Aphorisms, green-pigment recipes, and a bone flask
Maxims on doctors and reason, recipes for greens, and how to form a flask from bone plates
This densely written page mixes moral aphorisms, painting recipes, and a craft technique. Leonardo jots maxims—that men grow rich paying physicians who destroy lives, and that human reasoning is largely vain while animals' lesser knowledge is true—then lists recipes for green pigments using verdigris, aloe, gall, turmeric, saffron and burnt orpiment, and notes that ultramarine mixed with glass-yellow makes a fine fresco green. A longer note, illustrated by the small flask drawn at the right margin, explains how to form a vessel from softened bone plates pressed in warm moulds, gilded inside, varnished, and joined into a flask sealed with rings at the neck.
On this page
Recipes for green pigments and shading blue
Verdigris with aloe, gall or turmeric makes a fine green, as do saffron and burnt orpiment, though Leonardo fears these may soon blacken. Ultramarine blue and glass-yellow mixed make a most beautiful green in fresco, that is, on the wall, while lac and verdigris give a good shadow to blue worked in oil.
Forming a flask from bone plates
Bone in plate, of the kind used for lanterns, is softened and pressed into warm moulds a braccio long, the excess trimmed while fresh, then dried and removed. The two half-shells are gilded within, varnished thrice or coated with verdigris, varnish and aloe, joined with liquid varnish and glass, left fifteen days to dry, and closed at the neck with a ring or two.
Maxims on physicians and human reason
Every man, Leonardo writes, desires to amass wealth to give to physicians, destroyers of lives, so they must be rich; and dried distilled human blood is most powerful. Man has great reasoning, mostly vain and false, while animals have little that is useful and true—for a small certainty is better than a great lie.