For instructions on how to use the footnotes and bibliography in this section, see Note to Visitor.

In his day, Leonardo was known as a mancino ("lefty" and "southpaw" are modern-day equivalents), with all the social, cultural, and psychological connotations—not all positive—that the word implied in the Renaissance and does even into our own time.¹ He may be the most universally recognized left-handed artist of all time. In contrast, the natural left-handedness of other important masters in the history of Western art has not figured as a prominent biographical fact about them or their work.² For example, the innate left-handedness of Michelangelo, Leonardo's younger contemporary by twenty-three years, is alluded to only in the autobiography of the Florentine sculptor and architect Raffaello da Montelupo (ca. 1504/1505–1566), and then only by way of an anecdote when describing his own left-handedness in drawing and writing.³ Raffaello's eyewitness account is a footnote in Michelangelo studies, for the famous biographies of Michelangelo written by Ascanio Condivi (Rome, 1553) and Giorgio Vasari (Florence, 1550 and 1568), authors who were close to the great artist, omit any such mention. However, many Renaissance authors writing about Leonardo noted that he was left-handed. The difference in the level of documentation regarding Leonardo's handedness, one may argue, can largely be explained by the fact that, throughout his life, his manner of writing and drawing so conspicuously reflected his left-handedness that it could not fail to be striking to his contemporaries.⁴ Unlike many left-handers from the Renaissance into our own time (such as Michelangelo), Leonardo may not have retrained himself to use his right hand regularly for writing or drawing (more on this subject below). While Leonardo's left-handedness is well known to modern scholars of his work,⁵ it is treated much too summarily, considering the significant implications that it has both for the connoisseurship of his drawings and for a reconstruction of his artistic personality.

The earliest record of Leonardo's left-handedness is that of the Franciscan mathematician and theorist Fra Luca Pacioli (ca. 1445–ca. 1514), the artist's intimate friend, frequent collaborator, and near-contemporary. At the latest, Pacioli must have befriended Leonardo during the years 1496 to 1499, when both were staying in Milan. They may have known each other earlier, since Pacioli traveled extensively throughout Italy in the 1480s, before residing in Venice in 1494 (publishing there his Summa de arithmetica, a copy of which Leonardo owned) and before arriving in Milan in 1496.⁶ Pacioli and Leonardo became frequent traveling companions after both were forced to leave Milan in 1499, with the fall of the city and the flight of Ludovico Sforza "Il Moro," their patron. One of Pacioli's treatises on mathematics, the De viribus quantitatis (Ms. Università degli Studi di Bologna, 1496–1508), repeatedly states that Leonardo was a mancino. Pacioli stresses that he speaks from firsthand knowledge: he "wrote in reverse, [his script] is left-handed and could not be read except with a mirror or by holding the back of the sheet against the light. As I understand, and can say, this is the practice of our Leonardo da Vinci, lantern of Painting, who is left-handed" (fol. 239v).⁷ The De viribus manuscript also alludes to Leonardo's collaboration with Pacioli in 1496, stating that Leonardo prepared and drew the studies of geometric solids "with his ineffable left hand" to illustrate the De divina proportione,⁸ the famous treatise that Pacioli wrote in 1496–98 but that was not published until 1509 in Venice.⁹ Pacioli is the only Renaissance source who makes overt reference to Leonardo's left-handedness as a draftsman.

The early accounts of Leonardo's left-handedness are most complete regarding his handwriting, which is not surprising, given the noteworthy character of this mirror script. Giorgio Vasari, one of the authors on the subject, corrected his posthumous vita of Leonardo after visiting Milan in 1566, where he met Francesco Melzi, the great master's faithful companion, pupil, and artistic heir (cat. nos. 120, 121). Vasari stated that a large portion of Leonardo's anatomical drawings and notes, which included the dissection studies guided by Marcantonio della Torre—the brilliant, young professor of philosophy and anatomy at the University of Pavia who died in 1511—were owned by Melzi (for example, see cat. no. 113). In Vasari's words, Leonardo "made a notebook drawn in red chalk and hatched in pen," with illustrations of the frame of the bones, nerves, and muscles, and next to each drawing, "part by part, he wrote in letters of an ill-shaped character, which he made with the left hand, backward; and whoever is not practiced in reading them cannot understand them, since they are not to be read save with a mirror."¹⁰ Vasari added that, besides the material in Melzi's possession that he saw in the city, some writings by Leonardo were also owned by a Milanese painter (probably Aurelio Luini), "with letters written with the left hand in reverse orientation."¹¹ Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo's Trattato dell'arte della pittura, scoltura et archittetura (Milan, 1584) records that Leonardo wrote his Paragone—a comparison of the arts—with the "tired hand" (egli scrisse di mano stanca), a common description of the left hand in the Renaissance.¹² A persistent mistake in the scholarly literature has it that Sabba da Castiglione's Ricordi (Bologna, 1546) mentions Leonardo's left-handedness in this context.¹³ It is true that Sabba's Ricordi offer crucial testimony about Leonardo's work as an artist in Milan, especially about his mural of the Last Supper and the colossal model of the "Sforza Horse" that was destroyed by the Gascon bowmen in the French invasion of 1499.¹⁴ But the treatise says nothing about Leonardo's left-handedness. Sabba da Castiglione (ca. 1480–1554), who was a minor writer, collector, and patron as well as a distant relation of the famous Baldassare, author of The Courtier, only noted his own left-handedness as a way of explaining his great difficulty in accomplishing the task of penning a treatise in his old age.¹⁵

Both early and modern authors have often attempted to explain the reason why Leonardo wrote in an unconventional right-to-left script, sometimes suggesting that it was a cryptographic writing concealing the secret contents of his work. The following note can be found on folio 2 verso of what was once part of the late-seventeenth- or early-eighteenth-century binding of the Codex Leicester (among the pages added by early collectors, preceding the pages of Leonardo's original manuscript; see cat. no. 114):¹⁶ "Vinci used to write in a left-handed manner, according to the practice of the Jews, this being the manner in which those sixteen volumes are written that we have already mentioned, and the character [of the writing] being good, it could be read rather easily by means of a large mirror; it is probable that he did this so that not all could read his writings so easily."¹⁷ This note as well as another, similarly alluding to Leonardo's left-handed script,¹⁸ were written between 1690 and 1717–19, at the time that Leonardo's coveted manuscript had passed into the hands of the Roman painter Giuseppe Ghezzi (1634–1721), from whom Thomas William Coke, first earl of Leicester, directly purchased it in the first half of 1717.¹⁹ Mario Baratta rightly pointed out in 1905 that in very specific circumstances Leonardo would invent code writing (for example, in the so-called Ligny memorandum of about 1499, recording the artist's secret journey to Rome with the count of Ligny). He also created playful rebuses and cryptic pictographs (Windsor, RL 12692). It is quite clear, however, that Leonardo's right-to-left script is not in itself sufficiently enigmatic to have functioned as a type of secret code.²⁰ With practice it can be read with little difficulty. The painter and brilliant early scholar Matteo Zaccolini of Cesena (1590–1630) is known to have become so absorbed by his studies of Leonardo's original writings that, according to the private notes of the erudite connoisseur Cassiano del Pozzo, "the said Matteo got used to that kind of [mirror] writing and began writing many of his own notes in that manner with great facility and in well-formed script, so that no one could at first understand them."²¹ For Leonardo, his manner of writing was clearly one of practicality. Scientific research—old and new—seems to suggest that for "lefties" mirror writing may come more easily with practice than conventional left-to-right script,²² as the hand moves with less effort and, staying ahead of the writing, does not smear the ink. Moreover, the fluent, expository manner of Leonardo's writings, their elegantly structured reasoning, their copious quantity, and the attractive calligraphic styles of some of his early notes in particular scarcely indicate a person suffering from dyslexia, as is often asserted concerning Leonardo in popular journalistic writings.²³

