The Secret of Leonardo Da Vinci&Leonardo's Notebooks

A recent spate of books and articles have suggested that Leonardo Da Vinci was the leader of a clandestine society and that he hid secret codes and messages in his art work. Is this true? In addition to his role in history as a famous painter, scientist and inventor, was he also the keeper of some vast secret to be passed down through the ages?

Ciphers and Encryption

Leonardo was certainly no stranger to the use codes and encryption. His notes are all written backwards with "mirror" writing. It is unclear exactly why Leonardo did this. It has been suggested that he may have felt that some of his military inventions would be too destructive and powerful if they fell into the wrong hands, therefore he protected his notes by using this reversed writing method. Other scholars point out that this type of encryption was is fairly simple to break. One needs only to hold to hold the paper up to a mirror to read it. If Leonardo was using it for security, he probably was only concerned about hiding the contents from a casual observer.

Other researchers have suggested that he used this reversed writing because he found it easier. Leonardo was left-handed and this would have made writing backwards less difficult for him than for a right-handed person.

Recently Leonardo has been credited by many people with inventing a device dubbed a cryptex. A cryptex is a tube constructed with a series of rings with letters of the alphabet engraved on them. When the rings are turned so that certain letters line up to the cryptex's password, one of the end caps can be removed and the contents (usually a piece of papyrus wrapped around a glass bottle containing vinegar) can be removed. Should someone try and get at the message by smashing the device, the glass bottle will break and the vinegar will dissolve the papyrus before the message on it can be read.

As ingenious as this device is, and as much as it sounds like something Leonardo might have invented, the cryptex is a fictional device created by Dan Brown and credited to Leonardo in his popular book, The Da Vinci Code. There is no evidence that Leonardo actually conceived or built such a device.

Mystery of the Mona Lisa

One popular idea is that Leonardo painted secret symbols or messages into his artworks. People have analysed his most famous painting, The Mona Lisa, and have found all kinds of hidden meanings and techniques in it. It is certain that Leonardo used some of his best artist's tricks to create the painting. Many people find the portrait's smile particularly haunting. They say it seems to change, even though the paint on the surface of the painting obviously does not.

Professor Margaret Livingstone of Harvard University makes the argument that Leonardo painted the edges of the portrait's smile so they would appear slightly out of focus. Because of this the edges of the smile are more easily seen by a person's peripheral vision rather than by looking directly at them. This may explain why some people report that the portrait seems to be smiling more when they are not directly looking at her.

Another theory proposed by Christopher Tyler and Leonid Kontsevich of the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco says that the smile seems to change because of variable levels of random noise in human visual system. If you close your eyes in a dark room you will notice that everything is not perfectly black. The cells in your eyes generate a low level of "background noise" (which you see as tiny light and dark dots). Your brain usually filters these out, but Tyler and Kontsevich suggest that when viewing the Mona Lisa, these little dots can change the shape of the smile. As evidence for their theory they imposed several random sets of dots over a picture of the Mona Lisa and showed them to people. Some of the sets made the portrait look very happy, others seemed to sadden it. Tyler and Kontsevich argue that the noise which is inherent in the human visual system has the same effect. As someone views the painting, the noise of their own visual system adds to the image and changes it, making the smile seem to change.

So what is the Mona Lisa smiling about in the first place? Through the years people have speculated that perhaps she was pregnant. Others have found the smile to be sad and have suggested she was unhappy in her marriage.




A copy of the Mona Lisa made more happy and less happy by the introduction of noise.


Dr. Lillian Schwartz of Bell Laboratories has come up with what seems an unlikely, but intriguing idea. She thinks that the subject is smiling because the artist has put a joke over on the viewers. She contends the painting is not of a pretty young woman, but is actually a self-portrait of the artist himself. Schwartz noticed that when she used a computer to line up the features of the Mona Lisa with a portrait that Leonardo had done of himself, they matched up perfectly. Other experts note, however, that this may simply be the result of the two pictures being painted by the same artist using the same techniques.

The Last Supper

Dan Brown in his popular thriller The Da Vinci Code suggests that Leonardo's The Last Supper has a number of hidden meanings and symbols. In the fictional story there is conspiracy by the early church to suppress the importance of Mary Magdalene, one of Jesus' followers (the story suggests - to the distress of many believers - that she was his wife). Supposedly Leonardo was the head of a secret order of men who knew the truth about Magdalene and attempted to preserve it. One of the ways Leonardo did this was to leave clues in his famous work in The Last Supper.

The painting depicts the last Passover dinner Jesus shared with his disciples before his death. Leonardo attempts to capture the moment when Jesus announces he will be betrayed and that one of the men at the table will be his betrayer. The most significant clue left by Leonardo, according to Brown, is that the disciple usually identified as John in the picture is actually Mary Magdalene. Indeed, a quick look at the painting seems to confirm this. The person to Jesus' right has long hair and smooth skin with what might be regarded as feminine features compared to the older, rougher-looking apostles around them. Brown also points out, through the characters in his story, that Jesus and the figure to his right together form the outline of the letter "M." Does it stand for Mary or perhaps Matrimony? Are these clues left by Leonardo about his secret knowledge?

