“Leonardo Thek@”: 3,500 pages of Leonardo da Vinci’s manuscripts brought together online for the first time in 500 years

Ten years of work were required to achieve this historic result. Named Leonardo Thek@, a digital platform launched by the Museo Galileo in Florence, in partnership with the Biblioteca Leonardiana di Vinci, the Royal Collection Trust in England, and the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, brings together for the first time the two main collections of Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts. Approximately 3,500 pages are now available online and free of charge, including the 1,200 folios of the famous Codex Atlanticus and the 550 from the Royal Collection at Windsor. This is the first time since the Tuscan master's death in 1519 that these documents, scattered across Europe since the 16th century, have been reunited in one place. The project was funded in part by the Italian Ministries of Culture and Higher Education.

Pompeo Leoni, the sculptor who dismembered Leonardo's legacy

Upon his death, Leonardo's manuscripts were passed on to his pupil Francesco Melzi, before falling into the hands of the sculptor Pompeo Leoni at the end of the 16th century. Leoni cut up and reorganized many of the pages into several thematic albums, even separating the drawings from their corresponding texts. Historians consider this intervention "disastrous," according to The Independent, as it led to an immeasurable loss of context and original organization. The team at the Museo Galileo has developed a digital tool capable of comparing the dimensions of the pages, their composition, their watermarks, and other material characteristics to piece them back together. As a result, 50 reconstructions of pages whose fragments were scattered between Italy and the United Kingdom have already been completed, including one that reunites a drawing of a horse from the Codex Atlanticus with its corresponding text held at Windsor. Other pages reveal new discoveries: on the back of a sketch of a needle-making machine, two intertwined dragons have been uncovered.

A tool to follow Leonardo's "thought processes"

Beyond the physical reconstruction, this platform offers researchers an unprecedented window into Leonardo's intellectual workings. By bringing together scientific notes, anatomical studies, artistic reflections, and engineering plans—including his famous flying machine—it allows us to grasp the connections the inventor established between disciplines. "We can see his thought processes and how he used his sheets of paper," emphasizes art historian Matthew Landrus, a Leonardo specialist at the University of Oxford. "Leonardotheka 2.0 offers researchers worldwide unprecedented opportunities to explore the invaluable wealth of information contained in Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts," says Paolo Galluzzi, the platform's creator, in The Independent.