A noteworthy point regarding Leonardo's handedness as a painter occurs in a well-known description by Antonio de' Beatis alluding to Leonardo's paralysis of the right hand, a reference that scholars have interpreted in a variety of ways. De' Beatis, who was secretary to Cardinal Luigi of Aragon, recorded in his diary on October 10, 1517, that he and his employer paid a visit to Leonardo in his living quarters at the castle of Cloux (near Amboise).²⁴ De' Beatis called the great artist an "old man of more than seventy years of age." Leonardo was actually sixty-five years old, but looked older, and nearly every sixteenth-century author seems to have misidentified his age at the time of his death in 1519. In this eyewitness account, de' Beatis also commented: "Quite true that, because he [Leonardo] was overcome by a certain paralysis of his right hand, one can no longer expect fine things from him . . . messer Leonardo can no longer paint with the sweetness of style that he used to have, and he can only make drawings and teach others."²⁵ It is not likely, as has often been claimed, that de' Beatis made a mistake regarding Leonardo's handedness; he was probably a good observer of social behavior in his service as secretary.²⁶ It is normal for an artist to engage much of the body in the physical act of painting, and the most likely implication to be drawn from this observation is that Leonardo probably engaged his right arm and hand for balance and support in painting with his left. Handedness can also be relative, as three later examples illustrate. First, the account of the naturally left-handed Adolph von Menzel (1815–1905): "When I paint in oils, [I do so] always with the right; drawing, watercolor, and gouache always with the left"; Menzel's paintings actually reveal right-handed and left-handed strokes, though his drawings seem predominantly left-handed.²⁷ A second case, in which left-handedness was forced upon a right-handed painter, is that of Jean Jouvenet (1644–1717). According to the biography by A. J. Dezallier d'Argenville (Paris, 1752), Jouvenet retrained himself to paint with his left hand at the age of sixty-nine, after suffering a stroke on the right side of his body, a fact that is also alluded to in the artist's own unpublished memoir. As if in curious confirmation of the written accounts, Jouvenet signed his altarpiece of the Visitation of the Virgin (The Magnificat) at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, "J. Jouvenet, Dextra paralyticus Sinistra pinxit 1716"—that is, "paralyzed right hand, painted with the left hand in 1716."²⁸ Jouvenet was able to continue drawing with his right hand, with the aid of the left.²⁹ The third case concerns Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), who was ambidextrous until 1772, when, during a sojourn in Venice, a fever turned his hair white and gave him a permanent tremor of the right hand that forced him thereafter to draw only with his left.³⁰ For the sixty-five-year-old Leonardo, suffering from ill health, in contrast, the paralysis of the right hand did not impair his skill, since he was naturally left-handed, but taxed the physical strength of his arms in the demanding act of painting. Lomazzo's Idea del tempio della pittura (Milan, 1590) enigmatically notes, "so it seemed that Leonardo trembled each hour that he set out to paint."³¹ Lomazzo's Trattato (Milan, 1584) also calls Leonardo "pittore di mano manca" (left-handed painter) along with numerous admiring citations of his genius,³² and Giovanni Battista Armenini's De' veri precetti della pittura (Ravenna, 1586 and 1587) describes Leonardo's Last Supper (Refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan), "which he painted with the man manca [left hand] in oil on the wall."³³ There is currently no body of archaeological data from the scientific investigation of Leonardo's paintings to shed conclusive light on his handedness (see discussion in cat. no. 46 in the exhibition catalogue).³⁴

The drawings are another matter. First published in 1903, exactly one hundred years ago, Bernard Berenson's Drawings of the Florentine Painters briefly singled out Leonardo's left-handedness as one of the fundamental criteria for establishing their authenticity. Although Berenson was not the first connoisseur to do so (that was Giovanni Morelli), he laid the groundwork for an extraordinary reevaluation of Leonardo's drawings.³⁵ While the archaeological evidence in Leonardo's drawings and handwriting can offer a solid basis for a discussion of his left-handedness, some distinctions need to be made. The evidence is clearest in the drawings in which the artist worked in a linear medium, either in metalpoint or, in his most common medium, pen and ink, but it is also distinguishable in many of his studies in chalk or charcoal. Broadly speaking, when Leonardo modeled areas of shadow with diagonal, parallel hatching, he very often drew lines that course from lower right to upper left and, much less frequently, from upper left to lower right. Here, one may remember that, in writing, the comfortable direction for Leonardo's hand to travel was from right to left, hence, possibly the predominant direction in the hatching of his drawings. The overall effect of the parallel hatching lines is fluent and continuous, often suggesting that he moved the quill pen with great speed. Though the subject requires further research, one can generalize that artists of Leonardo's time who used the right hand to draw, in contrast, typically shaded forms with hatching in the opposite direction, with strokes coursing from upper right to lower left, or from lower left to upper right. For right-handed parallel hatching, see especially catalogue numbers 3 verso, 12 verso, and 122–27.

One can often determine where the artist began his hatching strokes by finding the tips of the lines of hatching that show a greater pressure of the hand wielding the pen or the chalk. Especially in drawings done with pen and ink or with a sharp red chalk stick, this tip at the beginning of a line sometimes appears to be marked by a slightly indented point from which the stroke departs, after which it curves slightly upward, at times also creating a very slight angular hook at the end. The initial pressure of the pen sometimes slightly indents the paper, because of the pressure of the hand, and the line, at the beginning, usually seems thicker because of the greater accumulation of ink. As the artist's hand continues to move rapidly across the paper, decreasing pressure causes the line to become thinner, tapering out at the end of a stroke, as the pen or chalk is lifted from the paper, or creating a very loopy, thin terminus. In Leonardo's case, therefore, it is not entirely correct to state that he consistently drew strokes in one direction, for, like artists working with their right hand, he did not always begin his strokes at the same place. There is also a great variety in the diagonal disposition of lines, with strokes sometimes traveling outward from the outlines of a form, thus departing from the outlines in divergent directions, say, from lower right to upper left or from upper left to lower right.

Whether Leonardo began the hatching from the lower right, and traveled upward, or (much less frequently) from the upper left, and moved downward, the patches of diagonal lines always appear oriented in the same direction. This characterization of left-handed strokes generally holds true, provided that the sheet of paper was always kept stationary. Artists, however, often shift the paper in the process of drawing. Left-handed parallel hatching is found in Leonardo's drawings from the very beginning of his artistic career in the early 1470s onward, though it would be greatly modified after 1500. To the connoisseur's great relief, Leonardo rarely used counterstrokes in hatching before 1500 (more on this below), unlike the young Michelangelo, who was innately left-handed, but who trained himself to draw right-handed. From the early 1480s to the early 1510s, Michelangelo used a dense pen-and-ink cross-hatching technique derived from a close study of Martin Schongauer's prints.³⁶ Leonardo's early drawings, from the 1470s and early 1480s, often exhibit shorter and more disorganized lines of parallel hatching than do his drawings from the 1490s, with the strokes characterized by an especially large loop at the end. The lines often start at the outline of the forms, or close to it, and the diagonal hatching is distributed in broad patches of shadow that are interrupted across the form, with little intermediate modeling (in the early drawings, Leonardo often reworked the intermediate shadows with brush and wash; cat. nos. 18, 21). Precisely because their rendering is painterly, rather than linear, however, the early drapery studies painted with brush on prepared linen (cat. nos. 13–17) present a challenging problem of attribution; the brushstrokes are totally blended in, and none are individually discernible. In drawings from the early 1470s to the early 1480s, the strokes in Leonardo's hatching are frequently not unified—they often visibly change in direction within the general "lower left to upper right" disposition—and expressively zigzag downward (cat. nos. 19, 21, 23, 31, 32). By the late 1480s and throughout the 1490s, however, his use of diagonal parallel hatching was often fluent, pitch-straight, and almost perfectly continuous (cat. nos. 58–73), much like Italian engravings of this period.

