How They Organized Leonardo

Five Centuries of Scholars Wrestling with the Same Problem

Scholars Profiled: 7 Spanning: 1540–Present Approaches: By Subject · By Codex · Chronological · Thematic

A controversy arose among scholars as to whether the best method of publication was by individual manuscripts or collectively with some attempt at classification. Time has a way of proving most controversies vain, and in this instance it has shown the essential rightness of the position of both disputants.

— Jean Paul Richter, Preface (1939)

The Organizational Problem

Every scholar who has approached Leonardo's notebooks faces the same fundamental dilemma: how do you organize the mind of a man who refused to be organized?

Leonardo himself admitted the chaos: "This will be a collection without order, made up of many sheets." A single page might contain observations on water flow, a sketch of a flying machine, notes on shadow, a recipe for paint, and a personal reminder to buy stockings — all in mirror script. Should that page live under "hydraulics" or "flight" or "optics" or "materials" or "personal notes"?

For nearly 500 years, scholars have tried different approaches. No one has fully succeeded. Each system reveals something about Leonardo — and something about the scholar who chose it. Understanding how they organized the notebooks is itself a lens into the material.

The Major Scholars

Click each name for their full organizational system and its strengths and limitations

Francesco Melzi

c. 1540–1570 Approach: Thematic Compilation

Leonardo's devoted pupil and heir. Rather than organize the notebooks themselves, Melzi compiled — spending decades extracting passages on painting into a single manuscript, the Trattato della Pittura. The first and most intimate attempt to make sense of the master's chaos.

📖 Key Work: Trattato della Pittura (Codex Urbinas)

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Charles Ravaisson-Mollien

1881–1891 Approach: Facsimile by Manuscript

Published the first systematic facsimile edition of the Paris Manuscripts (MSS A–M plus Ashburnham). A landmark of by-codex organization — presenting each manuscript as Leonardo left it, page by page, with transcription and French translation.

📖 Key Work: Les Manuscrits de Léonard de Vinci (6 volumes)

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Jean Paul Richter

1883 / 1939 Approach: Subject-Based Classification

The definitive English-language organizer. Richter broke all the manuscripts apart and reassembled passages by subject — 1,566 passages across 22 sections. His numbering system became the universal reference standard. He acknowledged the classification as "rough and imperfect."

📖 Key Work: The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci

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Edward MacCurdy

1938 Approach: Subject + Expanded Scope

Built on Richter's subject-based method but vastly expanded the selection — more passages, broader categories, and crucial additions like the anatomical notebooks at Windsor that Richter had limited access to. The most complete single-volume English translation.

📖 Key Work: The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci

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Carlo Pedretti

1957–2018 Approach: Chronological + Codicological

The great corrector. Pedretti devoted his life to dating Leonardo's pages and reconstructing the original notebooks — undoing centuries of cutting, pasting, and rearranging. His approach was forensic: paper analysis, watermarks, handwriting evolution, cross-references. He showed that many "codices" are modern compilations.

📖 Key Work: The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci: Commentary

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Martin Kemp

1981–Present Approach: Integrated Interpretation

Rather than present the notebooks as a catalogue, Kemp reads them as evidence of Leonardo's unified worldview — art and science as a single investigation. His selections emphasize Leonardo's visual thinking and how the notebooks connect to the paintings. The bridge between scholarship and public understanding.

📖 Key Work: Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man

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Carmen Bambach

2019 Approach: Chronological-Biographical

The most monumental recent work. Bambach's four-volume, 2,400-page study organizes Leonardo's entire output — notebooks, drawings, and paintings — into a strict chronological biography. Every page dated, every drawing placed in sequence. The definitive 21st-century synthesis.

