Moreover, whether Leonardo appreciated it or not, he was surrounded by evidence of the Chinese impact on the Renaissance, such as Alberti’s books on perspective in painting and architecture. The basis of Alberti’s work was the mathematics he had acquired from the Chinese explanation of the solar system. Replacing the ecliptic coordinate system used by the Arabs, Greeks, and Romans with the Chinese equatorial system was a fundamental break with the old world, overturning the authority of Aristotle and Ptolomy.
However, that is a far cry from claiming that Leonardo copied existing Chinese inventions. One thing we can be sure of: Leonardo did not meet anyone from Zheng He’s fleets when they visited Florence in 1434. So it appeared that the similarities noted above were due to an extraordinary series of coincidences. Years of research by the 1421 team had apparently been fruitless.
Photographic Insert 2
Venice, the heart of Renaissance Europe’s maritime empire.
This map in the Doge’s Palace clearly depicts the northwest coastline of Canada and North America set “upside down”—with north at the bottom, as was the practice of Chinese cartographers. The roundels describe the sources of the information used to draw it: Marco Polo and Niccolò da Conti.
Detailed working shows the conversion of Waldseemüeller’s map into a globe with striking results.
Schöener’s globes of 1515 and 1520 clearly depict North and South America, and the desolate Straits of Magellan supposedly “first discovered” after the maps had already been drawn.
Universalis Cosmographiae, Waldseemüeller’s map of 1507, and his green globe of 1505/06 clearly depict the Americas with remarkable accuracy for the time, and corroborate Toscanelli’s story of meeting the Chinese delegation in Florence.
The Columbus map, CGA5A, tallies up with the Waldseemüeller map, showing curious “rhumb” lines that extend out across the Atlantic, all ending on a circle.
16
LEONARDO, DI GIORGIO, TACCOLA, AND ALBERTI
Then I had a stroke of luck. While on holiday in Toledo in 2005, Marcella and I happened upon a wonderful exhibition about Leonardo da Vinci. It was here that I was first introduced to the great works of Francesco di Giorgio Martini and the profound influence that these had on Leonardo.
In my ignorance, I had never heard of Francesco di Giorgio. Yet it was obvious that he was important; he had taught Leonardo about waterways. I decided to find out more on our return to London.
In the wonderful British Library I found first that Francesco seemed to have invented the parachute before Leonardo. For what follows I am indebted to Lynn White, Jr., author of “The Invention of the Parachute” in Technology and Culture. Dr. White wrote:
The first known European parachute has been that sketched by Leonardo in the Codex Atlanticus on Folio 381v, that Carlo Pedretti dates circa 1485…. However, British Museum Additional Manuscript 34113, folio 200v. shows a parachute which may be in a somewhat independent tradition since it is conical.
This rich and massive volume [in the British Library] seems to have been unnoticed by historians of technology. Can it be dated and placed?
The Manuscript [34113], a quarto of 261 folios of paper, was purchased by the British Museum in 1891…. Folios 21r. to 250v. [are] a treatise on mechanics, hydraulics, etc. with a multitude of drawings….
Folios 22r. to 53v. are nearly identical in content and sequence with Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Manuscript Palatinum 766, an autograph of the famous Sienese engineer Mariano detto il Taccola (who died in the 1450’s), that was dated by him (on folio 45v) to 19 Jan. 1433. Most of the remaining material in British Museum Additional Manuscript 34113 as far as folio 250v. [the parachute drawings are in folio 200v. and 189v.] is the sort of thing we have come to associate with manuscripts long credited to Francesco di Giorgio of Siena (1439–1501). Indeed folio 129r. [before parachute drawings] is entitled “Della providentia della chuerra sicondo Maestro Francesco da Siena,” and on folio 194v. [after parachute drawing], next to the picture of a large file, is written “Lima sorda sichondo il detto Maestro Francesco di Giorgio da Siena.”1
Dr. White analyzed the watermarks of the paper on which the parachute drawings appear. He concluded:
Probably drawn by di Giorgio, this parachute differs in shape from that of Leonardo’s.
Consequently the drawing on folio 200v. [parachute] may be placed reasonably in the 1470’s or not much later, if we are to believe the watermarks….
