Leonardo's Codex Nova

Leonardo

t is a, surprisingly little known fact that Leonardo Da Vinci anticipated Walt Disney in arranging for his mortal remains to be preserved with a view to later revivification. The principal difference, of course, was that the refrigerating compressor was no more than a doodle in the great man's jotter, so a butt of grappa in a dark corner of the basement of the Villa Medici was pressed into service instead.

When these events came to light, the scientists at Minerva Labs - never ones to baulk at tampering with the fabric of nature or unleashing terrible forces they cannot control - immediately set about bringing back the the pickled polymath.

At our state-of-the-art facility on a remote mountain deep in Transylvania, with much throwing of great levers and arcing of plasma between coils, things better left alone were successfully meddled with. No sooner had the smoke and maniacal laughter died away than, as though the intervening five centuries had never happened, the rennaissance man was putting quill to vellum.

I read somewhere a proposal to have the entire works of the playwright Shakespeare generated by employing a large number of monkeys, each with a mechanical typing engine. Having now read the plays in question, I accept that they contain factual inaccuracies - the Merchant of Venice, for instance, was not nearly as eloquent as portrayed, and tended to spit loudly and frequently - but in my experience monkeys lack the necessary skills to make any real improvement.
However, I have devised a mechanism which will reproduce the earthy insults which are, after all, the best bits. The device involves simply choosing one word from each of three stacks, and prefixing them with "thou".

Thou .

Whilst fiddling with a discarded preliminary sketch for a forthcoming portrait, I stumbled upon a design for an extremely efficient parchment flying machine. With a sufficiently large sheet of parchment I believe a man might descend from the top of the Tower of Pisa to the bottom without killing himself, a feat matched only by - well - using the stairs.
Madre de Dios, I think the padre is losing his grip. I couldn't help noticing this item pinned up in the church.

At the evening service tonight the sermon topic will be "What is Hell?"
Come early and listen to our choir practice.

I was most gratified to discover that my moving-portrait-or-landscape-machine has become really popular. Sadly, it appears that only one frame remains of my pioneering five minute sequence in which La Giaconda pulls a sheep's bladder over her head and inflates it (a trick which always went down well at the Borgias' Christmas parties).
These days, many people produce "movies" (a name doubtless taken from my observation "e porvo si muovo") and despite spending many years working entirely with black and white preliminary sketches, they have now also added sound. Lisa's drinking-chianti-through-the-nose trick would have made a great movie with sound!
Despite this, the current school of movie makers seems to have lost its desire for realism. I have noticed many movies in which the following strange things happen -

Mediaeval peasants always have filthy faces, tangled hair, ragged clothing - and perfect, gleaming white teeth.
Princesses always have a favorite lady in waiting, and always send her to warn the hero of the evil king's intention just in time.
The lady in waiting is never quite as beautiful as the princess. However, she still always catches the eye of the hero's sidekick.
Horses never get winded, throw a shoe, etc. until the pursuing sheriff is right behind the hero.
The wagon that breaks an axle or gets stuck in the creek is always the one carrying the king's entire treasury, which he takes with him every time he travels through the bandit-infested countryside.
At some point in a swordfight, the hero and villain will cross swords at face level, allowing them to grip each other's weapons while making nasty or sarcastic comments before they break the clinch and continue fighting.
If there is a candelabra, the villain will show how talented he is with a sword by cutting the candles and watching them fall over. The hero will do the same but the candles won't fall. The villain will sneer at the hero's lack of fencing ability, at which point the hero will topple the candles, revealing that they had been severed so expertly that they had not fallen with the force of the blow.
During a duel, the hero will jump or climb onto a platform that raises him above the villain. At that point, the villain will swipe at the hero's legs, which the hero will avoid by jumping over the villain's blade.
If the villain wounds the hero in his sword arm, one of three things will happen - (a) the hero will become ambidextrous and fight with sword in other hand, (b) the hero will find something else to defend himself with (tapestry, chain, chair) that can be used with the other hand, (c) the hero's girlfriend or sidekick will come up behind villain and impale him, thus saving the hero.
If hero is disarmed by villain, one of three things will happen - (a) the villain will show a trace of honour and allow hero to get his sword, (b) the hero will make mad dash/leap over or around villain to regain sword, (c) just when it looks like the end, hero's girlfriend or sidekick will throw a sword to him, which he will manage to grab easily.
If there is a tapestry or chandelier, the hero will cut it loose and drop it on the villain's henchmen.
There will almost certainly be stairs against the wall. At some point the hero will be forced up them backwards by the villain, whereupon he will either leap to the ground or swing from a rope/chandelier/tapestry to get away. Also, the villain will probably receive the coup-de-grace on them so can roll down them and die at the bottom.

Some observers have suggested that the extended immersion in strong spirits has reduced Leonardo's mental presence, but since he insists that the smile of la Giaconda was due to the artist having absent-mindedly left his codpiece undone, this is clearly untrue. Further extracts from his Codex Nova will be published here soon.

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