The question of the weight to give Leonardo's left-handedness in the connoisseurship of his drawings is both significant and complex. To a large extent (and here one may generalize broadly) Leonardo's drawings from his early years up to about 1500 do not present much difficulty in terms of attribution, because the diagonal parallel hatching courses across the surface of the forms (and into the background) with great fluidity and rapidity. In most of Leonardo's rendered drawings from the 1490s, the fine, nearly pitch-straight lines show an upper-left to lower-right orientation that is entirely clear. Yet even among drawings of the 1490s, the crudely executed, but definitely left-handed, Last Supper composition sketch in red chalk in Venice (inscribed in Leonardo's right-to-left script) has occasioned fierce debate regarding its authenticity.³⁷ While autograph drawings by Leonardo reveal left-handed parallel hatching (see the discussion below), it does not follow that all drawings with this type of parallel hatching are by Leonardo. Significant in any evaluation is the quality of execution. A number of surviving drawings that are executed in a Leonardesque style and that exhibit the hallmark of Leonardo's left-handedness—the lower right to upper left strokes—are demonstrably not by the master. These range from precise copies by enthusiastic pupils, to later imitations, to downright forgeries. It is known, for example, that Francesco Melzi reinforced drawings by Leonardo that were growing faint because of the physical properties of their medium, especially the studies in red chalk on reddish ocher prepared paper in which the contrasts between drawn form and colored ground are slight.³⁸ One such case is a much-discussed study of the head of an apostle (Simon?) in profile perdu that relates to Leonardo's Last Supper. The contours here seem harshly reinforced along the face, but the left-handed inner modeling of the features reveals a subtlety and beauty that are worthy of the great master himself.³⁹ A very detailed, left-handed copy in red chalk of this figure is also extant,⁴⁰ but the overall impression of the modeling of the forms is rather flat. Kenneth Clark first called attention to a number of similarly clean "replacement copies" drawn in red chalk (Royal Library, Windsor) in which the hatching with continuous, fairly fluent parallel diagonal lines seems fastidious and inert, and he convincingly attributed many of these to Melzi (see cat. nos. 120, 121).⁴¹ In this connection, an original study by Leonardo of a horse's foreleg, probably dating about 1495–1500, can be compared with the partial copy derived from it by Melzi, both drawn in the same red chalk medium.⁴² The extent to which Leonardo's pupils and copyists imitated his left-handed manner of drawing is extraordinary, and in a number of cases both original prototypes and copies are extant.⁴³

Of all Leonardo's drawings, his fascinating studies of grotesque physiognomy (including the so-called caricatures) were by far the most copied and can be instructive concerning the process by which copies begot further and even more distant copies (see also the essay by Varena Forcione in the exhibition catalogue). For example, in the present exhibition, one may trace the same motif of a small grotesque woman in bust length from Leonardo's original Chatsworth drawing (cat. no. 73b) to a copy attributed to Melzi (cat. no. 121), to another copy by a later sixteenth-century artist (cat. no. 136), and still further to a copy by a seventeenth-century artist found in the pages of the drawings album owned by the eighteenth-century French collector Pierre-Jean Mariette (cat. no. 137; RF 28749). These copies all simulate "left-handed" strokes, as in Leonardo's originals. This is also true of a more ambitious set of finished copies in soft leadpoint bound in a two-volume edition from 1669 of Rabelais's works (the Spencer Grotesques), which are probably by a late-sixteenth-century Lombard artist.⁴⁴ One of these copies may be compared to an original by Leonardo. A sheet of caricatures in pen and ink reveals just how Leonardo's left-handed parallel-hatching strokes were imitated. The pressure of the hand, the slight hook returns, and the greater ink deposits make clear that the strokes began at the lower right, tapering off toward the upper left, just as in many of Leonardo's originals. A further copy at The Metropolitan Museum of Art after one of these heads is much less clever in its imitation of Leonardo's hatching, and most of the strokes end up looking like a salad of short lines running in very disparate directions. Thus, even in a case like this, when Leonardo's original is not extant for comparison, one can discern copies imitating left-handed hatching by the fact that the "left-handed" strokes appear forced and discontinuous. In comparing the originals and the resulting copies, it is crucial to be aware of the pen's or the chalk's natural and rapid movement across the paper in the autograph drawings. Leonardo let the pen glide quickly, and with beautiful, rhythmic tonal emphases. He knew exactly when a well-placed inkblot could produce a successful pictorial effect. He also knew how to create dynamic passages of finish and sketchy unfinish (non finito) in his drawings, and the strokes in the modeling always look unified, as they course over the forms and the background. By comparison, the penmanship in the copies often appears strained. It is as if the pen's tip scratched the surface of the paper, then encountered resistance, the result of the copyist drawing slowly and constantly pausing, timidly looking back and forth at the original, picking up the pen again, while checking continuously that he was following the original exactly. In order to get the angle of the lines to look left-handed, it is also not improbable that some copyists turned the paper around (rotating it ninety degrees) and drew sideways.⁴⁵ Copyists further removed from Leonardo's circle of pupils completely lost sight of the organic structure of the hatching in the master's drawings. These copyists also failed to leave any passages in a state of creative sketchiness, as is typical of Leonardo's originals.

Complicating matters further, from 1500 onward Leonardo modified his own evidently left-handed parallel-hatching technique in order to explore more diverse tonal rendering. He began to experiment with a pronounced curved hatching that follows form in a fairly exaggerated way (cat. nos. 94, 95, 97–99, 103) and to pursue sfumato effects of seamlessly blended tone (cat. nos. 91, 107–9). During these explorations, however, he also occasionally returned to the straight parallel-hatching technique, for instance, in 1508–12, as can be seen in some of the drawings in the Codex Leicester (cat. no. 114, Sheets 1, 2, and 3). Yet even in Leonardo's most densely pictorial drawings of his mature period some traces of his left-handed parallel hatching often remain underneath the layers of worked-up medium. The study for the head of the Virgin (cat. no. 108) has sometimes been doubted ex silentio as being by Leonardo (rather than stating their doubts about the drawing, scholars have omitted it in their publications of Leonardo's work), possibly because its magical beauty renders it suspicious, and possibly because it is also commonly agreed (not without reason) that Leonardo's pupils could be at times more Leonardesque in their pursuit of aesthetic effects than Leonardo himself. Most important, the head of the Virgin is drawn in a nearly seamless sfumato technique with a surprisingly homogeneous use of red and black chalks that reveals extensive, unified left-handed strokes in the rubbed-in intermediate shadows. The left-handed strokes have gone unnoticed, probably because the drawing is so often examined from photographs rather than from the original. The delicately curving strokes of silvery, soft black chalk, moving from lower right to upper left, are most evident to the unassisted eye in the area of the Virgin's forehead, while the short left-handed strokes in the red-chalk underdrawing, especially near the area of the Virgin's nose, can be seen only with microscopic enlargement.⁴⁶ Thus, there can be no doubt regarding Leonardo's authorship of this drawing.

Leonardo's highly rendered studies in pen and ink with a pronounced curved hatching have been among his most misunderstood drawing types (cat. nos. 95, 98, 99, 112). The parallel strokes change freely in direction, though in a unified way, as they follow the roundness of the forms. Thus, a survey of the early scholarly literature turns up doubts concerning the attribution of pen-and-ink composition studies with curved hatching for the Leda and the Swan from Rotterdam and Chatsworth (cat. nos. 98, 99), the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and a Lamb from Venice (cat. no. 95), and the Mausoleum from the Louvre (cat. no. 112).⁴⁷ The early connoisseur Giovanni Morelli went so far as to attribute the Leda drawings to Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, "Il Sodoma" (1477–1549), the enigmatic painter from Varese who took Leonardo's sfumato technique to inspired heights. Today, most scholars rightly accept that these drawings with curved hatching—whether done with long or short strokes of the quill pen—represent examples of a genuine technique of rendering by Leonardo, which can be verified by comparing the sheets to his illustrations in the Codex Leicester (cat. no. 114) from 1508–10. There, one can see Leonardo's fine quill pen moving quickly back and forth from image to text written in his characteristic right-to-left script. Further confirmation of the authenticity of the Ledas, the Venice Saint Anne, or the Louvre Mausoleum comes from close study of the curved hatching technique in dark iron-gall ink in some of the drawings of Anatomical Manuscript C III (Windsor, RL 19101–19103, 19095), from 1508–12, which are also carefully inscribed with Leonardo's notes in his typical right-to-left script. Leonardo seems to have begun experimenting with this curved hatching technique in 1502–4 for his studies of fortifications and in 1503–5 for his sketches of the Battle of Anghiari (cat. nos. 81–83). He refined it into a wholly consistent and monumental graphic vocabulary in his drawings from 1508 to 1512.

