The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Complete


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PREFACE.  
A singular fatality has ruled the destiny of nearly all the most  
famous of Leonardo da Vinci's works. Two of the three most important  
were never completed, obstacles having arisen during his life-time,  
which obliged him to leave them unfinished; namely the Sforza  
Monument and the Wall-painting of the Battle of Anghiari, while the  
third--the picture of the Last Supper at Milan--has suffered  
irremediable injury from decay and the repeated restorations to  
which it was recklessly subjected during the XVIIth and XVIIIth  
centuries. Nevertheless, no other picture of the Renaissance has  
become so wellknown and popular through copies of every description.  
Vasari says, and rightly, in his Life of Leonardo, "that he laboured  
much more by his word than in fact or by deed", and the biographer  
evidently had in his mind the numerous works in Manuscript which  
have been preserved to this day. To us, now, it seems almost  
inexplicable that these valuable and interesting original texts  
should have remained so long unpublished, and indeed forgotten. It  
is certain that during the XVIth and XVIIth centuries their  
exceptional value was highly appreciated. This is proved not merely  
by the prices which they commanded, but also by the exceptional  
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