I include here not your typical image to display or discuss mechanics with,
but for Leonardo certainly was how he understood the movements of animals and and of people was very much mechanical problem for him and,
and for his and for his associates and indeed much later in his career.
Around 1510, he said The Book of the Science of Mechanics, which we were discussing outside just moments ago,
must proceed the book of Useful Inventions, where he sort of places a book that he that he refers to as the book of mechanics, now known as the Codex.
Madrid won a book of presentation drawings that discuss principles of mechanics, principles of statics,
which is the science of weights and principles of of dynamics, which is the science of, of, of movement.
And in this case, what, what I'll talk about is how that then worked with the rest of his work and how how
he considered the mechanical principles underlying a lot of things in nature,
including, for example, notes on the vascular system that you see here,
along with notes on staircases that he, of course, as we know with Leonardo, like to relate the problems of both of them,
how things work in the body as well as in architecture and the microcosm, the macrocosm, for example.
And in this case, right next to the vascular study, he notes that as with Ptolemy's cosmograph here,
he he recommends that his that his books on anatomy and his other books be organised according to told according to an organisational system of four,
4 to 8 parts, just like Ptolemy had done with this cosmograph here and indeed early on in his
career when he started making these notes and presentation drawings just like this,
this brachial, brachial plexus drawing of 1490, he started looking at structural problems and proportional issues with structure.
And you see that here with the with the study on the left.
And then later in 1506, he's then looking at what the brachial plexus really looks like, as you can see here.
And I've included a little diagram of, of, of, of how we see those in medical illustrations today.
But that gets that shows you how he sort of sees the body in mechanical and proportional terms and geometrical terms as well.
And this is one of the drawings planned for the exhibition of the brachial plexus, a proportional arrangement as well here,
an analysis with along with the a wing design, a glider wing design down below, and another type of wing design just above that.
Also his heart studies to include another discussion happening with the exhibition.
Drawing examples is that he, unusually for his time, came up with experiments to prove it, to show how the tricuspid valve system worked.
This this three semi lunar valve system how it closes he proposed was with was with vortices that would sort of enter this area here in the heart.
And so he said to produce this kind of thing,
make a plaster mould that would be blown with thin glass inside them, break it from the head to foot at a end.
He's putting an up right if right here to describe.
Well, you can see at the top and here is describing then how to produce an experiment that shows that the
vortices inside this of this object operate just like the vortices inside the heart that operate.
Therefore, the that close the the trust tricuspid valve.
So on the left, you can see how this really works in in medical practice,
how one sees this with a scan and then on the right, a study with a blown glass at Caltech in 2005 or 2004.
I recall where they were showing the vortices as well. Previously it was thought the tricuspid valve was closed with pressure, but it's not.
It's closed with the help of these vortices moving instead of just pressure from above.
So that said about anatomical studies and how that contributed to his understanding of the
mechanics of the heart and the body and rather sophisticated approaches to mechanics.
What do we know about his works in general and how that how those works sort of relate to the mechanical studies?
First of all, we know that he produced 6000 notes and drawings of an estimated 18,000 or more.
I mean, this is these these are the only ones that survive the 6000 notes and drawings and and of the paintings he's known to produce
less than a couple of dozen that that he had a major part in and then maybe 25 that he designed or had contributions to.
And so this is the full list of those.
But but those won't be the primary discussion today at the moment Book of Mechanics the the Codex Madrid one here on the left
and the book on painting are two finished books that he had done that Luca Pacioli referred to in 1498 and and his student,
Francesco Maltz, he made a copy of the treatise on painting that now survives in the printed version that you see here.
The original is lost, actually. So what did he do for this book on on mechanics, one he studied of springs and fuse mechanisms for clocks,
for example, how to regulate the force of the spring as it as it unwinds.
And this is the type of fusion mechanism at the bottom of the page here on the left and right, in the centre of the page.
Right, that that that regulates the even movement of the power of the spring as it as it loses its power, as it unwinds.
The later in his career, he would still work with springs in this case for a flintlock mechanism for which there's no precedent.
We don't think he invented the flintlock mechanism, but but this is rather impressive and there is no precedent for it.
