believed that the fecundity of nature was opposed by an equally potent force
which together with its silent accomplice, time, the consumer of all things96
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 del
la terra], and whose mass, standing between the water and the element of fire,
remained much restricted and deprived of its indispensable moisture; the rivers 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 animals, 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 continue 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 tenpo 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 coorta; 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 strikingly, 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 description of a desolate wasteland and the progressive breakdown of natures equilibriums, Leonardo found himself suspended between these two extremes.
The dating of these passages makes it plausible that Leonardo was introduced 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 humanists 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 infinite 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, moreodel 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 acqua. 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 mancher la generazione umana. E a questo modo la tera la fertile e fruttuosa tera abandonata rimar 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 fredda 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. 202216.
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, quoniam 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 Lorenzo Bonincontri inaugurated at the university in Florence around the year 1475; M. Baratta, 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 sufficient 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 infinite 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 biological 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 notebooks on anatomy:
The body of anything which is nourished continually dies and it is continually 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 nourishment 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 Vinci, 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 tempo 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 rinasce, 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 nutrimento 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 cycle in which matter is consumed and renewed but always conserved, thus ensuring 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 exist among the elements without a body.105 Furthermore, even nutrition is explained 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 possibility 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 exchange between organic and inorganic matter, and the self-sufficient, chemical
regulation of the processes of life and death are described by Leonardo in Lucretian 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 anato
mici, 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 deserted 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 eaten, 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 outdated. 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 hotly 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 [indicato nel disegno anatomico della cavit orale] e potrebbe cadere qualche particula per la bocca d, e passare per c, che sarebbe mortale. Ma la natura ha ordinato li sacculi ab, li quali ricevano 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 nature, 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 ideas 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 violence made by its motion109 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 similitudine della farfalla al lume delluomo che con continui desideri sempre con festa aspetta la nuova primavera []. E non si avvede che desidera la sua disfazione. Ma questo desiderio 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 modello 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 following worda: Contra: perch la natura non ordin che luno animale non vivessi della morte 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 animali 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 congregazioni 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 moltiplicazione []. 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 degree, only to pursue their rectilinear motion along a different path. For a recent and innovative interpretation of the Lucretian theory of motion, see the monograph by D. Fowler, Lu
cretius on Atomic Motion. A Commentary on De rerum natura 2.1-332, Oxford 2002.
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through the calm void, moving at equal rate with unequal weights [] wherefore 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 universe111 echoes Lucretius conviction that there could be no centre to the cosmos (De rerum natura, I, 1070-71).
Leonardo and the Lucretians
Now that Leonardos direct knowledge of De rerum natura has been verified, 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
Latin112 up to the age of 35, that is, up to the second half of the 1480s. However, 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 brilliant 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 authorities 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 Antiquity was de rigeur for a painter with ambitions and, given the reputation of Lucretius during the second half of the Quattrocento, it is only to be expected that
Leonardo would have wished to learn more about an author who had produced
such original and innovative view on nature.
111
Come la terra non nel mezzo del cerchio del sole, n nel mezzo del mondo, ma
ben nel mezzo de sua elementi, compagni e uniti con lei; e chi stessi nella luna, quandella
insieme col sole sotto a noi, questa nostra terra collelemento dellacqua parrebbe e farebbe
offizio tal qual fa la luna a noi; Leonardo da Vinci, Il manoscritto F, cit., fol. 41b (Richter,
II, 858). All the same, Leonardo was not a Copernican ante litteram and for this very reason it is probable that in jotting down this image he was taking his cue from Lucretius or
some other author with similar views.
112
D. Laurenza, Leonardo. La scienza trasfigurata in arte, Milano 1999, p. 23.
113
Solmi, Scritti vinciani, cit., p. 70.