Despite our first impression that the figure in the picture is feminine, the question is whether the figure would have looked feminine to a viewer of the era in which Leonardo painted it. Probably it would have not. John was considered to be the youngest of the disciples and as such he was often portrayed as being a beardless youth with soft features and long hair. We translate this today as being female, but back in Florence in the fifteen century, which was a different culture with different expectations of what it is to be feminine and masculine, that wouldn't necessarily have been the case. Leonardo was only one of a number of artists, including Ghirlandio and Andrea del Castagno, who pictured St. John in this manner. In his Treatise on Painting, Leonardo explains that characters in a painting should be depicted based on their types. These types might include a "wise man" or an "old woman" each with their own characteristics: beard, wrinkles, short or long hair. John as pictured in The Last Supper is a "student" type: A protégé who has not yet matured. Artists of this day, including Leonardo, would have portrayed this "student type" as a very young man with soft features just as we see in the painting.




The figure to the left of Jesus (to the right in this image). Is it John or Mary?


As for the outline of the "M" in the picture, this is a result of the way the artist composed the picture. Jesus, at the time he announces his betrayal, sits alone in the center of the painting, his body in the shape of a pyramid and the disciples in groups on either side. Leonardo favored this pyramid design and often used it in his works.

The Priory

Supposedly Leonardo was the leader of a secret group called the Priory of Sion. According to The Da Vinci Code, it was the Priory's mission to keep the secret of Mary Magdalene and her marriage to Jesus alive. While The Da Vinci Code is fiction, it is based on theories from a controversial "non-fiction" book entitled Holy Blood, Holy Grail written by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln in the early 1980's.

Holy Blood, Holy Grail cites the evidence for Leonardo's membership in the secret Priory of Sion as a number of documents deposited in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. While there is some evidence that an order of monks with this name existed as far back as 1116 A.D., there is little to suggest that the medieval group had anything to do with the Priory of Sion of the 20th century.

The documents in the Bibliotheque Nationale supporting the existence of the Priory actually are there, but they appear to be part of a hoax conceived by a man named Pierre Plantard in the 1950's. Plantard and a group of like-minded friends with right wing and anti-Semitic leanings formed the Priory. By fabricating and planting the documents, including fake genealogical tables, Plantard apparently hoped to show that he was a descendant of the Merovingians and an heir to the French throne. The document purporting to show Leonardo, along with such luminaries as Botticellie and Isaac Newton as grand masters of the group, was fake as well.

It is unclear whether Plantard also tried to perpetuate the Mary Magdalene story as well. It is known that he claimed the Priory did possess a treasure. Not a set of invaluable documents as suggested in The Da Vinci Code, but a collection of sacred objects inscribed on a copper scroll found with the Dead Sea scrolls in the 1950's. Plantard told interviewers that the Priory would return this treasure to Israel when "the time was right." Experts are divided on wheather the treasure mentioned in the copper scroll ever really existed Even if it did, there is no evidence that any group has control of it today.


Leonardo's Notebooks

The great artist Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks probably started out as just a way for him to improve the quality of his paintings. He studied anatomy to portray the human body accurately. He studied plants and rocks to make them authentic for his paintings. Somewhere along the line, however, the books became more than that. They became a record of his life-long fascination with nature and his genius for invention.

At the time of his death in 1519 Leonardo was known as a great artist, but his capabilities as an engineer, scientist and inventor were less appreciated. After his demise, his notebooks fell into the possession of his favorite apprentice Francesco Melzi. Melzi held onto most of them and kept them safe until his own death in 1579. Melzi heirs had less respect for the material, however, and sold pages off to collectors or gave them away to friends.

In 1630 Pompeo Leoni, a sculptor in the Court of the King of Spain, got a hold of much of the material and tried to organize it by subject. This unfortunatley resulted in the books being taken apart and the original order, which might have told us much about Leonardo's thinking, was lost. Each of the new books created by this process was a Codex.


One of Leonardo's anatomy drawings probably done from a dissection.


In many of his books Leonardo employed a backwards form of writing that could only be read with a mirror. It is unknown why he did this. Some historians speculate he did it to keep his writings private, others think that because he was left-handed he just found it easier and faster to write this way.

Clearly the notebooks were written for his own personal use. The organization is minimal. The lettering is quick, sloppy and often without punctuation. There is some indication he employed a personal shorthand, making the content confusing to read. In many places the pen seems to race along trying to keep up with the revelations of the mind.

