Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was a painter, sculptor, inventor, philosopher and researcher. He is renowned as the original ‘Renaissance Man’. ‘I will preserve the memory of myself in the minds of others’ was one of his maxims. Among his most famous works of art are the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and the Vitruvian Man. He left an extensive collection of handwritten documents in his notebooks. These books, known as codices, survive in various volumes such as the Codex Atlanticus, Codex Madrid, Co...