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In addition to possibly having studied under Bonincontri, in the period between 1478 and 1480 Leonardo had occasion to frequent the circle of Marsi
lio Ficino114 who, as we have seen, was familiar with De rerum natura even if he
did not appear to be interested in the philosophy of nature. The artist was also
a friend of Leon Battista Alberti, who had made a thorough study of the poem,
going so far as to translate some of the Latin verses into Italian.115 Moreover, as
we have already mentioned, Botticelli was at this time working on a painting that
contained echoes of lines from the poem.
Leonardos critique of the pseudo-scientific experiments of alchemists, in
which he used Lucretian terms translated into Italian to support his arguments,
was written around 1490 and there are indications that in this period he may
have also begun a work entitled Delle cose naturali.
Leonardo was in Venice for a brief period in 1500, and may have been aware
of the publication by Aldus Manutius of the first of his two editions of De re
rum natura. The artist returned to Florence in 1501 and, eager as ever to add to
his scientific knowledge, sought out Niccol Machiavelli with whom he established, beginning in 1503, a solid and enduring friendship.116 As Sergio Bertelli has pointed out on more than one occasion,117 Machiavelli showed an interest in De rerum natura from a very young age and in 1497 made a copy of the
poem with the intention of publishing a critical edition,118 possibly in collaboration with Michele Marullo. This interest was reinforced when at the end of the
1490s Machiavelli attended the lectures of Michele Andreani, who did not hesitate to present the philosophy of Epicurianism in a positive light. Machiavellis
own views are reflected clearly in his condemnation of Savonarolas revolutionary
ideas; accusing the friar of bad faith, he marshalled arguments that were reminiscent of those raised by Lucretius against organized religions, which perpetrated
their abuses by exploiting the credulity of the masses.119 Similarly, in highlight114
Furthermore, Paul Oskar Kristeller has suggested that the (now lost) portrait of Hera
clitus and Bramante that hung in the studiolo of Ficini around 1474 could have been an early
work by Leonardo, and that the painting executed by Bramante in Milan may have been based
on a suggestion by Leonardo. See the correspondence between Kristeller and Carlo Pedretti,
Heraclitus and Democritus, Achademia Leonardi Vinci, VI, 1993, pp. 144-145.
115
Gambino, Alberti lettore di Lucrezio. Motivi lucreziani nel Theogenius, cit.
116
R. D. Masters, Machiavelli, Leonardo and the Science of Power, Notre Dame and London 1996; Id., Fortune is a River. Leonardo da Vinci and Machiavellis Magnificent Dream to
Change the Course of Florentine History, New York 1998.
117
S. Bertelli, Noterelle Machiavelliane. Un codice di Lucrezio e Terenzio,Rivista storica italiana, LXXIII, 1961, pp. 544-555; Id., Noterelle Machiavelliane II. Ancora su Lucrezio
e Machiavelli, ibid., LXXVI, 1964, pp. 774-792; Id., Machiavelli and Soderini, Renaissance
Quarterly, XXVIII, 1975, pp. 1-16.
118
The manscript studied by Bertelli is conserved in the Biblioteca Vaticana (call number,
Rossigno 884).
119
Al popolo fiorentino non pare essere n ignorante n rozzo; nondimeno da frate Gi-
~ 369 ~
Marco Beretta
ing the importance of the birth of laws and civilization in the passage of man
from a savage state to the first forms of socialization, Machiavelli was reiterating
a theme embraced by all the Lucretians in Florence, that of the immanent, material, and largely random causes of human progress.120
For a short period around 1503 Leonardo enjoyed close ties with Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici, who cultivated an interest in the natural sciences
and seems to have harboured a certain sympathy for the philosophy of Epicurus.
Perhaps in order to set himself apart from those relatives of the cadet branch
of the family who were passionate partisans of Platonism, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco regularly supported the study of authors such as Lucretius and disciplines
such as the natural sciences and geography, in what could be viewed as a veritable programme of cultural reform.121
At the beginning of the Cinquecento, when the fame of De rerum natu
ra was at its height, another friend of Machiavelli and Leonardo Amerigo
Vespucci122 published a series of letters recounting the discoveries that he had
made during his remarkable voyage to South America in 1501-1502. Originally addressed to his patron Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, this work (which was subsequently translated into Latin and published as Mondus Novus) enjoyed enormous success not only because of its contents, novel and astounding as they
were, but also due to the scientific methodology used by the author to gather his data and the cultivated style of his exposition. After detailing in his first
letter a new method of calculating longitude from the stars,123 and underlining
the importance of mastering this problem if one hoped to surpass the knowledge of Antiquity, in his third letter dated 1502 Vespucci went on to describe
the rational animals that he had encountered during the course of his explorations. Here he borrows, although without citing his source explicitly, the image
that Lucretius had drawn of primitive man, and identifies a direct correspondence between De rerum natura and what he himself had seen. Thus, Vespucci
writes:
rolamo Savonarola fu persuaso che parlava con Dio; Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Li
vio (XI) in N. Machiavelli, Il Principe e altre opere politiche, a cura di D. Cantimori, Milano 1983, p. 141.
120
Ibid., pp. 110-111.
121
Lorenzo however passed away in the year 1503.
122
The acquaintance between Vespucci and Leonardo is portrayed by Govi (Leonardo,
letterato e scienziato, cit., p. 90) as follows: Amerigo Vespucci, conterraneo e amico del Vinci (il quale ne avea lasciato un ritratto, posseduto gi dal Vasari, ora smarrito), dovette al certo intrattenersi con lui de suoi vasti progetti, de suoi viaggi, delle sue scoperte; non quindi
strano, che Leonardo siasi innamorato degli studi geografici, e abbia consacrato loro qualche
parte delle sue meditazioni.
123