As we have seen, some ambidexterity among artists is not unusual.⁴⁸ Given Leonardo's natural left-handedness, a crucial question concerns whether the artist was ambidextrous as a draftsman, that is, a left-hander who learned to use his right hand. This was the subject of a heated dispute between two early connoisseurs of Leonardo's work, Giovanni Morelli and Luca Beltrami.⁴⁹ First, Morelli's contention: "In all these drawings by Leonardo, the shading . . . is from left to right—for Leonardo both wrote and drew with his left hand, and only occasionally made use of his right when representing spherical objects."⁵⁰ (Morelli, like other early connoisseurs, overlooked much archaeological evidence in assessing the creative process of Leonardo's drawings, and he therefore had difficulties with the great master's curved hatching technique.) Beltrami, pained by Morelli's indictment of the intuitive component in connoisseurship ("der geistige Gehalt," the inner or spiritual quality of works of art), fiercely advocated a less rigid view that took into account the possibility of a more ambidextrous Leonardo, both as a draftsman and as a writer. The view of Leonardo as an ambidextrous draftsman was endorsed by other early Italian connoisseurs (especially Gustavo Uzielli and Mario Baratta), while Anglo-American art historians have by and large agreed on an exclusively left-handed Leonardo as a draftsman. One drawing in the present exhibition (cat. no. 92) reveals right-handed and left-handed strokes. This is the monumental Christ Church cartoon (full-scale drawing), dating from 1503–5, which portrays the head and shoulders of a grotesque man, vigorously executed in charcoal or soft black chalk. It exhibits much lower left to upper right parallel hatching in the face and hair, while the lower parts of the back are boldly drawn with lower right to upper left hatching. In such large-scale drawings as cartoons, which often demanded great physical effort to produce,⁵¹ it seems almost possible to envision the artist drawing with both hands, though it cannot be discounted that the right-handed parts of the drawing were done by a pupil closely working with the master.

In the vast majority of Leonardo's notes, the script reads right to left in so-called mirror writing. This is true from the very beginnings of his artistic career, as is seen in the upper-left inscription on the recto of the famous Landscape of the Arno River and Valley, done in pen and ink and dated August 5, 1473, when the artist was twenty-one years old. His use of this script was continuous throughout his life, suggesting that it was a comfortable habit for him. Whether Leonardo sometimes wrote in conventional left-to-right script was also the subject of especially heated debate among early scholars, though the consensus now is that he did.⁵² The verso of the Arno River drawing is inscribed at the top in what appears to be an attractive calligraphic hand with a conventional, though somewhat strained, left-to-right script that may also possibly be by the young Leonardo. A more striking case is the drawing of an allegory on the verso of a sheet with studies relating to the Adoration (cat. no. 31), which establishes its date in 1481–83. The scene is labeled with four words in right-to-left script—"fortuna," "morte," "invidia," and "ingratitudine"—but two in conventional, though forced, left-to-right script—"ignoranza" (with a reversed letter "z") and "superbia." There can be no doubt that the latter words are also authentic, for the handwriting of both types of lettering are in the identical metalpoint medium as the figural drawing on the sheet. The beautifully drawn maps in color (Royal Library, Windsor), from 1503 and later, one of which is exhibited here (cat. no. 80), are fluently labeled in conventional left-to-right script, for they were probably intended as presentation pieces for the patron. The boldly drawn preliminary sketches done to prepare these maps, however, bear Leonardo's usual right-to-left script (cat. nos. 78, 79). Functioning as official documents, the well-known letters from Leonardo to Ludovico Sforza (undated, ca. 1481–83) and to Cardinal Ippolito d'Este (September 18, 1507) are both written in conventional left-to-right script and are probably redactions of Leonardo's original text.⁵³ While scholars agree that these letters closely reflect Leonardo's intentions, the actual degree of his authorship has been hotly debated. Jean Paul Richter and Luca Beltrami, for example, vehemently argued that the handwriting in the letter to Ludovico was Leonardo's own. It is now commonly thought that they were written by scribes on Leonardo's behalf.⁵⁴ The well-educated and aristocratic Francesco Melzi (cat. nos. 120, 121) gradually took on the role of scribe for Leonardo, as well as of interpreter of his notes, when he came to live in the master's household in Milan about 1508. Leonardo's numerals read often right to left and sometimes left to right, but not always with internal consistency (or with respect to the script; see cat. nos. 53 verso, 78, 79, 102), which suggests that he may have sometimes adapted them for the eyes of a reader other than himself.⁵⁵ In his entire oeuvre, only the minuscule number of drawings and notes that were intended to be read by another—whether patron, collaborator, or friend—seem to be written in conventional left-to-right script.

The fragmentary autobiography by Raffaello da Montelupo, written in the 1560s when he was an old man, offers an unexpected glimpse of how left-handedness was perceived in the Renaissance, and what it meant to be a left-handed artist. The autobiography relates events in Raffaello's youth, in the early sixteenth century, before the brutal sack of Rome in 1527 by the army of Emperor Charles V, which is also vividly described:

I will not omit to say that by nature I am left-handed, and, finding that hand more facile than the right one, I used to write with it, since my teacher did not mind, being satisfied that my handwriting was good. I have therefore always used the left hand, be it for writing, be it for drawing some designs from the Morgante,⁵⁶ which was used for reading at school. From the moment that I held the sheet [of paper] lengthwise, in order to write with the left hand, many were astonished, thinking that I wrote "all'ebraica" ["Hebrew-style," hence right to left] and that [my writing] could not be read later. Regarding this, I remember a curious case: when I found myself in Florence making a receipt for a notary for a certain amount of money, I laid the sheet lengthwise [to write], and the notary doubted that my writing could be read. When I had finished a sentence, he took the sheet and, realizing that it could be read extremely well, he called perhaps ten notaries to come watch me. Having finished the receipt, I then wrote some other words with the right hand because I could also use it well, even though I later stopped using it. As I have already said, I draw better with the left hand, and once when I found myself drawing the "Arco di Trasi al Colosseo" [the Arch of Constantine], Michelangelo and Sebastiano del Piombo passed by and stopped to watch me. It should be prefaced that both of them, though naturally left-handed, did everything with their right hand, except actions requiring force. So they stayed a long time to watch me with great wonder, because, as far as is known, the two of them never made anything with their left [hand].⁵⁷

