Description of panel A: drawing of the human skull (c.1489)
Windsor Castle, RL 19058 recto, c.1489. Oblique view of the human skull. The text (translated by O'Malley and Saunders, cited below) reads:
| The confluence of all the senses has perpendicularly below it at a distance of 2 fingers the uvula, where one tastes the food, and lies straight above the wind-pipe and above the opening of the heart by the space of a foot. A half-head above it is the junction of the cranial bones [bregma], and a third of a head anterior to it in a horizontal line is the lacrimator [nasolacrimal duct] of the eye. 2/3 of a head posterior to it is the nape [of the neck], and at an equal distance and height to the side are the 2 pulses of the temples. The veins which are represented in the cranium in their ramifications make an imprint of a half of their width in the cranial bone, and the other half is hidden in the membranes which cover the brain. Where the bone is poorly provided with veins within, it is refreshed from without by the vein a m [middle meningeal vessels] which issues forth from the cranium, passes into the eye and then into the … |
References:
| Clark, K. and Pedretti, C. (1968) The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Phaidon, 19058r |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1901). I Manoscritti di Leonardo da Vinci della reale biblioteca di Windsor. Dell'Anatomia. Fogli B. (T. Sabachnikoff, ed.), Roux e Viarengo Editori, 41r |
| O'Malley CD and Saunders JB de CM (1952) Leonardo da Vinci on the human body (New York, Henry Schuman), plate 6. |
| Clayton M and Philo R (1992) Leonardo da Vinci: The Anatomy of Man (Boston: Little, Brown and Company) plate 2B page 36 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1978-1980) Corpus of the anatomical studies in the collection of Her Majesty, the Queen, at Windsor Castle (Keele, K. and Pedretti, C. eds.), Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 42r |