Our new parachute is, therefore, at the latest, contemporary with and probably slightly earlier than that of Leonardo…. It is indicative of Leonardo’s perceptiveness that he picked up this idea so quickly and that he began to make it more sophisticated.
So it seems Leonardo learned not only about canals and aqueducts from Francesco di Giorgio but also about parachutes. What else? Back to the British Library!
Dr. Ladislao Reti, an expert on Leonardo, has this to say about Francesco di Giorgio Martini’s “Treatise on Engineering and Its Plagiarists”:
Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439–1501) the great Sienese painter, sculptor and architect, was also interested as were several of his contemporary fellow craftsmen, in the study and development of mechanical devices. This was in accordance with the still flourishing Vitruvian tradition. His engineering treatise, still little known, is mainly dedicated to civil and military architecture and contains hundred of small but perfectly drawn illustrations showing war machines of every kind, as well as cranes, mills, pumps etc…. Although a number of studies have been published about the artistic and architectural work of Francesco di Giorgio, his work in technology has only occasionally been noticed.2
Dr. Reti then lists the libraries and museums in which Francesco’s Trattato di architettura civile e militare is held and continued:3
There is also an incomplete manuscript3 that once belonged to Leonardo da Vinci. This latter is of particular interest because Leonardo added marginal notes and sketches; the manuscript is now in the Laurenziana Library in Florence (Codex Mediceo Laurenziano 361 formerly Ashb.361 [293]). In addition several old copies of the treatise or its drawings are to be found in other Italian libraries, reflecting the early interest aroused by Francesco’s work.
These Trattato manuscripts, especially those parts dealing with mechanical engineering and technology, have never been adequately studied or fully published. A fairly accurate picture of Francesco di Giorgio Martini’s work was first made available to scholars in 1841 when Carlo Promis, using the Codex owned by Saluzzo, published the Trattato for the first time (Trattato di Architettura Civile e Militare edited by Carlo Promis (2 vol., Turin, 1841)….
Further confusion was caused by the fact that the Codex Saluzziano [quoted above] and the Codex Laurenziano [the one owned by Leonardo da Vinci] in spite of being written by the same hand, and containing almost identical drawings, were, for a long time, not attributed to the same author [Francesco di Giorgio]. Early interest was aroused by the Laurenziana Codex because of the marginalia added by Leonardo.
Dr. Reti then lists the contents of the Trattato:
In these folios we can identify no less than 50 different types of flour and roller mills including horizontal windmills…sawmills, pile drivers, weight transporting machines, as well as all kinds of winches and cranes; roller-bearings and antifriction devices; mechanical cars…a great number of pumps and water lifting devices…. and an extremely interesting water or mud-lifting machine that must be characterized as the prototype of the centrifugal pump…. [Francesco] described original war machines offensive and defensive, including the hydraulic recoil system for guns. There are also devices for diving and swimming almost identical with those drawn by Leonardo da Vinci in his Manuscript B.
Comparisons of Francesco di Giorgio’s and Leonardo’s machines are available on our 1434 website.
Leonardo’s Helicopter and Parachutes
Apart from copying di Giorgio’s parachute, Leonardo’s helicopter was not original. His proposed helicopter is sh
own on the cover of this book. In “Helicopters and Whirligigs,” Dr. Reti argues that a model helicopter in the form of a children’s whirligig toy appeared in Italy circa 1440 from China and provided the theoretical basis for Leonardo’s famous helicopter project.4
Dr. Reti contends that it was first drawn in 1438 in the Munich manuscript of Mariano Taccola (see 1434 website).
Clearly, Francesco di Giorgio was an astonishingly innovative designer and engineer. His Trattato di architettura still exists in several versions. Marcella and I have examined the copy in Florence once owned and annotated by Leonardo. We were astounded by the range of his drawings; it seemed to us that Leonardo was a consummate three-dimensional draftsman who had taken Francesco’s drawings of his machines and made even better drawings of them. Leonardo’s role, in our eyes, was changed; he was a superb illustrator rather than the inventor. For as far as we could see, almost all of his machines had been previously invented by Francesco di Giorgio.