One can learn a great deal about the emphasis on right-handedness in the Renaissance from printed calligraphy books of the period (they are often also illustrated with modest woodcuts),⁵⁹ though they are the type of resource that is rarely tapped by art historians. The detailed instructions of these popular manuals shed light on the mechanics of holding and moving the pen and ink across the paper, and the sum of the evidence argues (not unexpectedly) for a right-handed world.⁶⁰ Gerard Mercator's Literarum latinarum . . . (Antwerp, 1540), for example, illustrates the correct and incorrect ways of holding a quill pen in writing. Most manuals advise on how to maintain a steady posture of the body, as well as how to place the arm, right hand, and fingers, and warn that the pen be moved in only three strokes. In this regard, Leonardo's left-handedness would have posed a challenge to his writing teachers, especially because of the awkward placement of the left hand around the quill (for example, curling the hand and wrist above the line to be written or below it) in conventional left-to-right writing. The manuals give various recipes for inks, papers, and sizing, and describe how to make well-crafted quill pens for achieving the elegant, rapid movements necessary for cursive script (with attractive legatura and incatenatura). For instance, the best quill feathers were plucked from a domestic goose (ocha domestica), though a wild goose was also suitable, but from the bird's right wing so that the angle and curve would correspond to a right-handed writer (the tip then required cutting according to precise instructions). The calligraphy book by Marcello Scalino da Camerino, entitled Regole nuove et avertimenti (Venice, 1584; Brescia, 1591), also describes step-by-step how right-handed boys were taught handwriting.⁶¹ Moreover, it is clear from Giovanni Francesco Cresci's Perfetto scrittore (Rome, 1570) that teachers gave up on the "defects" of some of their pupils (and one can imagine that left-handedness was at times one of them).⁶² One may speculate that Leonardo, especially in his early years as an illegitimate child living outside the paternal household, may not have experienced ordinary patterns of schooling (see Chronology).⁶³ Giorgio Vasari's vita paints a portrait of the young Leonardo as a transgressive boy at the abbaco, the four-year secondary school that was attended by boys from the age of ten or eleven onward and where he was probably sent to learn the merchant's profession. The main subject was business arithmetic, though key books by such authors as Aesop and Dante were also read.⁶⁴ According to Vasari, "At the abbaco during the few months that he [Leonardo] attended it, he made such progress, that he often [deliberately] confounded his teacher by continually raising doubts and causing difficulties."⁶⁵ While the degree of veracity of the biographer's anecdote may be debated, it is probably not a complete fabrication. The boy's education must have also included learning good handwriting skills. Notaries were among the professionals in the Renaissance most required to possess a quick, self-confident, and clear cursive script, often not devoid of flourishes: their ideal was to write with a light hand (scrivere con la mano leggiera).⁶⁶ The artist's father, Ser Piero di Antonio da Vinci (1429–1504), was a notary, as were many men in the artist's family, excepting his grandfather, Antonio di Ser Piero da Vinci (ca. 1372–1465), going back to the fourteenth century.⁶⁷ Although in right-to-left direction, Leonardo's early handwriting, as in a sheet dated by him 1478 when he was twenty-six years old, is pleasingly ornate, and his initials sometimes reveal great calligraphic flourishes.⁶⁸ Moreover, the verso of a sheet from the late 1470s or early 1480s exhibited here (cat. no. 20) bears sketches that relate to the Benois Madonna and the Madonna Litta (State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg), while the recto contains some small calligraphic exercises toward the top and bottom of the right border, written in right-to-left script. Also of concern to Leonardo, in his later career as author of a variety of treatises, the education of a Renaissance humanist was judged by the quality of his antique-style lettering and script. Among his projects about 1498 may have been the preparation of drawings for the woodcuts of the alphabet of Roman epigraphic letters published in Fra Luca Pacioli's De divina proportione (Venice, 1509).⁶⁹ It also bears emphasizing that, in the 1480s and 1490s, Leonardo arduously taught himself a specialized vocabulary of expression by rote copying of words (vocaboli) from admired texts, compiling interminably long lists of individual words in alphabetical order for his lexicographic exercise (see cat. no. 21).⁷⁰ Calling himself a "man without a humanist's education" (omo sanza lettere), Leonardo was embarking on a career as an author of treatises.

Yet how odd was Leonardo's right-to-left handwriting considered to be? Beyond the case presented by Raffaello da Montelupo, it is difficult to offer concrete proof to substantiate the frequent claims that other Italian Renaissance artists and architects also wrote in left-handed script.⁷¹ Nevertheless, the fact that Giovanni Battista Palatino's enormously popular calligraphy book Libro nuovo d'imparare a scrivere (Rome, 1540) illustrates a clever pattern for practicing "lettera mancina," mirror left-handed script, indicates that, however curious, left-handed script was not unheard of. According to the rhymed verse inscribed below Palatino's woodcut illustration, the writing can be read without straining the mind, with the aid of a mirror.⁷² The variety of scripts that these books found acceptable seems to have been great: Giovanni Antonio Tagliente's Excellente scrivere pattern book (Venice, 1532) even illustrates a model for practicing a "lettera pendente," that is, a conventional left-to-right cursive that leans to the left in an otherwise deplorable and exaggerated way, as if it were left-handed (as opposed to the conventional rightward tilt).

If Leonardo's left-handedness was noteworthy in the Renaissance, it has fascinated posterity. Jean Paul Richter, the author of the most important anthology of Leonardo's writings, speculated that the great artist became left-handed because "he was deprived of the normal use of his right hand by an accident, or in a fight."⁷³ Arthur Ewart Popham, the eminent connoisseur of Leonardo's drawings, suggested that a childhood accident had maimed the great artist's right hand, rendering him left-handed by necessity.⁷⁴ In a considerably more far-fetched attempt, Sigmund Freud wrote in a letter of October 9, 1898, to Wilhelm Fliess (his disciple in 1887–1902) that "perhaps the most famous left-handed individual was Leonardo, who is not known to have had any love affairs," thus linking the artist's left-handedness with sublimated sexuality.⁷⁵ Proceeding on the basis of a "childhood memory," Freud pressed this point (among others) quite far in his famous psychosexual interpretation of the artist's personality. (The study was published as Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci in Leipzig and Vienna in 1909–10.)⁷⁶ Marie Bonaparte's 1927 interpretation misunderstood both the historical context of her subject and the study of Leonardo's drawings:

From the psychoanalytic point of view, it is conceivable that this contiguity is not accidental and that there existed an unconscious connection between his [Leonardo's] undoubtedly extreme repression of infantile masturbation and his subsequent disgust of sexuality. This may even be true also of the fact that he was left-handed, or at least preferred the left hand for drawing, painting, and writing. For it is remarkable that the hands Leonardo drew on the page [Windsor, RL 19009 recto]⁷⁷ on which he set down his thoughts about the disgust prompted in him by the sexual act are all right hands.⁷⁸

The material in this section was derived from the exhibition catalogue, Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman. Edited by Carmen C. Bambach, with contributions by Carmen C. Bambach, Alessandro Cecchi, Claire Farago, Varena Forcione, Martin Kemp, Anne-Marie Logan, Pietro C. Marani, Carlo Pedretti, Carlo Vecce, Françoise Viatte, and Linda Wolk-Simon. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2003. Distributed by Yale University Press. The catalogue is available in the Museum's bookshops and in the online Met Store. Many thanks to the Museum's Editorial Department for making portions of the exhibition catalogue available for online use.

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Footnotes

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1. A very slight sketch in red chalk from 1515–19 by one of Leonardo's pupils, too faint for reproduction, portrays a left hand holding a pen (Codex Atlanticus, vol. 9, fol. 770v [formerly, fol. 283v-b]; discussed in Möller 1926; Pedretti 1958b; and Pedretti 1978–79, vol. 2, p. 105, no. 770v. Historical research can be adduced to demonstrate that religions and cultures—across the ages—have at times stigmatized left-handedness. Negative connotations of character are evoked by the Latin and Italian words for "left" (sinister and sinistra), and in Italian the left hand is often figuratively called la mano manca (the lacking or injured hand). See lexicographic surveys in Battaglia 1975; Battaglia 1998. 
   
2. Here, one would include, for example, Michelangelo, Hans Leonhard Schäufelein, Hans Holbein the Younger, Jan van Goyen, Francesco Borromini, Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli) late in his life, Adolph von Menzel, Edward Munch, Paul Klee, and Pablo Picasso. See Mongan 1987, p. 164; Jung 1977; Parker 1983, pp. 32–33; Beck 1987, pp. 12–13; Rowlands with Bartum 1993, vol. 1, p. 141; Reuterswärd 1993; and Gatteschi 1998, pp. 120–21. 
   
3. Raffaello da Montelupo's autobiography (published in Vasari–Milanesi 1906, vol. 6, pp. 551–62; Gatteschi 1998, pp. 120–21). On Raffaello da Montelupo as a left-handed draftsman, see Berenson 1935, pp. 105–20; Berenson 1938, vol. 1, pp. 256–63; Berenson 1961, vol. 1, pp. 384–92. 
   
4. Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo seems to refer to this in the Idea del tempio della pittura (Milan, 1590): "as one can see from many books written and drawn by him [Leonardo] with his left hand" ("come vedesi da molti libri da lui scritti e disegnati alla mancina"; quoted from Lomazzo 1973–74, vol. 1, p. 293). 
   
5. The most substantive previous discussion of Leonardo's left-handed manner of writing is found in Baratta 1905a, pp. 3–55 ("perchè Leonardo da Vinci scriveva 'a rovescio'"), though imprecise in its details and outdated. For summary references to Leonardo's left-handedness, see Richter 1970, vol. 1, pp. 105–11; Beltrami 1909; Calvi 1916, pp. 437–45; Beltrami 1919b, pp. 144–54; Calvi 1925a; Berenson 1938, vol. 1, p. 168; Favaro 1930; Keller 1938; Venturi 1939; Pedretti 1953, pp. 176–86; Heydenreich 1954, vol. 1, pp. 53–54; Pedretti 1958b; Clark and Pedretti 1968–69, vol. 1, pp. xv–xix; Pedretti 1975b, pp. 1–38; Pedretti 1977, vol. 1, pp. 91–97; Jung 1977; Scaglia 1982; Mongan 1987; Reuterswärd 1993; and Holly 1996. 
   
