The Digital Reconstruction of Leonardo’s Library Revealing Formal Patterns in Early Modern Thought

Abstract

The present article combines an individual, object-based approach with digital technologies with the aim to define the relation of verbal and visual inscriptions in Leonardo da Vinci’s technical-scientific and literary-artistic works. By conducting a comparative analysis of Leonardo’s folios featuring fables, emblems, and engineering projects,I identify the archetypes of this interaction in the books contained in his personal library and examine the convergence of his use of empirical, diagrammatic, and pictorial strategies toward the investigation of nature. The material component of this study consists in a series of analytical drawing tables which examine recurrent patterns, and textual and visual connections in Leonardo’s manuscripts. The identified patterns are subsequently cataloged and examined through the web-publishing platform “LILeo” created in collaboration with the Rutgers Digital Humanities Laboratory as part of my dissertation project. By digitally highlighting the interaction of elements on the space of the page, and enabling the layering of drafts belonging to similar projects in Leonardo’s works and sources, this study traces the formal patterns of the artist’s analytical thinkingin order to uncover the origins of his interdisciplinary research.