Sheet of mechanisms with an inverted line on Rome
Dozens of small device sketches around a rhetorical phrase written upside-down
The leaf is crowded with small studies of built mechanisms in red chalk and brown ink: pulley trains, coiled and leaf springs, ratchets and escapements, clamps and cam-like devices, with a bracket shape at the upper left and a tight coil spring at the lower right. Written with the sheet inverted (the caption notes 'foglio capovolto') is the rhetorical line 'Tell me if ever, tell me if ever anything was built in Rome.' Several further lines of untranscribed jotting are visible along the left margin and foot of the page that the bundle does not include.
On this page
An inventory of small mechanisms
The page gathers many quick sketches of devices - pulley and belt arrangements, coiled and leaf springs, ratchet and escapement forms, clamps and bracketed fittings. They are scattered across the sheet in red chalk and brown ink rather than composed into a single machine.
A rhetorical line on Rome, written inverted
Set with the page turned upside-down is a repeated, exclamatory phrase: 'Tell me if ever, tell me if ever anything was built in Rome.' The doubling of 'tell me if ever' gives it the character of a pen-flourish or line of verse rather than a technical note.