Il mondo nuovo di Amerigo Vespucci. Scritti vespucciani e paravespucciani, a cura di
M. Pozzi, Alessandria 1993, p. 62.
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They hold to no law or faith. They live according to nature. They do not
recognize the immortality of the soul. Between them they do not hold their own
property, because everything is shared. They do not assign names to kingdoms
or provinces; they have no king, nor do they obey anyone; every man is master
of himself. They do not administer justice, which is not necessary to them, because they have no code of law.124
Vespucci does cite Epicurus in Mondus Novus and, with reference once again
to the customs of the tribes he came across during his voyage, discloses:
They have neither temples nor religion, nor do they even worship idols.
What else? They have an unrestricted freedom to live, such as would be more
appropriate to Epicurus than to the Stoics.125
And in his last letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco:
In these people we do not know that they keep any laws, nor can we say
that they die Jewish or worse still pagan, because we did not see them make any
sacrifices, nec etiam, they do not maintain a house of worship. Their life I would
judge to be epicurean.126
Such a conclusion obviously could not have been based on an attentive reading of the final verses in Book V of De rerum natura. In contrast, as some observations on the religious beliefs of the peoples of India show, Leonardo was quite
aware of the discussions being conducted in intellectual circles on the customs
and beliefs in foreign lands.127
But it was not only from friends that Leonardo would have been able to learn
about Lucretius. Through the good offices of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, in 1503
Leonardo obtained access to the library of Santo Spirito,128 where a unique collection of books originally belonging to Niccol de Niccoli was conserved, among
which De rerum natura would certainly have held pride of place.
Given the stimulating environment in Florence, where ideas inspired by Lucretius and references to his work circulated freely, it seems to us more than like Ibid., p. 87.
Ibid., p. 115.
126
Ibid., p. 144.
127
Ma ben vi ricordo, che li lor simulacri non sien da voi mangiati, come ancora in alcuna regione dellIndia, ch quando li simulacri operano alcuno miraculo, secondo loro, li
sacerdoti li tagliano a pezzi (essendo di legno) e ne danno a tutti quelli del paese non sanza; Leonardo da Vinci, Frammenti letterari e filosofici, cit., p. 181.
128
Libri incatenati, cf. Leonardo da Vinci, Il Codice Atlantico, cit., f. 801r, formerly f. 293v, Libreria di sancto Marcho, libreria de sancto Spirito; Il Codice Atlantico, cit.,
f.331r, formerly 120rd.
124
125
~ 371 ~
Marco Beretta
ly that Leonardo, during his second period there, would have participated actively in the cultural life of the city.
However, Florence did not offer the only arena where ideas could be tested against De rerum natura. When he returned to Milan, Leonardo would have
found especially in Pavia circles that were anything but hostile to the new
cultural currents. He was able, for example, to conduct anatomical studies in accordance with the teachings of Galen under the tutelage of Marcantonio Della
Torre, professor of anatomy at the university in Pavia.129 Although little is known
about the life and work of Della Torre, it is worth noting that one of his fellow
townsmen and intimate friends, the physician Girolamo Fracastoro of Verona,130
had studied De rerum natura while working out his theories on the nature of
contagious diseases, in particular syphilis. Furthermore, the second edition of the
poem was printed in Verona, where Della Torre was living, and it is conceivable that the anatomist would have shared the interest of his Venetian colleagues
in the work of Lucretius.
Hence there was no dearth of opportunities for Leonardo to learn about
the philosophy of Lucretius and, as we hope to have sufficiently demonstrated,
it would have been difficult for him to escape the influence of the spirited debates that were going on in the intellectual circles frequented by him. In addition, as many of Leonardos notes show, he possessed such an exact knowledge
of specific points in De rerum natura that any doubts regarding his direct acquaintance with the work must be undermined. It is of course likely that, as was
so often the case with this polymathic artist, his study of Lucretius was selective
and intermittent; indeed, as we have seen, on more than one occasion Leonardo
could entertain the ideas of Lucretius simultaneously with those of other, completely different authors. It must be said in closing that Leonardos admiration
for the Latin poets philosophy probably extended well beyond the single points
discussed here for, as Vasari had already intimated, the artist found in De rerum
natura a vision of nature that was congenial to his own progressive views, joined
to a philosophy that was in full syntony with his personal search for a deeper understanding of nature based on the principles immanent to its complexity.
129
See the entry by A. De Ferrari in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani. A study on Della Torre will be published shortly by D. Laurenza, In Search of a Phantom: Marcantonio del
la Torre and Leonardos Late Anatomical Studies, in Gli studi anatomici di Leonardo, a cura di
D. Laurenza e A. Nova (forthcoming).
130
On Della Torre and Fracastoro, see the two chapters by Gian Maria Varanini and
Giuseppe Ongaro published in Girolamo Fracastoro. Fra medicina, filosofia e scienze della na
tura, a cura di A. Pastore e E. Peruzzi, Firenze 2006, pp. 7-54.
~ 372 ~

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Marco Beretta

Leonardo and Lucretius*

E se lui [il poeta] parla de cieli, egli si

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Leonardo and Lucretius

Leonardo and Lucretius

Leonardo and Lucretius

Leonardo and Lucretius

Leonardo and Lucretius

Leonardo and Lucretius

Leonardo and Lucretius

It is highly significant that Lucretius too employs an architectural analogy that

Leonardo and Lucretius

Vinci, Frammenti letterari e filosofici, a cura di E. Solmi, Firenze 1979,

Leonardo and Lucretius

Leonardo and Lucretius

Leonardo and Lucretius

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