Description of panel B: two drawings of the human skull (c.1489)
Windsor Castle, RL 19057 recto, c.1489
Leonardo's earliest surviving anatomical drawings are of the human skull. A series of the drawings dates from 1489 (when Leonardo was 37 years old). Leonardo attempts to locate the senso comune at the geometric center of the brain. A square is drawn around the lower skull.
| Where the line a m, intersects the line c b, will be the confluence of all the senses; and where the line r n, intersects the line h f, will be the pole of the cranium, at a third of the base of the head, and thus c b, will be a half. Remember when you delineate this halved head from within, to make another which shows it from without, turned in the same direction as this, so that you may better understand the whole. |
References to this drawing:
| Clark, K. and Pedretti, C. (1968) The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Phaidon, 19057r |
| 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, 40r |
| O'Malley CD and Saunders JB de CM (1952) Leonardo da Vinci on the human body (New York, Henry Schuman), plate 7 (includes translation above) |
| 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, 43r |
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