This was quite a shock. We decided to unwind in a nearby mountain village, Colle val d’Elsa,5 the birthplace of Arnolfo di Cambio, the genius who designed Renaissance Florence. His home was once the palace of silk merchants, the Salvestrinis. Today it is a hotel where we had the good fortune to stay in a room with walls three feet thick, which had once been Arnolfo’s bedroom. We had a view of a classic Tuscan valley—the hills rolling away like long green ocean swells; the crests of the waves; the stone farmhouses surrounded by vineyards and olive groves. The crowing of cockerels, the bray of a donkey, and the laughter of distant unseen children floated across the sunlit land. We had a panoramic view of the valley far below. Around us huddled the town in which Arnolfo grew up—a mass of fortified towers within the protection of sturdy stone walls, a veritable fortress.
We had dinner al fresco in the square, the walls and flagstone floor still pulsating with heat. After a splendid bottle of Dolcetto, a dark red, dry, sparkling wine, we asked local people what they knew of Francesco di Giorgio. He appeared to be as famous as Leonardo or Mariano Taccola. This was another surprise—who was Mariano Taccola, known as “the Crow” or “the Jackdaw”? Was he called Jackdaw because of his beak or because he “jackdawed” the work of others?
At dawn, we left for Siena and Florence to view Taccola’s drawings. The trip yielded another bombshell: Taccola seemed to have invented everything that Francesco di Giorgio later drew; di Giorgio had obviously copied Taccola.
Mariano di Jacopo ditto Taccola was christened in Siena, near Florence, on February 4, 1382.6 His father was a wine dealer. His sister Francesca had married into the comfortable family of a silk trader.
Siena7 had been built on a hill for protection. The land beneath was swamp. Obtaining clean fresh water and draining the swamps were constant necessities. Hence it was natural for a well-educated young man to be acquainted with aqueducts, fountains, water mains, and pumps, as well as the medieval weapons deployed to protect the town—trebuchets and the like.
A prosperous town threatened by Rome from the south and Florence from the north, Siena was a “free city” of the Holy Roman Empire, but Sigismund, the emperor,8 was too weak to protect her. (In Taccola’s time the emperor was preoccupied with the Hussite wars.)
In 1408, Taccola married Madonna Nanna, the daughter of a leather merchant, which enabled him to move up the social scale. In 1410, he was nominated for entry into the Sienese Guild of Judges and Notaries, where his apprenticeship lasted six or seven years. He seemed to have had a penchant for failing his exams. In 1424, Taccola became secretary of a prestigious charitable institution, the Casa di Misericordia, an appointment he held for ten years. As such, he would have become acquainted with influential visitors to Siena—such as Pope Eugenius IV, Giovanni Battisa Alberti (in 1443), and the Florentines Brunellschi and Toscanelli.
In 1427, Taccola began to keep technical notebooks, containing knowledge he had acquired “with long labour.” As Prager and Scaglia explain, Taccola’s early entries in his notebook are about the defense of Siena and the operation of harbors.9
Between 1430 and his death in 1454, Taccola produced a series of amazing drawings that were published in two volumes, De ingeneis10 (Of four books) and De machinis,11 and an addendum. The range of his subjects is quite extraordinary. Book 1 of De ingeneis contains harbors, bucket pumps, mounted gunners, bellows for furnaces, underwater divers, fulling mills, and siphons. Book 2 features cisterns, piston pumps, dragons, amphibious machines with soldiers, and ox-powered gin mills. Book 3 includes chain pumps, tide mills, variable-speed hoists, winches, quarrying machines, flotation machines to recover sunken columns, builders’ cranes, mechanical ladders, sailing carts, and amphibious vehicles. In Book 4 he tackles trigonometrical surveying, tunneling, machines for extracting posts, treasure-hunting tools, windmills and watermills, pictures of monkeys, camels, and elephants, trebuchets, armored ships, paddle boats, roof-beam joists, and reflective mirrors. De ingeneis was followed (ca. 1438) by De machinis, a volume of drawings of mostly military machines (described in chapter 19).
An articulated siege ladder as featured in the general collection of Chinese Classics of Science and Technology.
Taccola’s articulated siege ladder is one of many military inventions that bear a striking resemblance to Chinese versions.
