Transcriber’s Note:

This e-text is based on the 1802 edition. The original spelling has been retained, as well as inconsistencies, such as ‘musquetry’/‘musketry’, ‘Du Frêne’/‘du Fresne’, ‘Melzio’/‘Meltio’/‘Melzi’, etc. Uncommon or old-style spelling has not been altered, such as ‘opake’ (opaque), ‘verdegris’ (verdigris), ‘dutchess’ (duchess), etc. Errors due to bad print, as well as minor punctuation errors have been tacitly corrected.

In the text, the plates are referenced by using Roman numerals, whereas the captions of the plates show Arabic numerals; the same applies to the Table of Chapters and the chapter headings, respectively. This inconsistency has been retained.

Footnotes related to itroductory chapters have been prefixed with the letter ‘i’ ([i1]–[i210]); footnotes in da Vinci’s own text, however, are shown as plain Arabic numerals ([1]–[102]).

The following typographical errors have been corrected:

# p. xviii: ‘overspead’ → ‘overspread’; ‘Vincius ast oculis’ → ‘Vincius est oculis’
# p. lxiii: ‘Vasari, 36, ’ → ‘Vasari, p. 36,’
# p. lxxxv: ‘Maestrodi’ → ‘Maestro di’
# p. xcii: ‘Fontainbleau’ → ‘Fontainebleau’
# p. 22: Plate 2: original caption points to page 2; corrected to page 22.
# p. 37: ‘pully’ → ‘pulley’
# p. 117: ‘andso’ → ‘and so’
# p. 156: ‘A B E D’ → ‘C B E D’
# p. 181: ‘that that’ → ‘than that’
# Footnote 62: ‘tranferred’ → ‘transferred’

The Table of Chapters has been moved to the beginning of the text for reasons of clarity and comprehensibility.