Faint mechanical studies on blue paper
Pale devices sketched on tinted paper, with a jotted line 'Tell me how...'
On this blue-tinted sheet Leonardo has laid out a group of mechanisms in very pale ink: framed uprights, levers, weighted arms and hoisting gear spread across the page in a light preliminary layout. In the upper left, written with the sheet inverted, is a short jotting, 'Tell me how they have passed... Tell me how'. The drawings are faint and largely at the stage of a first sketch, and other faint marks on the sheet are not transcribed.
On this page
Pale studies of mechanisms
Faint lines lay out several devices at once - framed uprights, levers, weighted arms and hoisting gear - loosely arranged across the tinted paper. The work is light and preliminary, and the individual mechanisms are hard to read with certainty.
A jotted line
In the upper-left corner, written with the sheet turned upside down, is a brief phrase, 'Tell me how they have passed... Tell me how'. It reads as a jotting or pen-trial rather than a caption for the drawings.