📖 Key Work: Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered (4 volumes)

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Comparing the Approaches

Every system reveals something — and obscures something else

Scholar	Method	Reveals	Obscures
Melzi	Thematic compilation	Leonardo's painting theory as a coherent whole	Everything that isn't about painting
Ravaisson-Mollien	By codex (facsimile)	The physical reality of how pages coexist	Thematic connections across codices
Richter	By subject (22 sections)	Depth of Leonardo's thought per topic	The multi-subject nature of individual pages
MacCurdy	By subject (expanded)	Broader range, especially anatomy	Same limitation as Richter, amplified
Pedretti	Chronological / forensic	How Leonardo's thinking evolved over time	Quick subject-matter lookup
Kemp	Integrated interpretation	The unity of Leonardo's art-science worldview	Raw data — selects rather than catalogues
Bambach	Chronological biography	Leonardo's life as a continuous creative arc	Subject-based access (must read linearly)

The Fundamental Tension

Every organizational system for Leonardo's notebooks is caught between two poles:

Respect the physical manuscripts — show pages as they are, multi-subject chaos and all (Ravaisson-Mollien, Pedretti)
Make the content accessible — extract and reorganize by subject so you can actually find Leonardo's thoughts on water, or painting, or flight (Richter, MacCurdy)

Neither is wrong. Both are necessary. The manuscripts-first approach preserves context but makes it impossible to study a single topic. The subject-first approach enables research but destroys the multi-disciplinary texture that is Leonardo's signature.

This is exactly the problem we face with DiscoveringDaVinci.com. We inherited Richter's subject-based system for the translations — and it's incredibly useful for finding specific passages. But it also chops Leonardo's pages into fragments that lose their original neighbors. A passage about water might have sat next to a sketch of a flying machine, and that juxtaposition might have been the point. Phase C of this project is my attempt at a third way — organizing by how Leonardo himself might have thought about it, chaos and all. -D

The Chronological Revolution

The biggest shift in Leonardo scholarship came when Pedretti (and later Bambach) began dating individual pages rather than treating codices as units. This revealed that many "codices" — the Codex Atlanticus most famously — are modern compilations, not notebooks Leonardo himself assembled. Pompeo Leoni literally cut pages apart with scissors in the 1590s and glued them into new arrangements.

Once you know when a page was written, you can trace how Leonardo's ideas developed — how his understanding of water flow in 1490 relates to his revised understanding in 1508, and how both connect to the paintings he was working on at the time. Chronology turned the notebooks from a reference library into a biography of thought.

What's Missing From All of Them

No existing system adequately handles:

Multi-subject pages — a single folio covering flight, anatomy, and painting simultaneously
Visual-textual integration — Leonardo's drawings are not illustrations of his text; they are independent arguments
Cross-domain connections — how Leonardo's study of water informs his painting of drapery, or how anatomy connects to architecture
The lost context — we have perhaps 25-30% of what Leonardo wrote; any system is organizing fragments
Leonardo's own intended order — he planned multiple treatises but never finished organizing them

Timeline of Major Editions

Five centuries of attempts to make sense of Leonardo's pages

c. 1540–1570

Francesco Melzi compiles the Trattato della Pittura from Leonardo's manuscripts — the first organized edition of any kind.

1590s

Pompeo Leoni dismembers multiple notebooks with scissors and paste, creating the Codex Atlanticus and dispersing pages across collections. His "organization" created the chaos future scholars would have to untangle.

1651

First printed edition of the Trattato della Pittura, based on Melzi's compilation. Widely circulated across Europe — shapes how artists think about Leonardo for the next two centuries.

1881–1891

Charles Ravaisson-Mollien publishes the Paris Manuscripts in 6 volumes — the first comprehensive facsimile edition. Establishes the by-codex approach.

1883

Jean Paul Richter publishes The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci — the first subject-based English compilation. 1,566 passages, 22 sections. Defines the field.

1938

Edward MacCurdy publishes The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci — expanding Richter's approach with many more passages and broader coverage, especially anatomy.

1939

Richter's Second Edition — greatly expanded, with Irma Richter's contributions. The passage numbering is solidified as the universal reference standard.

1957–1977

Carlo Pedretti publishes his Commentary on Richter — correcting datings, identifying sources, and reconstructing original notebook sequences. The chronological revolution begins.

1981

Martin Kemp publishes Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man — integrating notebooks with paintings in a unified interpretation of Leonardo's visual thinking.

2019

Carmen Bambach publishes Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered — 4 volumes, 2,400+ pages. The most comprehensive chronological organization of Leonardo's entire output ever attempted.