Twelve notebooks at the Institut de France
Held at the Institut de France, the Paris manuscripts (A–M) and the restored Ashburnham leaves are Leonardo's pocket notebooks — each one circling a cluster of obsessions, from the flying machines of Notebook B to the optics of the eye in Notebook D. Carried in his belt, they are the working diaries of his mind.
Manoscritto A
Notebook A (c.1490–92): painting and perspective, mechanics and the movement of water — among Leonardo's earliest sustained notebooks.
Manoscritto B
Notebook B (c.1487–90): architecture, ideal cities, military engines and the famous flying machines — including the aerial screw and the ornithopter.
Manoscritto C
Notebook C (1490–91): a sustained investigation of light and shadow, and how illumination falls upon bodies.
Manoscritto D
Notebook D (c.1508–09): the anatomy and optics of the eye and the nature of vision.
Manoscritto E
Notebook E (1513–14): flight, the mechanics of weights, geometry, water and painting from Leonardo's late Roman years.
Manoscritto F
Notebook F (1508): water, optics, astronomy and geology — observations of the physical world.
Manoscritto G
Notebook G (c.1510–15): botany and the growth of plants, mechanics and geometry from Leonardo's final years.
Manoscritto H
Notebook H (1493–94): a tiny pocketbook of fables, bestiary notes, water studies and fortifications.
Manoscritto I
Notebook I (c.1497–1505): geometry, and studies of grammar and language.
Manoscritto K
Notebook K (1503–08): geometry after Euclid, the movement of water, and flight.
Manoscritto L
Notebook L (1497–1504): fortification, architecture and the Sforza horse, with notes from the Cesare Borgia campaigns.
Manoscritto M
Notebook M (c.1495–1500): Euclidean geometry, mechanics and the germination of seeds.
Ashburnham I
Leaves once cut from Notebook A by Count Libri and later restored — architecture and related studies, reunited with the Paris manuscripts.
Ashburnham II
Leaves once cut from Notebook B and later restored — military and architectural studies, reunited with the Paris manuscripts.