6. Pedretti 1953, pp. 176–93; Bambach [Cappel] 1994a, pp. 29–39. 
   
7. Facsimile in Pedretti 1953, p. 183 (partial transcriptions in Baratta 1905a, pp. 30–31; Richter 1970, vol. 1, pp. 109–10, n. 1): "Cap. IX. Do scrivere ch[e] non se legi se no[n] con spechio / Scriuesi anchora alla rouescia è mancina ch[e] non / si possono legere . se non con lo specchio . o, uero guarda/[n]do la carta dal suo rovescio contra la luce, come so / mentendi senzaltro, dica come fa il no[st]ro leonardo da / uinci, lume della pittura quale è. mancino, come piu / uolte è ditto." 
   
8. Facsimile in Pedretti 1953, p. 179: "facte e formate per quella ineffabile senistra mano." 
   
9. Two versions of the original manuscript of Pacioli's De divina proportione are extant, dating about 1496–98, in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan (of higher quality), and in the Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire, Geneva. 
   
10. Vasari 1966– , vol. 4, pp. 28–29: "Lionardo, che ne fece un libro disegnato di matita rossa e tratteggiato di penna) . . . et in quegli a parte per parte di brutti caratteri scrisse lettere che sono fatte con la mano mancina a rovescio, e chi non ha pratica a leggere con l'intende, perche non si leggono se non con lo spechio." 
    
11. Vasari 1966– , vol. 4, p. 28: "Come anche sono nelle mani di [. . .], pittor milanese, alcuni scritti di Lionardo, pur di caratteri scritti con la mancina a rovescio, che trattano della pittura e de' modi del disegno e colorire. Costui non è molto che venne a Fiorenza a vedermi desiderando stampar questa opera, e la condusse a Roma per dargli esito, né so poi che di ciò sia seguito." Lomazzo's Trattato (Milan, 1584) identifies Aurelio Luini as one of the Milanese painter-collectors of Leonardo's drawings of grotesque heads (Lomazzo 1973–74, vol. 2, p. 315). 
    
12. Lomazzo 1973–74, vol. 2, capitolo xiv, p. 138. 
    
13. For example, see Solmi 1923, p. 227; Richter 1970, vol. 1, p. 110, n. 1 (with a misleading direct quotation). 
    
14. Castiglione 1560, Ricordo CIX, "Circa gli ornamenti della casa," fols. 56v–57v. 
    
15. Castiglione 1560, unpaginated preface: "& sopratutto co[n] la difficultà, e fatica gra[n]de del mio ritroso, & sconcio scriuere co[n] la sinistra mano a me naturale, il quale era si necessario, che no[n] si potea fare senza esso." 
    
16. Pedretti 1980a, pp. 17–19; Pedretti 1994c, pp. 31–33. 
    
17. Author's transcription: "Soleua il Vinci scriuere Alla Mancina, secondo luso degli / Ebrei, nella qual Maniera erano scritti quei sedici Volumi / de quali de già abiamo fatto Menzione, et esendo il cara/ttere buono, si legeua assai facilmente Mediante un spe/chio grande, è probabile ch'egli facessi questo, accio tu/tti non legessèro così facilmente i suoi scritti" (partially transcribed in Richter 1970, vol. 2, p. 413). 
    
18. Author's transcription: "Libro Originale / Della Natura, peso, e moto delle Acque, / composto, scritto, e figurato di proprio carattere alla mancina dall insigne Pittore e Geometra / Leonardo da Vinci." 
    
19. The earl of Leicester had the Codex handsomely rebound. The eighteenth-century brown leather slipcase (341 x 264 x 32 mm), which bears the arms of the earls of Leicester, is likewise inscribed: "DA VINCI/ DELLA NATURA &c./ DELLE ACQUE/ MS./ ORIGINALE/ DELL'AUTORE/ ALLA MANCINA./ 699." The Codex Leicester was disassembled in 1981, and the binding, slipcover, and added endpapers are now kept separately. 
    
20. Baratta 1905a, pp. 34–40. 
    
21. Bell 1991. Quotation of Cassiano del Pozzo's Montpellier Ms. H. 267, from Pedretti 1977, vol. 1, pp. 38–39: "nella quale ha spiegato molti[ssim]e cose che apartengono al Trattato di Lionardo da Vinci jnscritto opinione di Lionardo da Vinci, circa il modo di dipigner Prospettiue, ombre, lontananze, altezze, bassezze da presso e da discosto et altro. Del qual Trattato di Lionardo come haueua uisto molte cose da quello scritto con carattere alla rouescia, così il d[etto] Matteo s'assuefece à quella ragione di scriuere, e molte delle sue fatiche, acciò non fussero alla p[rim]a intense da ognuno le haueua con facilità grande e con caratteri assai aggiustato prese a scriuere in quella maniera." 
    
22. Early scientific studies are cited in Baratta 1905a, pp. 41–46; Calvi 1916, pp. 438–39. Recent studies are cited in Schott 1979; Kirk and Kertesz 1989; Coren 1993, pp. 230–33; Kirk and Kertesz 1993; L' Anthony 1995; Zacharias and Kirk 1998; Schott 1999; Blank, Miller, and von Voss 2000 (my thanks to Alison Manges for some of this literature). See also "How to Teach Italic," Gunnlaugur SE Briem, January 1, 1999 (http://www.ismennt.is/not/briem/text/3/33/33.3/33.304.left.html). 
    
23. Contra Røsstad 1995, pp. 112–25, "indications of visual dyslexia in Leonardo's texts." Davis 1997 and Sanders 2001 offer good working definitions of dyslexia (my thanks to Rachel Stern for this literature). 
    
24. De' Beatis's diary entry is also discussed in Vecce 1990, pp. 51–59. 
    
25. Marani 1999c, 2000b, pp. 364–65, document no. 94 (Vecce 1990, p. 56): "Ben vero che da lui per esserli venuta certa paralesi ne la dextra non se ne puo expectare piu cosa bona. Ha ben facto un creato milanese chi lavora assai bene et benche il prefato messer Lunardo non possa colorire con quella dulceza che solea pur serve ad fare disegni et insignare ad altri." 
    
26. Contra Venturi 1939, p. 173. 
    
27. Reuterswärd 1993, p. 10 (n. 10): "wenn ich Öl male immer mit der Rechten, Zeichnen, Aquarellieren, Gouache immer mit der Linken." See archival photograph of Adolph von Menzel drawing with his left hand, published in Keisch and Riemann-Reyher 1996–97, p. 43; and discussion in Jung 1977, p. 206. 
    
28. Dezallier d'Argenville 1752, p. 352; and further Schnapper 1974, pp. 146, 222, no. 146 (my thanks to Nicolas Schwed and Perrin Stein). 
    
29. Reuterswärd 1993, p. 10 (n. 6). 
    
30. Powell 1951, pp. 12, 27; Reuterswärd 1993, p. 7. 
    
31. Lomazzo's passage generally alludes to how artists approached their art. Lomazzo 1973–74, vol. 1, p. 333 (Beltrami 1919a, p. 188, document no. 263 [13a]), capitolo xxxi: "Così Leonardo parea che d'ogni ora tremasse, quando si ponea a dipingere; e però non diede mai fine ad alcuna cosa cominciata, considerando quanto fosse la grandezza dell'arte, talché egli scorgeva errori in quelle cose che egli altri pareano miracoli." Later painters used a "Malstick" to steady the hand, a device that in fact often renders the distinction between left-handed and right-handed brushstrokes difficult to discern. 
    
32. Beltrami 1919a, p. 185, document no. 263 (8): "Leonardo Vinci Fiorentino, sommo e unico pittore e plasticatore e acutissimo investigator de le sue arti, de le quali ne scrisse, e parimenti dell'acque e macchine molti libri, di mano manca, come già fece nel pingere l'antico Cavaliero Turpilio pittore Venetiano." Other evidence of Leonardo's genius is given in Lomazzo's writings (transcribed in ibid., pp. 182–206, no. 263). 
    
