The "Left Hand" by Leonardo

Like many of his contemporaries who had grown up without a formal education, Leonardo da Vinci wrote in a simplified form of ‘mercantile script’. Being left-handed drove him to experiment with a way of writing from right to left. The Codex Trivulzianus bears witness to this handwriting experience of Leonardo. Other graphic evidence shows his mastery of the usual way of writing, from left to right.

The word lists in the Notebook show Leonardo’s attempts to enrich his vocabulary by learning words of Latin derivation in order to claim full scientific dignity for his work and for more complete access to the works of humanists and men of science. The majority of the words transcribed in the Codex Trivulzianus are indeed Latinisms and scholarly terms derived from various sources, including the Novellino by Masuccio Salernitano, the Vocabolista by Luigi Pulci, the De re militari by Roberto Valturio, translated into Italian by Paolo Ramusio, and the Italian version of the Liber facetiarum by Poggio Bracciolini.