The manuscript contains 283 paper leaves of various size, most of them approximately 22 cm x 16 cm. Only a few of the leaves are blank. Two folios, 100 and 101, were incorrectly numbered twice. The codex is a collection of Leonardo's manuscripts originating from every period in his working life, a span of 40 years from 1478 to 1518. It contains short treatises, notes and drawings on a variety of subjects from mechanics to the flight of birds. From Leonardo's text, it appears that he gathered the pages together, with the intention of ordering and possibly publishing them. Leonardo customarily used a single folio sheet of paper for each subject, so that each folio presented as a small cohesive treatise on an aspect of the subject, spread across both back and front of a number of pages. This arrangement has been lost by later book binders who have cut the folios into pages and laid them on top of each other, thereby separating many subjects into several sections and resulting in an arrangement which appears random. It is similar to the Codex Leicester, which is also a compilation of the notes, diagrams and sketches. The Codex Arundel is recognized as second in importance to the Codex Atlanticus.
History
The manuscript was written at the end of the 15th century and in the beginning of the 16th century in Italy. Most of the pages can be dated to between 1480 and 1518. Very little is known about the early provenance of the codex until it was acquired by Royal Society. The manuscript was purchased in the early 17th century by Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel, art collector and politician. Henry Howard, 6th Duke of Norfolk, presented to the Royal Society in 1667. The manuscript was first catalogued in 1681 by William Perry, a librarian, as a scientific and mathematical notebook. It was purchased by the British Museum from the Royal Society along with 549 other Arundel manuscripts in 1831. It was catalogued by the British Museum in 1834. It is housed in the British Library,. The most recent facsimile was published in 1998. On 30 January 2007 the manuscript became part of the British Library's project "Turning the Pages", when it was digitalised along with Codex Leicester, and became available in the 2.0 format. These two manuscript of Leonardo notebooks were reunited online.
