ALTHOUGH Leonardo da Vinci anticipated many modern developments, he didn鈥檛
invent the bicycle. A sketch of a pedal bike found among his manuscripts is in
fact a doodle made by an Italian monk in the 1960s, says a German technology
enthusiast.
The supposed Renaissance bicycle, complete with pedals and chain, has
appeared in numerous books and museum displays. Historians had already concluded
from the poor quality of the sketch that it did not come from Leonardo鈥檚 own
hand. But lexicographer Augusto Marinoni, who discovered the sketch in 1974
while working at the Catholic University of Milan, argued that it was a pupil鈥檚
rough reproduction of an original by the master, since lost.
鈥淣o one questioned it,鈥� says Hans-Erhard Lessing, retired curator of the
Museum of Technology and Labour in Mannheim. 鈥淭he Italians were ecstatic to have
invented the bicycle.鈥� The next record of a similarly advanced cycle dates from
1855, nearly 400 years later.
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The bike appears on the back of a sheet of authentic Leonardo sketches along
with crude outlines of penises that were probably sketched by one of his
adolescent apprentices. A 16th-century conservator had folded the sheet in half
and glued it shut, hiding the obscene graffiti from view for nearly 500
years.
But Lessing tracked down art historian Carlo Pedretti of the University of
California at Los Angeles, who had examined the folded pages in 1961. Pedretti
held them up to a strong light and saw no bicycle. Instead, his notebook records
two circles with curved lines through them where the cycle now appears. 鈥淲hat I
saw was not a bicycle,鈥� Pedretti told 快猫短视频.
Lessing believes a forger drew in the bicycle, using the two circles as
wheels, after the page was unfolded in the 1960s by Italian monks restoring the
manuscript. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the sort of thing a bored monk might do,鈥� says Nicholas
Clayton, editor of The Boneshaker, the magazine of the British
Veteran-Cycle Club. Marinoni has been ill for some time and has not been able to
respond to Lessing鈥檚 reassessment of the sketch. But when the possibility of
forgery was raised at a conference in France in 1991, he said: 鈥淚 am sure of the
honesty of the monks.鈥�
Chemical analysis of the brown crayon marks that make up the sketch could
provide conclusive proof that it is a modern addition. But unfortunately, the
restored pages have been sealed away in plastic to preserve them. However,
Lessing notes that none of the crayon had rubbed off on the facing side of the
folded page, despite five centuries of supposed contact, whereas bits of the
obscene graffiti had.
Despite the mounting evidence that the drawing isn鈥檛 genuine, modellers
working with the Museum of Leonardo da Vinci in the inventor鈥檚 home town near
Florence have produced a full-scale wooden replica. It will appear in an
exhibition, Mechanical Marvels: Invention in the Age of Leonardo, opening at the
World Financial Center in New York this month.