The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Part 54

Thus are base unions sundered.

[Footnote: A much blurred sketch is on the page by this text. It seems to represent an unravelled plait or tissue.]

690.

Constancy does not begin, but is that which perseveres.

[Footnote: A drawing in red chalk, also rubbed, which stands in the original in the middle of this text, seems to me to be intended for a sword hilt, held in a fist.]

691.

Love, Fear, and Esteem,- Write these on three stones. Of servants.

692.

Prudence Strength.

693.

Fame alone raises herself to Heaven, because virtuous things are in favour with G.o.d.

Disgrace should be represented upside down, because all her deeds are contrary to G.o.d and tend to h.e.l.l.

694.

Short liberty.

695.

Nothing is so much to be feared as Evil Report.

This Evil Report is born of life.

696.

Not to disobey.

697.

A felled tree which is shooting again.

I am still hopeful.

A falcon, Time.

[Footnote: I. Albero tagliato. This emblem was displayed during the Carnival at Florence in 1513. See VASARI VI, 251, ed. MILANESI 1881. But the coincidence is probably accidental.]

698.

Truth here makes Falsehood torment lying tongues.

699.

Such as harm is when it hurts me not, is good which avails me not.

[Footnote: See PI. LX, No. 2. Compare this sketch with that on PI. LXII, No. 2. Below the two lines of the text there are two more lines: li guchi (giunchi) che riteg le paglucole (pagliucole) ch.e.l.li (che li) anniegano.]

700.

He who offends others, does not secure himself.

[Footnote: See PI. LX, No. 3.]

701.

Ingrat.i.tude.

[Footnote: See PI. LX, No. 4. Below the bottom sketches are the unintelligible words "sta stilli." For "Ingrat.i.tudo" compare also Nos. 686 and 687.]

702.

One's thoughts turn towards Hope.

[Footnote: 702. By the side of this pa.s.sage is a sketch of a cage with a bird sitting in it.]

Ornaments and Decorations for feasts (703-705).

703.

A bird, for a comedy.

[Footnote: The biographies say so much, and the author's notes say so little of the invention attributed to Leonardo of making artificial birds fly through the air, that the text here given is of exceptional interest from being accompanied by a sketch. It is a very slight drawing of a bird with outspread wings, which appears to be sliding down a stretched string. Leonardo's flying machines and his studies of the flight of birds will be referred to later.]

704.

A DRESS FOR THE CARNIVAL.

To make a beautiful dress cut it in thin cloth and give it an odoriferous varnish, made of oil of turpentine and of varnish in grain, with a pierced stencil, which must be wetted, that it may not stick to the cloth; and this stencil may be made in a pattern of knots which afterwards may be filled up with black and the ground with white millet.[Footnote 7: The grains of black and white millet would stick to the varnish and look like embroidery.]

[Footnote: Ser Giuliano, da Vinci the painter's brother, had been commissioned, with some others, to order and to execute the garments of the Allegorical figures for the Carnival at Florence in 1515-16; VASARI however is incorrect in saying of the Florentine Carnival of 1513: "equelli che feciono ed ordinarono gli abiti delle figure furono Ser Piero da Vinci, padre di Lonardo, e Bernardino di Giordano, bellissimi ingegni" (See MILANESI'S ed. Voi. VI, pg. 251.)]

705.

Snow taken from the high peaks of mountains might be carried to hot places and let to fall at festivals in open places at summer time.

*** End of Volume 1

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci

Volume 2

Translated by Jean Paul Richter

1888

XI.