Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Arunde Notebooks Are Online

Other than he painted the Mona Lisa, Last Supper and was a prolific inventor, how much do you really know about the Italian Renaissance man himself?

Thanks to a batch of newly released documents now known as the “The Codex Arundel,” we can now learn a great deal more about one of the greatest minds of hisotry. The collection of da Vinci’s later notebooks, of course written in his distinct mirror-writing style, has been digitized and shared online for all to peruse.

Da Vinci notebook (3 images)

The action of writing from right to left is thought to be the left-handed inventor’s personal adaptation to maximize efficiency. What’s been digitized includes drawings and text and, as described by da Vinci himself are “’a collection without order, drawn from many papers, which I have copied here, hoping to arrange later each in its place according to the subjects of which they treat.”

Published by the British Library in London, the collection is a “sprawling feast of words and image” that shows the “astonishing range” of da Vinci’s mind, writes historian Jonathan Jones.

You’ll definitely be taking Google Translate to task.

Meet your guide

Evan Bleier

Evan is a senior editor with InsideHook who earned a master’s degree in journalism from NYU and has called Brooklyn home since 2006. A fan of Boston sports, Nashville hot chicken and Kentucky bourbon, Evan has had his work published in publications including “Maxim,” Bleacher Report and “The Daily Mail.”