Much of the books appear to be lab notes. Leonardo used the scientific method before the scientific method had been invented. In one revealing passage he states, "First I shall make some experiments before I proceed further, because my intention is to consult experience first and then by means of reasoning show why such experiment is bound to work in such a way. And this is the rule by which those who analyze natural effects must proceed; and although nature begins with the cause and ends with the experience, we must follow the opposite course, namely (as I said before), begin with the experience and by means of it investigate the cause."

Over time most of the notebooks have found their way into various museums, archives or libraries around the world. Only one is in private hands. Two were totally unknown until 1966 when they were found by chance in the National Library of Madrid. Presently there are ten known codices containing Leonardo's sketches and notes.


A flying machine that works by flapping its wings.


Codex Atlanticus - This document contains information on mathematics, geometry, astronomy, botany, zoology and the military arts. It is held by the Biblioteca Ambrosianain in Milan, Italy. There are some 1,119 pages in this work spread over 12 volumes. This sketchbook contains some of Leonardo's most famous drawings and notes.

Of particular interest are the pages on gliders and flying machines. Most of Leonardo's aerial machines were designed after he studied birds. For this reason they generated their forward motion by mechanisms designed to flap the wings. In his notes he recorded, "the bird is an instrument functioning according to mathematical laws, and man has the power to reproduce an instrument like this with all its movements."

He built a working model of one of his flying machines and on January 2, 1496, he recorded in his notes that he was going to attempt to fly it the next day. It is unknown whether he didn't try or if the flight was a failure. Later on he did make a note to himself to try any more flying experiments over a lake where he would be less likely to be injured in a landing. Atlanticus also contains a design for a parachute which might have been conceived to allow for the safe escape of any pilot from a flying device.


A giant crossbow found in Codex Atlanticus

Leonardo's man-powered flight designs, though ingenious, would never have worked. A man cannot generate enough energy with his muscles to lift himself and a flying machine off the ground without the use of very high efficiency designs and materials made possible by modern technology. If Leonardo had concentrated more on building a glider, rather than a powered flying machine, he might have been much more successful in getting off the ground.

Atlanticus also contains a number of military designs including those for a giant crossbow and a compact version of a wooden spring catapult designed to hurl boulders. There were also siege machines created to defeat city walls and span moats and designs for castles and fortifications.

Codex Arundel - This book resides in the British Library in London and is one of the ones created by the cutting and pasting of pages from other works. Most of the material deals with the study of geometry, weights and architecture and the pages seem to have been authored between 1480 and 1518. Among other items, the Arundel document contains a design for a primitive tank that resembles a flying saucer as well as plans for an underwater diving bell.

Codices of the Institute of France - These are twelve documents (referred to as A-M) of varying sizes that cover a variety of areas including hydraulics, military art, optics, geometry and bird flight. One of Leonardo's most well known-designs, a primitive helicopter, is included


A man-powered helicopter designed by Leonardo da Vinci


in manuscript B. The device was designed to be operated by four men. The men would never have had the strength necessary to create sufficient lift, but if a suitable engine had been substituted it might have actually gotten off the ground.

Codex Trivulzianus - There are only 55 pages in this document currently held in Milan. The subjects of this collection include religion, architecture and literature. It is thought the pages in this work were composed between 1487 and 1490.

Codex "On the Flight of Birds" - This short work of only 17 pages is a very careful study Leonardo did in 1505 on the mechanics of flight and the movement of air.

Codex Ashburnham - This is actually composed of two documents held by the Institute of France. It primarily consists of pictorial studies drawn between 1489 and 1492.

Codex Forster - These are three different documents held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. They are composed of studies about geometry, weights and hydraulic machines. Written between 1490 and 1505,


An early version of a tank found in Codex Arundel.


Codex Leicester - This manuscript was in the news when it was purchased by Bill Gates in 1995 for $30.8 million. It contains 64 pages mostly dedicated to Leonardo's theories on astronomy, the properties of water, rocks and fossils, air and celestial light. It is currently exhibited in the Seattle Museum of Art.

Windsor Royal Documents - These pages are part of the royal collection at Windsor Castle. The subjects include anatomy and geography, horse studies, drawings, caricatures and a series of maps. There are about 600 unbound pages created between 1478 and 1518.

The Madrid Codices - These manuscripts were found in the archives of the National Library of Madrid. There are two volumes bound in red morocco leather and contain 197 pages on geometry and mechanics.

The fact that Leonardo wasn't the grand master of a clandestine society as pictured in The Da Vinci Code shouldn't lesson our admiration for him, however. While the inclusion of this historical personage in a work of modern fiction is intriguing, we should not allow it to cloud our vision of what Leonardo really did accomplish. His art works have been an inspiration to millions down through the centuries and contain intricacies that experts are still trying to unravel. In addition, his experiments and inventions have shown him to be an advanced thinker whose explorations went far beyond that of his contemporaries. The secret of Leonardo Da Vinci is that he was a genius that few people in his own century appreciated.