# Codex Leicester > Leonardo da Vinci - c. 1504-1508 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/leonardo-da-vinci/codex-leicester/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-13 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Leonardo da Vinci - **Date:** c. 1504-1508 - **Medium:** Pen and ink on rag paper - **Dimensions:** Each page approximately 29 x 22 cm. Eighteen sheets, each folded once to form a bifolium, giving 72 pages. - **Object type:** Manuscript - **Period:** Italian, early sixteenth century - **Current location:** Private collection, United States. Owned by Bill Gates since 1994. - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary Eighteen sheets of paper, each folded once, seventy-two pages, written in mirror script from right to left in Florence between about 1504 and 1508. It is a notebook about water that turns into a notebook about the moon, about fossils, about the age of the earth and about what the world is made of. In it Leonardo works out that the ashen glow on the dark part of the crescent moon is sunlight reflected from the earth, and argues, in detail and against the Bible, that the marine shells found high in the Italian mountains cannot have been put there by Noah's flood.It has been sold twice in living memory. Armand Hammer bought it at Christie's London on 12 December 1980 and renamed it the Codex Hammer. Bill Gates bought it back under its old name at Christie's New York on 11 November 1994 for USD 30,802,500, a figure that includes the buyer's premium and is still quoted almost everywhere as though it were the hammer price. It is the only one of Leonardo's surviving notebooks in private hands. Every other one belongs to a library or a museum, and that single fact is what the price is actually measuring.The record it is usually credited with no longer stands unqualified. The Codex Sassoon made USD 38.1 million at Sotheby's in 2023 and a first printing of the United States Constitution made USD 43.2 million in 2021. In money of the day the Leicester has been passed. Adjusted for inflation it has not. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1504-1519** Leonardo da Vinci `[documented]` (origin) Compiled largely in Florence between 1504 and 1508, in the years when Leonardo was dissecting bodies, studying the flight of birds and working on the scheme to make the Arno navigable. The eighteen bifolia were written and filled separately and only afterwards gathered into a booklet; the Museo Galileo states that the gathering was probably not done by Leonardo himself. He kept the sheets, as he kept all of them, until his death at Amboise in 1519. - **1519-c. 1537** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner is recorded between Leonardo's death and the manuscript's appearance in Rome. Leonardo's papers were dispersed after 1519 and the Codex Leicester is one of the sheaves that went to Italy rather than to France. How it got to Rome, and through whose hands, is not established in any source consulted. - **c. 1537-c. 1577** Guglielmo della Porta, sculptor, Rome `[disputed]` (ownership) The Museo Galileo places the manuscript in the hands of the sculptor Guglielmo della Porta in Rome around 1537. The underlying document is not identified in the online exhibition, and popular accounts repeat the della Porta connection without evidence of any kind. Treat the 1537 date as the museum's dating rather than as a transcribed record until the Christie's 1994 provenance essay or the Galluzzi catalogue can be consulted. Della Porta, a pupil of Michelangelo, died in Rome in 1577. - **c. 1577-1690** Heirs of Guglielmo della Porta, Rome `[unknown]` (inheritance) The manuscript is said to have stayed with the della Porta family for over a century, unrecorded. The story that Giuseppe Ghezzi found it in 1690 in a chest of family papers belonging to the della Porta heirs is the standard account and is repeated by the Wikipedia article, but no primary document for the chest has been located in the sources consulted. It should be read as tradition until a document is produced. What is not tradition is the outcome: by 1689 the manuscript was Ghezzi's. - **1689-1717** Giuseppe Ghezzi, painter and antiquarian, Rome `[documented]` (ownership) The Museo Galileo records the painter Giuseppe Ghezzi (1634-1721) as holding the manuscript by 1689. Ghezzi was secretary of the Accademia di San Luca and a dealer as well as a painter, exactly the sort of man through whose hands loose Renaissance papers moved in Rome, and exactly the sort of man an English visitor on the Grand Tour would be introduced to. - **1717-1759** Thomas Coke, later 1st Earl of Leicester `[documented]` (purchase) Bought in Italy by Thomas Coke (1697-1759), then a young man on the Grand Tour and later the builder of Holkham Hall. The Museo Galileo and the Christie's 1994 catalogue both give 1717 and record that Coke took the manuscript to Florence to have a copy made; the Wikipedia article gives 1719. The two dates are not reconciled in the sources consulted and both are recorded here. The 1719 date is the one that most popular accounts carry. Francesco Trevisani painted Coke's portrait in Rome in 1717. - **1759-1980** The Coke family, Earls of Leicester, and the Trustees of the Holkham Estate, Norfolk `[documented]` (inheritance) Held at Holkham Hall for two hundred and twenty-one years. This is