We don't know how how if he is the originator of this of this design, but his real reason for going to Milan in 1483 and then getting the job in 1489,
eventually four, with Ludovico Sforzo, who's pictured here, is on the left.
On the right was to work on was was initially as a musician.
So even though known as a painter, he he went as a musician and would later help with festivals and make things like this.
This is a lyric the braccio in a dragon head form that he designed for for festivals.
This is this there is good there are good suggestions that this is perhaps a portrait of Leonardo as Orpheus
playing a lyric the braccio in 1505 by Marcantonio Raimondi and and he also designed programmable machines.
This was quite clever before his time as well,
where he where one can program these cards right here on the machine to to operate the drum, the drum beats as as it moves along.
The other here is a type of piano or Clive a chord which one can carry around at the festival,
walk around with it playing the stabbed chord that we need more of those I think.
But but what if you want to say that's before its time.
That's that's a fair argument I think. Whereas I normally don't say that's a fair.
But so this is a stage set for Orpheus here where Orpheus as as the mountain opens up, the underworld opens up.
As that happens, as you can see on the dial. I'm on the right or on the left here.
Orpheus comes into the underworld. He's there to, of course, rescue his wife.
And and. And we see the underworld open up like this.
It would have had candles inside it like that. And the home of the general for the for the forces in Milan.
In fact, he must have been rather nervous about that,
but rather ingenious theatrical work that he had to do for Ludovica Sforza, what he was hired to do in 1489.
The full time job that he received was to do this was to make a giant horse.
This is a copy or an example of one in 1996, I believe was finally finished.
That was never finished, however, because the bronze had to be shipped away in 1493.
But he did. He made impressive designs for the horse.
And to give you an example of some of the type, some of the engineering work he had to do for the for the project.
This is a short video at the Museo Galileo that shows the structure of the upper the apparatus
that's required to hold the tesserae in place while one puts the wax figure into a mould.
And lowers that that mould with of wax figure into the ground as this is made to do.
And you can see that it's operated with a winch on the right.
And can lower this very large horse into the ground where where then molten bronze would be poured into into the mould and the wax then melted away.
And you would have the horse molten wax, the molten you would have the bronze horse then to pull out after it's.
After it's. Sufficiently cooled.
It didn't happen,
but it was planned in such a way that he included studies of how to work with difficult combinations of compound pulleys, for example.
So that gives you an example of how how well thought out the program was.
Another example is this water clock that he had done and had to calculate the diameters of the each vessel for for each vessel that would fill up.
This is 24. There were 24 vessels.
And he would calculate with the rule of three how to how the each developed vessel would be, what would fill and then drop and then operate.
This Jack Smart here to hit the bell every hour.
The other another device here is a perpetual water pump, theoretically perpetual, because it doesn't manage the friction properly.
But as you can see here, it has two buckets of water.
As one fills, it drops and pushes the piston down this way.
And then that pushes water up here to fill up this other bucket.
And in the process happens on the other side. Rather clever device.
Generally, though, his ideas are perpetual motion or rather theoretical, and he puts them in these little tiny notebooks.
I wanted to bring one end to show you that and have that for the living book outside as well, the Living Library.
But these tiny notes, I think people don't realise when they see an image how big the text is for one thing, but this is just an idea for him.
And then he formalised that in his book on mechanics with larger text.
Easier to read all of it from from with the left hand, starting at the right hand of the page and going left, however.
And so programmable automatic cart is something he study fairly early on.
There was there was some fascination in the early 19th, early 20th century with this kind of vehicle that people wanted to see it built.
But what's what's really clever is it's programmable. These cams here, depending on where you put them, determine how to how to steer the car.
So it's it's governed with with with springs in here that help to steer it.
What it helped to propel it forward. But then it steers. So let's see.
We have other examples here. Flying machines, for example.
This is a cart. I'm sorry? A kite.
That that you then operate across a river and then you land on the other side with these air filled wine bags on the other side of the river.
So if you if you dare if you dare want to use that kite so other types of gliders and flapping machines he considered
that were that were perhaps for short trips you know not necessarily for for long flights even though he would say,
you know, that you could jump off of a of a of a tower to test the flying machine so that he did he did mention that that's an option.