33. Armenini 1587, 1977, p. 172: "Ma fra gli altri io vidi in Milano quello de' Frati di San Domenico in Santa Maria delle Gratie, nell quale à man manca vi è dipinto à oglio sul muro Un Cenacolo da Leonardo Vinci, che à benche fosse fino allhora mezo guasto." See also Pedretti 1953, p. 218. 
    
34. David Alan Brown pointed out and illustrated the left-handed strokes in the hair of Tobias in the painting of Tobias and the Angel (National Gallery, London), part of which he attributed to the young Leonardo; Brown 1998b, pp. 55–56, 189 (n. 34), fig. 38. The curving brushstrokes in the highlights begin at the lower right, to judge from the greater thickness, and taper toward the upper left. 
    
35. Berenson 1903, vol. 1, pp. 147–66; Berenson 1938, vol. 1, pp. 166–83; Berenson 1961, vol. 1, pp. 245–65. 
    
36. The cross-hatching technique of the young Michelangelo is discussed in Hirst 1988, pp. 4–5, 59–68; Fischer 1994, pp. 245–53; Eike D. Schmidt and Letizia Treves in Weil-Garris Brandt 1999, pp. 326–31, nos. 44, 45. 
    
37. A variety of discordant opinions on the attribution of this drawing are expressed in Richter 1883, vol. 1, pl. 46, p. 335; Müntz 1899, p. 189; Horne 1903, p. 25; Loeser 1903b, p. 183; MacCurdy 1904, p. 106; Gronau 1904; Seidlitz 1909, vol. 1, p. 197, pl. 34; Malaguzzi-Valeri 1913–23, vol. 2, p. 495, no. 536; Calvi 1916, p. 88; Poggi 1919, pl. 88; Venturi 1920, pp. 114–15, no. 76; Sirén 1928, p. 77, pl. 102; Bodmer 1931, pp. 252, 403–4; Berenson 1938, vol. 2, no. 1107; Popham 1994, p. 137, no. 162; Goldscheider 1952, no. 71; Pedretti 1968b, pp. 59–61 (n.); Cogliati Arano 1980, no. 22; Pedretti 1983, pp. 33, 62; Marani 1986b, p. 5 (n.); Clark and Pedretti 1988–89, pp. 150–51; Marani 1989, p. 70; Martin Clayton in Palazzo Grassi 1992, pp. 232–33, no. 19; Marani 2001a, pp. 152–53, no. 41; Steinberg 2001, pp. 288–87. 
    
38. Clark and Pedretti 1968–69, vol. 1, pp. xvii–xix. 
    
39. For a convincing proposal arguing Leonardo's partial authorship of this drawing, see Marani 2001a, pp. 144–45, no. 37, which also records the assenting opinion of Alessandro Ballarin. Clark and Pedretti 1968–69, vol. 1, p. 102, no. 12550, considered the drawing a copy. 
    
40. Here, in agreement with Marani 2001a, pp. 146–47, no. 38; and Clark and Pedretti 1968–69, vol. 1, pp. 101, no. 12549. 
    
41. Clark and Pedretti 1968–69, vol. 1, pp. xvii–xx. 
    
42. A. E. Popham, in fact, published another such replacement copy in red chalk (Windsor, RL 12361), a sheet of studies of a dog, as autograph by Leonardo; Popham (1946) 1994, p. 116, no. 82. 
    
43. For example, see the cleanly drawn copy in pen and ink (British Museum, P.p.1–33) of the small, delicately finished allegory at the Louvre (cat. no. 67). It includes some "left-handed" strokes that seem most evident in the figure of the seated man wearing a hat. 
    
44. The Spencer Grotesques are discussed in Scott-Elliot 1958; Pedretti and Trutty-Coohill 1993. See also the essay by Varena Forcione in the exhibition catalogue. 
    
45. Leonardo himself seems to have moved around the paper to draw his late pen-and-ink studies with pronounced curved hatching. 
    
46. I am indebted to Marjorie Shelley, Paper Conservator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for conducting this insightful technical research (April 10, 2002). 
    
47. Esp. Venturi 1939, p. 169, on the doubted Louvre Mausoleum drawing (cat. no. 112). 
    
48. Reuterswärd 1993, pp. 7–10 (nn. 6–9). 
    
49. Morelli 1900, pp. 177–79; Beltrami 1909; Beltrami 1919b, pp. 144–54. 
    
50. Morelli 1900, pp. 177–78. 
    
51. Bambach 1999a, pp. 33–80. 
    
52. Richter 1970, vol. 1, pp. 105–11; Morelli 1900; Beltrami 1909; Beltrami 1919b, pp. 144–54. 
    
53. Transcriptions with notes in Richter 1970, vol. 2, pp. 325–27, 332, nos. 1340, 1348; Beltrami 1919a, pp. 10–11, 123, document nos. 21, 193; Pedretti 1977, vol. 2, pp. 295, 298; Villata 1999, pp. 16–17, 219–20, nos. 20, 252. 
    
54. See note above, with further opinions in Beltrami 1909; Calvi 1916, pp. 435–46; Calvi 1925a, pp. 65–70; Beltrami 1919b; Venturi 1939, pp. 167–73; Pedretti 1975, pp. 22–25; Vecce 1998a, pp. 77–79, 271; Marani 1999–2000, p. 362, no. 84. 
    
55. Baratta 1905a, pp. 29–30, 52; Richter 1970, vol. 1, p. 107, under "24." Again, this was a matter of convention for him, and is probably not to be interpreted as an indication of dyslexia, as is often claimed in popular journalistic writing (see note 23). 
    
56. The Morgante was a chivalric poem published by Luigi Pulci (1478), with a dedication to the mother of Lorenzo de' Medici. Leonardo copied 288 words from this book to teach himself an educated man's vocabulary of expression. For a discussion of Leonardo's list of 288 vocaboli in the Codex Trivulzianus (Biblioteca Trivulziana, Castello Sforzesco, Milan), see Marinoni 1980b, p. xv. 
    
57. Raffaello da Montelupo in Gatteschi 1998, pp. 120–21: "Non mi asterrò dal dire come per natura io sia mancino, ed avendo quella mano più pronta della destra scrivevo con quella, dato che il maestro non ci faceva caso bastandogli che la mia scrittura sia buona. Dunque ho sempre usato la mano sinistra, sia per scrivere sia per fare qualche disegno che copiavo dal Morgante che veniva letto a scuola. Dal momento che per scrivere con la sinistra dovevo tenere il foglio per lungo, molti si meravigliavano, pensando che scrivessi "all ebraica" e che non si potesse leggere. A questo proposito ricordo un caso curioso: trovandomi a Firenze a fare una ricevuta ad un notaio per certi denari, misi il foglio per lungo e il notaio mi lasciò fare dubitando però che il mio scritto si potesse leggere. Quando ebbe terminato una frase, prese il foglio e, resosi conto che si leggeva benissimo, chiamò forse dieci notai perché venissero a guardarmi. Finita la ricevuta scrissi poi qualche altra parola con la mano destra perché riuscivo bene pure con quella, anche se poi l'ho abbandonata. Come ho già detto, disegno meglio con la mano sinistra e una volta che mi trovavo a disegnare l'Arco di Trasi al Colosseo, passarono da lì Michelangelo e fra Sebastiano del Piombo e si fermarono a guardarmi. C'e da premettere che tutt'e due sono mancini naturali pero facevano tutto con la mano destra, salvo le azioni di forza. Così rimasero a lungo ad osservarmi con grande meraviglia perché, che si sappia, loro due non hanno fatto niente con la sinistra." The Arch of Constantine bore the name Arco di Trasi al Colosseo as far back as the twelfth century, a name that derives from the mistaken belief that the captive Dacians on the reliefs were Thracians (my thanks to Ellen Perry for this information). 
    
58. This drawing was first presciently attributed to Raffaello da Montelupo by Bernard Berenson; Berenson 1935, pp. 105–6; Parker 1972, vol. 2, pp. 203–4, no. 405. 
    
