1434 (19 page)
Authors: Gavin Menzies
T
hen 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 1485â¦. 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 1891â¦. Folios 21r. to 250v. [are] a treatise on mechanics, hydraulics, etc. with a multitude of drawingsâ¦.
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 (1439â1501). 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.”
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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 watermarksâ¦.
Our new parachute is, therefore, at the latest, contemporary with and probably slightly earlier than that of Leonardoâ¦. 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 (1439â1501) 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 etcâ¦. 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 manuscript
3
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)â¦.
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 windmillsâ¦sawmills, pile drivers, weight transporting machines, as well as all kinds of winches and cranes; roller-bearings and antifriction devices; mechanical carsâ¦a great number of pumps and water lifting devicesâ¦. and an extremely interesting water or mud-lifting machine that must be characterized as the prototype of the centrifugal pumpâ¦. [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 shown 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,
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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 valleyâthe 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 upâa 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 surpriseâwho 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.
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His father was a wine dealer. His sister Francesca had married into the comfortable family of a silk trader.
Siena
7
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 townâtrebuchets 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 Sienaâsuch 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.
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Between 1430 and his death in 1454, Taccola produced a series of amazing drawings that were published in two volumes,
De ingeneis
10
(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.