Arno survey, walling costs, and the note of 6 June 1505
Red-chalk map of the lower Arno with building accounts and a dated memorandum
Folio 1r mixes a red-chalk topographic sketch of the Tuscan coast and the lower Arno with columns of building costs and personal jottings, all in Leonardo's mirror script. A list of towns - Vico, Bientina, Calcinaia, Castelfranco, Fucecchio, Pontedera and others - is set out with the distances between them, part of his survey of the Arno valley. Cost notes reckon the price of a square canna of walling at Rome and the loads of lime, sand and stone it needs, alongside weekly payments in ducats. At the centre a dated memorandum records that on Friday 6 June 1505 he began to lay on colour in the palace, when a sudden storm tore the cartoon and turned the day dark as night.
On this page
Survey of the lower Arno: towns and distances
Beside a red-chalk sketch of the coast and river the sheet lists the towns of the lower Arno with the intervals between them: Vico 1, Bientina 1 1/2, Calcinaia 1, Castelfranco 1, Fucecchio, Santa Maria in Monte 2, Pontedera, Montecalvoli 2 and Santa Croce 1. The numbers give the stages from one place to the next along the valley.
Beginning to paint in the palace, 6 June 1505
A dated memorandum records that on Friday 6 June 1505, at the stroke of the thirteenth hour, Leonardo began to lay on colour in the palace. As he set down the brush the weather broke and a bell tolled summoning the men before the tribunal; the cartoon tore, a water-vessel spilled and shattered, and a very great rain fell until evening, so that the daylight was dark as night.
Price of a square canna of walling
A masonry note compares the cost of the square canna of wall: at Rome it is built for 19 carlini at the builder's own charge, or for 7 carlini when the owner of the wall bears the cost. A further reckoning sets the square canna at 42 lire, with the workmanship at 35 soldi.
Materials for a canna of sixteen braccia
The materials for a canna of sixteen braccia are tallied as four loads of lime, eight of sand and sixty loads of stone. Elsewhere the leaf notes payments in ducats, including one ducat given to Lorenzo on a Saturday morning.