Leonardo and his books

Catalog of the exhibition Florence Museo Galileo - 6 June – 22 September 2019&nbsp

In the year of the global celebrations of the five hundredth anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, a Florentine exhibition addresses a curious and compelling theme: how did Leonardo work? What study skills did he have? What books did he read and own? Leonardo was not a "man without letters" as he defined himself with a bit of irony. He was an avid reader, hunter and book collector. At the end of his life he came to own almost two hundred volumes: an extraordinary number for a fifteenth-century engineer-artist. Leonardo's library is actually a 'lost' library: only one book belonging to him has so far been identified: the treatise on architecture and engineering by Francesco di Giorgio Martini preserved in the Laurenziana Library in Florence with handwritten annotations by Leonardo himself. For the first time the exhibition at the Galileo Museum in Florence attempts the reconstruction of this library: the family documents, the first books of the young Leonardo (Dante Ovidio) the great masters (Alberti Toscanelli Pacioli). Leonardo's study is also reconstructed with the writing and drawing instruments he used. The exhibition curated by Carlo Vecce is organized by the Galileo Museum in collaboration with the Commission for the National Edition of the Manuscripts and Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and the Central National Library of Florence.