Other mechanical devices these are automata in the 16th century that that would be that would follow
sort of follow on from these kinds of ways of thinking about automatic devices like flying machines.
The same goes for the giant crossbow and military engineering project that you see here.
Giant, giant catapults that he that he thought about. This was the standard way of designing things at the time.
This is Francesco to George Martini. And and what Leonardo had done had improved the the accuracy of the design process by breaking it
down into three part proportions and then making the length and width proportional to one another.
So he made numerous studies to make that work for for the giant crossbow study.
These are metal stylus marks on the on the page. If I darken the page that's what it looks like now.
And and then a you'd used Euclidean proportional theories for determining how the ratios should work.
So this was built actually by 18 factual television and this is a video of how they they tried to get it to machine will operate.
Watch out for ten. Anyone seen this?
This time, it's closer to Leonardo's original design.
But will that make a difference? They use the modern style of our armature or from the first shot.
They only draw the boat back a quarter of its potential distance.
To work it in gently because of the huge forces involved.
It could be lethal if the boat shatters. So it's not Leonardo's armature design.
Exactly. The boat is working well, so they decide to do it next night.
So they've done this again and they've then used my I had since that time I'd produced a book on this.
In fact, I was encouraged by it and factual for whom I had done the study initially.
And then I and then now that now my studies for the crossbow are used for this
where the where the chassis is is a little different than what I recommended.
But the armature is fairly sophisticated and one can see that from from above here.
Still,
it doesn't necessarily have the power that it's supposed to have the quality of out of the skin and then keep giving evidence and you keep doing that.
I'll get back to reality. But that's when you have to run some on the Tea Party or maybe elites out of business and training and development.
My solo picked up an engineer. Money's going to seduce their person up to the machine of Lumumba's inevitable to give
in to their reality when the basically cyclamate the probability they run the ship.
Zack 1% for Phantom.
Very nice. Anyway, it works. And then the.
I mean, it doesn't work. See my line of design, but, but, you know, it's a better design to some extent than the other one.
The The Last Supper is another one I'd talk about, but but I won't talk about it in depth right now.
What the main thing that I would mention about it is that the mechanics of human emotion are then and get
addressed by Leonardo in this where he addresses with the perspective focussed on Christ's right temple.
He he focuses the the vanishing point at to the centre of the room and it expands
to the rest of the room by virtue of of extending from his sort of mind,
which Leonardo theory theorised about the centre of the brain being the census communists of the common sense where the soul is also located.
And so Leonardo was looking at at the time the way in which the Spirit of the Lord
filled the whole world is this as this was produced for the sports accord as well,
and, and the mechanics of, of of of the spirit of nature and,
and of the room being engaged with also using Euclid as a as a source at the bottom of this page for looking at the
organisation of the painting and the emotional expressions of the figures and the and the tragedy of the event,
the organisation of it reflects back on in fact Masaccio's Trinity and the organisation of that in in perfect balanced form.
And it also reflects and then Rafael would reflect back on it for his designs for the Stanza Della signature of the the School of Athens,
for example, where you see in the background Brunelleschi's plan for St Peter's that Rafael has appropriately added in to the design.
And so proportions of music are also engaged in this.
And if you extrude the painting, if you bring it out of it,
you can see that the proportions of the tapestries are disproportionate in perspectival form, but in musical proportions.
An octave, a fifth and a fourth are recreated in in the in the tapestries.
So this is something that that sort of develops a musical expression of the painting, also addressing Christ's engagement and so forth.
Should we look to paintings like the Mona Lisa for mechanical issues as well?
If we look at how the Mona Lisa is to reflect the nature behind her in the
activities of of the of the moving water and the actions of nature behind her,
certainly she is she's a reflection of the mechanics of nature herself, as she's a sort of Mother Nature figure in her own right in this context.
So Leonardo is is is connecting her to the nature behind her through the folds on her garments.
So you see the undulating movements of the car, squirrel folds that that add to that energy.
So to conclude, I would say that that as we look at how he organises his series of books on human human
nature and and and anatomy and mechanics and painting and various other subjects,
he also organises all of that so that the book of mechanics precedes those of his universe books on useful inventions,
and and that that underlies a lot of what his work is about for him.
Thank you.