Open Leo Documentation

• The idea

  Open Leo is a project which aims to gather Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts in a Digital Library to allow scholars to freely access and consult these resources.
  Open-leo Digital library was created using markup languages HTML and CSS for the constuction of the webpage and layout of the editions.
  This Digital Library is inspired by the already existing website e-Leo, a digital archive containing the complete collection of the editions of the works of Leonardo da Vinci belonging to the Biblioteca Comunale Leonardiana of Vinci, starting from the 1651 edition of the "Trattato della pittura". This project was developed in 2007 to preserve this documentary material and to offer scholars an advanced tool for the study of Leonardo’s manuscripts.
  Open Leo's is an academic prototype, with the goal of enhancing e-Leo which is now dated, we aim to bring the Digital Library into line with the current digital humanities standards of interoperability and placing this resource in the realm of the Semantic Web.

• "Codex on the flight of birds"

  The application of new improvements to the existing web resource was experimented on a sample of the famous "Codex on the flight of birds", a manuscript dating back to 1505/1506. This manuscript documents Leonardo's research and studies on themes such as gravity, balance, power and endurance and their connection to the actual mechanism behind the flight of birds. His research starts with the intention of building a flying machine and continues through the observation of birds in flight. The codex contains several notes and sketches annotated during different periods of time.
  The codex we observe now is similar to how Leonardo da Vinci had prepared it, consisting of 18 pages, with the exception of a missing page; the numbering skips from page 4 directly to page 6. This could be due to the loss of the page or to a numbering error, a point that scholars are still investigating. This manuscript is now housed in the Biblioteca Reale di Torino.

• The Scholarly Digital Edition

  In Open Leo, the "Codex on the flight of birds" is displayed in both its critical and diplomatic editions. The starting point was “Il Codice sul volo degli uccelli nella Biblioteca Reale di Torino” by Augusto Marinoni, edited in 1976, which contains a diplomatic transcription and a critical and regularized versions according to the criteria of the Commissione Vinciana. This double transcription follows the established editorial tradition of Vinci’s manuscripts. The critical transcription aims to restore the text as it was intended by Leonardo while the diplomatic transcription reproduces the manuscript word for word, retaining abbreviation and pointing out deletions. The diplomatic transcription also allows the reader to form an independent interpretation of the original text. While Drawings are not reproduced in Marinoni’s printed edition, they are indicated by captions.
  e-Leo, the original resource, proposes the visualization of the critical transcription and provides links between the transcribed text and the facsimile to locate different paragraphs within the page. Our improvements focus on the simultaneous visualization of both the critical and diplomatic editions, strictly adhering to the philological principles established by Marinoni. The transcriptions are displayed on the right side of the interface, while the left side provides a digital facsimile of each page with an additional “Reflect” button, allowing the user to visualize the mirrored version of the text and decipher Leonardo's typical writing style. This feature was inspired by the same function inside e-Leo to overcome the obstacles of interpreting a text written from right to left.
  Unlike e-Leo, our resource integrates a IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) JSON-LD manifest provided by the Library of Congress. This integration is a crucial enhancement, as it ensures the access to and interaction with high resolution visual resources aligning the project with current digital humanities standards for interoperability and sustainability. We decided to provide the visualization of the IIIF manifest with the tool Mirador, that allows the actual visualization of the complete codex done by the work provided by the Library of Congress.
  The diplomatic transcription faithfully reproduces Leonardo’s text and page layout, integrating the text with the typical sketches. Abbreviations, deletions and substitutions are highlighted through an interactive paleographic commentary, consisting in a series of pop-ups that clarify the role of special characters and signs. The visual result was achieved through the XSLT conversion of the XML/TEI file. By switching to the critical edition, it is possible to visualize Marinoni’s regularized version of the text, which is seamlessly integrated with his notes in the commentary section below the transcription box. In the critical version, sketches are identified by their captions.
  To allow the user to create correspondences between the regularized paragraphs and the non-linear conformation of Leonardo’s pages, the highlight function connects parts of the transcribed text with fragments of the page image. The sample encoded consists of 6 pages, starting from the internal cover and finishing with the verso of the third page with the exception of the recto of the first page. This choice is due to the complexity of the page layout and the impossibility to reproduce it faithfully in the diplomatic edition. A further development would include taking care of the complexes disposition of drawings and text in the pages. The XML/TEI encoding is available for download under the transcription box. The lack of metadata in e-Leo is addressed by an additional “Metadata” table, which provides information about the title, author, creation date, type & format, language and location. Each manuscript of the Digital Library will be linked to related media and web resources to provide the foundations for further research. Since Leonardo’s manuscript content is often very technical and heterogeneous, Open Leo incrporates Voyant tools, a web-based reading and analysis environment for digital texts. Specifically, we use Cirrus, a word cloud that visualizes the top frequency words of a text or a corpora. The word cloud positions the most frequent terms centrally and in a larger size. By applying this tool, users can easily discover the main theme of the codex.
  Through these enhancements, Open Leo transforms the study of Leonardo's manuscript into a dynamic experience, leveraging the potential for interconnection and multimedia integration offered by the Semantic Web.

Primary Sources:

Bibliography

• da Vinci, Leonardo, “Codice sul volo degli uccelli”, 1505-1506, Torino, Biblioteca Reale, ms. Varia 127.
• da Vinci, Leonardo, “Il codice sul volo degli uccelli nella Biblioteca reale di Torino”, trascrizione diplomatica e critica di Augusto Marinoni, Firenze, Giunti-Barbera, 1976.

Sitography

• “e-Leo: Archivio digitale di storia della tecnica e della scienza”, Biblioteca Leonardiana di Vinci, https://www.leonardodigitale.com/.
• Library of Congress, “Codex on the Flight of Birds”, https://www.loc.gov/item/2021668201.

Secondary Sources:

Bibliography

• Cricco, Giorgio & Di Teodoro, Francesco Paolo, "Itinerario nell'arte. Dal Gotico Internazionale al Manierismo". 4th ed., vol. 3, Zanichelli, 2017.

Sitography

• Google Arts & Culture, “Codice sul volo degli uccelli”, https://artsandculture.google.com/story/codice-sul-volo-degli-uccelli/MwXRkD4q9e99Ig?hl=it.
• "Leonardo to Mars", 2012, https://www.leonardo-to-mars.com/index.php/it/.
• Museo Galileo - Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, "La mente di Leonardo. Nel laboratorio del Genio Universale" https://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/menteleonardo/imdl.asp?c=13419&k=23343&rif=23348&xsl=1
• Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, “Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex on the Flight of Birds”, https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/leonardo-da-vincis-codex-flight-birds
• "Voyant Tools", https://voyant-tools.org/.