Leonardo's List of Books in His Library
A memorandum naming some forty volumes — scripture, Livy, Aesop, Ovid, Petrarch and more
The sheet is Leonardo's celebrated memorandum of his own books, written mostly in red ink in two columns and naming roughly forty volumes: the Bible, treatises on warfare (De re militari) and agriculture (Piero de' Crescenzi), Livy's first, third and fourth Decades, Donatus's Latin grammar, Aesop's fables, the Psalms, Ovid's and Filelfo's Epistles, Petrarch, Poggio's Facetiae, a treatise on chiromancy and many more. The list is a personal inventory of his reading rather than a formal catalogue. A faint geometric diagram of a triangle with a circle and some additional lines of writing (untranscribed, largely show-through from the inclined-plane study on the verso) are also visible on the sheet.
On this page
A catalogue of some forty book titles
The page tallies book after book in two columns — from the Bible and De re militari down through the three Decades of Livy, Donatus, Justinus, Morgante, Aesop and the Psalms. It reads as a running inventory of volumes Leonardo owned or wished to consult, several of them practical handbooks (military art, agriculture, epistolary formularies).
A window onto Leonardo's reading
Beside devotional and classical works the list names popular literature and reference — Poggio's Facetiae, a Zibaldone (commonplace book), Cecco d'Ascoli, Albertus Magnus, a New Rhetoric and a treatise on chiromancy. Taken together the titles map the breadth of his self-directed study.