Prager and Scaglia describe Taccola as a pivotal figure in the development of European technology. In their view, Taccola ensured that the long stagnation of many technical practices of the Middle Ages came to an end. His De ingeneis became the starting point for a long line of copybooks.
So how did a clerk of works of a small mountain town suddenly produce books of drawings of such a huge range of inventions, including a helicopter and military machines that were at that time unknown in Siena?
We could profitably start with the dates of Taccola’s books. Prager and Scaglia, in my opinion the leading authorities on Taccola, put publication of books 1 and 2 of his De ingeneis at around 1429–1433. Taccola began books 3 and 4 around 1434 or 1438 and continued working on them until his death in 1454; De machinis was begun after 1438 and the addenda drawings around 1435.
According to Prager and Scaglia, the addenda drawings, which were inserted in all four books after about 1435, represent a significant change for Taccola. The new technique is very characteristic of soldiers and engines in small scale, the sketches inserted and annotated with small handwriting in the last two books and in the sequel. Sketches of engines, mainly military in function, may be seen on almost all pages of books 1 and 2; they always surround primary drawings, often in copious array. This paragraph seems to me to mean that another author (Francesco di Giorgio) had begun to annotate Taccola’s drawings in books 1 and 2.
Taccola’s drawings were certainly added to by Francesco after 1435. In his marvelous book The Art of Invention: Leonardo and the Renaissance Engineers, Paolo Galluzzi writes:
The final pages of Taccola’s autograph manuscripts De Ingeneis I-II carries a series of notes and drawings in the hand of Francesco di Giorgio (fig. 26). No document better expresses the continuity of the Sienese tradition of engineering studies. They offer us a snapshot, so to speak, of the actual moment when the heritage was passed on from Taccola to Francesco di-Giorgio.11
A reproduction of this snapshot of history is shown by kind permission of the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence, on our 1434 website. So we can say at this stage Leonardo had di Giorgio’s book of Machines, which were adaptations of Taccola’s drawings.
Francesco di Giorgio Pillages Taccola’s Work
Di Giorgio was a wholesale plagiarizer. Here are eight examples of his pillaging of Taccola’s work, which he never acknowledged.
Francesco’s picture of a collapsing tower is almost identical to Taccola’s; Francesco similarly copies Taccola’s underwater swimmers and floating riders on horseback (see the 1434 website).
Chinese water-powered vertical and horizontal rice grinding mills.
Di Giorgio’s design shows a simila
r method of converting vertical energy to horizontal.
Francesco, whose drawings were made after Taccola’s, employs the same distinctive trebuchet as Taccola. His hoists and mills, which transform vertical power to horizontal, and paddle-wheel boats copy Taccola’s, as do his devices for measuring distances, his weight-driven wheels, and his ox-drawn pumps. Several examples are shown on our 1434 website.
Francesco di Giorgio Improves on Taccola
Francesco was a very good draftsman. He improved on Taccola—as can be seen in almost every drawing shown. Furthermore, he adds details to improve the quality of the illustration. Galluzzi writes:12
Many of the 1,200 odd drawings and practically all the notes [of di Giorgio’s Codicetto] are in fact derived from Taccola’s manuscripts. But hardly any of the drawings or notes are slavish copies…. The drawings are obviously modeled on Taccola but Francesco often adds or omits details and in some cases introduces significant changes…. Other people’s ideas and procedures were shamelessly plundered even by artists like Francesco…. [He] never mentioned the name of his source in the works he later authored. (p 36)
From the…small manuscript [Codicetto] onward, in the series of drawings and notes based on Taccola’s manuscripts, we find an increasingly frequent recurrence of devices not dealt with by Taccola. The drawings are carefully drafted without annotations and clearly focus on four topics: machines for shifting and lifting weights, devices for raising water, mills and wagons with complex transmission systems…. There is something illogical and incomprehensible about the abrupt switches between the series of faithful reproductions from Taccola and the presentation of a multitude of innovative projects. For these are not only “new” machines but devices of far more advanced mechanical design than Taccola’s…. his devices feature complex gear mechanisms whose careful and highly varied arrangements are calculated to transmit to any level and at any desired velocity the motion produced by any source. As we know of no precedents that could have inspired Francesco, we are led to assume that they are his original contribution.13
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