59. Casamassima 1966; Bambach [Cappel] 1991b, pp. 83–86; Bambach [Cappel] 1991a, pp. 99–101. 
    
60. The research and conclusions that follow are based on the extensive collection of sixteenth-century calligraphy and alphabet books in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Department of Drawings and Prints, and in particular on Pacioli 1509, Vicentino 1522, Vicentino 1523, Verini 1527, Tagliente 1532, Fanti 1535, Palatino 1540, Mercator 1540, Amphiareo 1554, Cresci 1570, Hercolani 1574, and Scalino 1591. 
    
61. Scalino 1591, pp. 21–22, praises exercises of rote repetition and offers extremely rare evidence: "And finally that the pupil be [seated] to the left of the teacher, who will in turn place the fist of his left hand lightly touching on the right hand of the pupil in writing, to guide the pupil's hand with skill, helping the hand with the three fingers of the right hand, and so together [master and pupil] go on outlining many times over the letters one by one, in order that the boy feel the movement of the wrist in forming and linking the letters, and that he learn the ease of tracing the characters." Original text: "124. Modo che deve tener il maestro per inseg-/nar' à scriuere à fanciulli . . . & finalmente, che lo imparante stia nello scrivere che farà à man sinistra al Maestro, ilquale col pugno della / man sinistra, toccando leggiermente la mano dritta dello scolare, che scriue, la guidi con / destrezza, aiutandola con le tre dita della man destra, & cosi insieme vadano lineando, più, & / più volte quei caratteri ad vno ad vno, accioche il fanciullo senta il mouimento del polso, la for/matione, & l' andare de gli elementi, & che apprenda la facilità del lineare i caratteri." 
    
62. Cresci 1570, unpaginated, folio 3 recto, explains: "The master ought to teach the student first how to hold the pen correctly, and remind him frequently of this, because he [will] frequently forget, because not everyone has the hand ready to hold the pen with grace, due to many defects, which in the case of some pupils are impossible to overcome; at least show them to hold the [quill] in a way that it can produce a good outline, and [let him] hold the pen as [he] wishes: telling him, however, that he hold something in his left hand [mano manca] that help him to hold the paper in place, so that it not turn around, as he writes, because this matters very much." Original text: "Delli modi che deve tener vn mastro / per insegna a scriuer bene a i suoi discepoli lettera corrente can-/cellaresca, & altri particolari./ Deve il mastro primieramente insegnar a tener ben la penna in mano allo scholaro, & ricordarli spesso tal modo, perche spesso se/ lo scorda: & perche ogn'uno non hà cosi la mano disposta à tener la penna con gratia, per diuersi difetti, a quali in alcuno sono / impossibili a rimediare, almeno gli mostri a tenerla in modo, che venghi a formar buona lineatura, & tenga poi la penna in che / modo si uoglia: auisandolo ancora che tenga alcuna cosa nella mano manca che l'aiuti a tener ferma la carta che non si dibatta quan/do scriue, perche questo importa molto." 
    
63. Vecce 1998a, pp. 32–36. 
    
64. Baxandall 1982, pp. 86–108, on the abbaco. 
    
65. Vasari 1966– , vol. 4, p. 16: "Ecco, nell'abbaco, egli in pochi mesi ch'e'v'attese, fece tanto acquisto, che movendo di continuo dubbj e difficultà al maestro che gl'insegnava, bene speso lo confondeva." This allusion to the term abbaco has frequently been misinterpreted to mean generally "mathematics" or "arithmetic," despite the fact that it is quite clear from Vasari's wording that abbaco here means the school. 
    
66. Fanti 1535, unpaginated, under "sesta ragione." A number of calligraphy books of the period offer patterns for the practice of a notary's script. It is called "littera per notari" in Vicentino 1523 and Fanti 1535, and "lettera notaresca" in Palatino 1540 and Palatino 1547. 
    
67. Vecce 1998a, pp. 19–25. 
    
68. Calvi 1925a, pp. 9–63; Pedretti 1975b pp. 10–11. 
    
69. Bambach [Cappel] 1991b, p. 84 (nn. 79–81); Bambach [Cappel] 1991a, pp. 99–100 (n. 2). 
    
70. Marinoni 1944–55; Marinoni 1980b, pp. vii–xxv. 
    
71. Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446), the great Renaissance architect and engineer who was the son of a notary and who was a role model for the young Leonardo, is often said to have used mirror writing. This unreferenced claim, however, appears to be based on a rather contrived interpretation of an ambiguous passage about Brunelleschi's use of "graphs with numbers and symbols which Filippo alone understood," in Antonio di Tuccio Manetti's biography of Brunelleschi, written before 1489 (Manetti 1970, pp. 52–53). That passage deals with proportional measurements of antique ruins and is entirely unrelated. The most certain example of Brunelleschi's handwriting, his portata del catasto of 1427, is in conventional left-to-right script (illustrated in Milanesi 1876, vol. 1, no. 21). Moreover, Baratta 1905a, pp. 31–33, which is sometimes cited by later historians, also states that some architectural drawings attributed to Fra Giovanni Giocondo da Verona (1433–1515), the polymath antiquarian and theorist from a generation later who was Leonardo's close colleague, are inscribed with right-to-left words. A crude sketch in Florence (Uffizi 1530 A), now thought to be by an anonymous sixteenth-century draftsman, is inscribed with what appear to be a few garbled right-to-left words, while another sketch (Uffizi 1538 A), though most probably by Fra Giocondo himself, is not inscribed with mirror script. The vast majority of the extant documents and writings by Fra Giocondo are, in fact, written in a conventional left-to-right script (amply illustrated in Fontana 1988). 
    
72. Transcribed in Baratta 1905a, pp. 31–33. 
    
73. Richter 1970, vol. 1, p. 110. 
    
74. Popham 1946, 1994, p. 9. 
    
75. Letter quoted from Freud 1964, p. 7. See also Holly 1996. 
    
76. Freud 1964, pp. 86–87; on Freud's Leonardo, Schapiro 1956, pp. 303–36; Schneider Adams 1993, pp. 14–140; Schapiro 1994; Benson 1994; Holly 1996; Oremland 1997, pp. xiii–xvi, 1–22, 109–21; Davis 1999, pp. 484–97 (my thanks to Rachel Stern for some of this literature). 
    
77. See the thorough analysis of Leonardo's Windsor drawing of hands in Keele and Pedretti 1979–80, vol. 2, pp. 530–39, nos. 143 recto and verso. 
    
78. Translation quoted from Eissler 1961, pp. 115–16 (with transcribed original French text). 
    
79. Plato 2000, p. 152: "The practice which now prevails is almost universally misunderstood . . . that the right and left hand are supposed to be by nature differently suited for our various uses of them; whereas no difference is found in the use of the feet and lower limbs; but in the use of the hands we are, as it were, maimed by the folly of nurses and mothers; for although our several limbs are by nature balanced, we create a difference in them by bad habit." 
    
80. See the double-sided sheet (figs. 71, 72 in the exhibition catalogue) on which Leonardo drew the mirror designs of the composition by holding the paper to the light and tracing the design from one side of the sheet onto the other. 
    
81. Compare the Uffizi drawing of a perspective projection for the stable appearing in the upper left of the Adoration of the Magi panel (fig. 139 in the exhibition catalogue) and the very early, somewhat stiffly drawn sheet in the Louvre (cat. no. 27), which shows a number of design elements in reverse orientation. 
    
82. Compare Leonardo's exploratory drawings on the theme of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne: British Museum, London (cat. no. 96); Louvre, Paris, RF 460; Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice (cat. no. 95). 
    
83. See esp. Codex Arundel, Ms. 263, British Library, London. 
    
84. Translation quoted from Kemp 1989c, p. 202. C. Urb., fol. 132r: "Come lo specchio e il maestro de pittori. / Quando tu uoi uedere se la tua pittura tutta insieme ha con / formita co'la cosa ritratta di naturale, habbi un specchio / et faui dentro specchiare la / cosa uiua, et parangona, la / cosa specchiata co' la tua pittura e' considera bene s'el tuo sub-/bietto del'una e l'altra similitudine ha conformita insie/me." 
    
85. Translation quoted from Kemp 1989c, p. 202. C. Urb., fol. 33v: "facendo a'similitudine dello specchio / il quale si trasmutta in tanti colori quanti sono quelli delle co-/se, che se li pongano dinanzi, e' facendo cosi lui pa[r]à essere seconda / Natura."