the period in which the manuscript acquired its name and its scholarly reputation: copies of it circulated in Europe, one reaching the Grand-Ducal Library at Weimar around 1818 on Goethe's recommendation, and Jerome Lalande referred to it in print in 1769. Jean Paul Richter, preparing the first serious edition of Leonardo's writings in the 1880s, thanked the Earl of Leicester and his librarian at Holkham for access. - **1980-1994** Armand Hammer, then the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, Los Angeles `[documented]` (purchase) Bought at Christie's London on 12 December 1980 by the American oil magnate Armand Hammer, president of Occidental Petroleum, who renamed it the Codex Hammer. The vendor is given as the Trustees of the Holkham Estate; contemporary American reporting says Lord Coke was selling to meet inheritance tax on the estate and its collection. Hammer commissioned Carlo Pedretti to edit and translate it, a project completed in 1987. Hammer died in 1990 and the manuscript passed to his museum. - **1994-present** Bill Gates `[documented]` (purchase) Bought at Christie's New York on 11 November 1994 by a telephone bidder acting for Bill Gates, who was identified publicly the following day. Gates restored the name Codex Leicester, had the manuscript digitised, and has lent it for exhibition repeatedly since. It remains the only Leonardo notebook in private ownership. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **1980-12-12** Christie's, London, Property of the Trustees of the Holkham Estate, lot Not established in the sources consulted - Estimate: Not established in the sources consulted - Hammer: GBP 2,200,000 (reconstructed) - With premium: GBP 2,420,000 - The figure quoted everywhere is USD 5,126,000, and it is quoted without saying what it includes. The Art Newspaper reported in 1994 that Hammer had paid GBP 2 million excluding premium; the London dealer Robin Halwas, describing the Christie's 1994 catalogue, gives the 1980 purchase as GBP 2.42 million. Those two cannot both be right. GBP 2.42 million is GBP 2.2 million plus the ten per cent buyer's premium then charged in London, and GBP 2.2 million converts to USD 5,126,000 at the rate of about 2.33 dollars to the pound obtaining in December 1980. The Associated Press, reporting the 1994 sale, gave Hammer's 1980 price as USD 5.6 million, which is what GBP 2.42 million converts to at the same rate. Three of the four reported figures are therefore consistent with a hammer of GBP 2,200,000 and a premium-inclusive total of GBP 2,420,000, and the widely quoted USD 5,126,000 is the hammer converted, not the total. The Art Newspaper's GBP 2 million is the outlier. Bidding opened at about USD 1.4 million and lasted under two minutes, with Hammer against at least two or three other bidders. The price was the highest then paid for any manuscript, against USD 2 million for a Gutenberg Bible in 1978. - **1994-11-11** Christie's, New York, The Leonardo da Vinci Codex Hammer, the property of the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, Los Angeles, lot Not established. The task brief gives lot 9; the Christie's online lot record displays 1, and the sale catalogue is a 203-page volume devoted entirely to this manuscript, which points to a single-lot sale. Not resolved. - Estimate: USD 10,000,000 - 15,000,000 - Hammer: USD 28,000,000 (reconstructed, not stated in any source consulted) - With premium: USD 30,802,500 - USD 30,802,500 is the figure of record and it is premium-inclusive. It cannot be a hammer price: hammer prices fall on round increments and 30,802,500 is not one. A hammer of USD 28,000,000 with a buyer's premium of fifteen per cent on the first USD 50,000 and ten per cent above produces exactly USD 30,802,500, and that tiered scale is the one the New York rooms were operating in the mid-1990s. The writer could not source Christie's published 1994 rate card, so the USD 28,000,000 hammer is offered as a reconstruction and nothing more. What is safe, and what almost no account says, is that the famous number includes the fees. Guinness gives the sterling equivalent of the day as GBP 19,246,489. Bidding lasted two minutes and forty seconds. The underbidder was the Cariplo Foundation of Milan, backed by one of Italy's largest banks. The buyer bid by telephone and was anonymous on the day; Gates was named on 12 November. ## Exhibitions - Codex Leicester, eight-day showing, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 1981 - Codex Hammer, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, 1982 - Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester and the Power of Observation, Phoenix Art Museum; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; North Carolina Museum of Art, 2015 - Water as Microscope of Nature. Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester, Galleria degli Uffizi, Aula Magliabechiana, Florence, 2018 ## Literature - The Codex Hammer of Leonardo da Vinci, translated into English and annotated, 1987 - Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester. Water as Microscope of Nature, 2018 - The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, 1883 - Leonardo da Vinci, the Founding Father of Ichnology, PALAIOS 25, 361-373, 2010 - Maestlin, Michael - Leonardo da Vinci: A Mind in Motion, exhibition, 7 June to 8 September 2019, 2019 ## Open questions - When was the binding removed and by whom? Every account agrees the manuscript is now shown as loose sheets between glass, and none consulted names the conservator or the date. The Uffizi's own page says it retains its original leather binding, which cannot be right as stated. - 1717 or 1719? Christie's 1994 catalogue and the Museo Galileo give 1717 for Thomas Coke's purchase; Wikipedia and most popular accounts give 1719. The two are not reconciled anywhere consulted. - What is the documentary basis for the della Porta ownership around 1537? The Museo Galileo asserts it; the underlying record is not cited, and the chest in which Ghezzi is said to have found the sheets in 1690 rests on no document located for this record. - What was the hammer price in 1994? USD 30,802,500 is premium-inclusive, and a USD 28 million hammer reproduces it exactly under the tiered premium then usual in New York, but Christie's published 1994 rate card was not obtained and the hammer is not stated in any source consulted. - Which is right about 1980: The Art Newspaper's GBP 2 million excluding premium, or the GBP 2.42 million total that the dealer description of the Christie's catalogue gives and that the dollar figures support? - What was the lot number in 1994? The task brief gives lot 9; the Christie's online lot record shows 1; the catalogue is devoted entirely to this manuscript, which suggests a single-lot sale. - How was the British export licence resolved after January 1981? The New York Times recorded that the codex would return to London pending a definitive licence. Whether the case was deferred to let a British institution match the price, whether any tried, and when the licence issued, is not established. - Was the Codex Hammer bought in 1980 with Occidental Petroleum's money rather than Armand Hammer's own, and did that produce shareholder litigation? Reported by The Spectator in September 1994; the full text could not be retrieved for this record. - When exactly did the correct explanation of earthshine first reach print? The Dictionary of Scientific Biography credits Michael Maestlin without giving the work or the date, and the widely repeated interval of about a century between Leonardo and publication rests on that unstated date. - Is the dating of the manuscript 1504-1508, 1506-1510, or later? Richter's argument for 1510 or later turns on a note referring to Frontinus, first printed in Florence in 1513, and holds only if Leonardo meant a printed copy. - Did Giuseppe Ghezzi add a calligraphic title page to the manuscript? The claim circulates but no source examined for this record establishes it. ## Sources - [1] Wikipedia, 'Codex Leicester'. Tertiary; used for the physical description, watermarks, sale figures, digitisation and exhibition list. Flagged for replacement with the Christie's 1994 catalogue and Pedretti's 1987 edition. - [2] Museo Galileo, 'Water as Microscope of Nature. Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester', online exhibition, Introduction and Codex sections; curated by Paolo Galluzzi for the Uffizi, 2018. - [3] Museo Galileo, 'The European circulation of the Codex Leicester', in the same online exhibition. The provenance timeline from della Porta to Weimar. - [4] Museo Galileo, 'The Moon: a second Earth', in the same online exhibition. Leonardo's rejection of the crystalline self-luminous moon and his account of lunar oceans. - [5] Gallerie degli Uffizi, exhibition record for 'Water as Microscope of Nature. Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester', Aula Magliabechiana, 30 October 2018 to 20 January 2019. - [6] Jean Paul Richter, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, 1883, Project Gutenberg ebook 5000. Used for the Codex Leicester deluge and fossil passages (nos. 984-987), the Verona marble note (Leic. 9b, no. 1061), the Theophrastus reading note (Leic. 14b, no. 1499), the Frontinus dating argument (no. 1472), the earth-as-body passages (nos. 929, 963, 967-970), the passages against necromancy and alchemy (nos. 1207, 1208, 1213), the passage against abbreviators (no. 1210), the Codex Atlanticus book list (no. 1469), Vasari on the mirror writing, and Richter's own remarks on reading it. - [7] The Art Newspaper, 'Leonardo codex on the market', 1 June 1994. Hammer's 1980 price given as GBP 2 million excluding premium; the Weiss lawsuit and the museum's reason for selling. - [8] Robin Halwas Ltd, bookseller's description of Christie, Manson and Woods, The Leonardo da Vinci Codex Hammer, the property of the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, sale catalogue, New York, 11 November 1994. Gives Coke's 1717 acquisition, the GBP 2.42 million 1980 price, the 203-page catalogue with a census of the manuscripts, and the statement that this is the only Leonardo notebook in private hands. - [9] History.com, 'Da Vinci notebook sells for over $5M', on the sale of 12 December 1980. The USD 5,126,000 figure, the opening bid of USD 1.4 million, the two-minute bidding, the two or three rival bidders, and the Gutenberg comparison. - [10] Deseret News (Associated Press), 'Bidder Reflects on Mirror Script, Pays $30.8 Million for Da Vinci Notes', 12 November 1994. The USD 10-15 million estimate, Christopher Burge's statement, Hammer's 1980 price given as USD 5.6 million, and the contents summary. - [11] The Seattle Times, '$30.8 Million Gets Gates Closer Look At Da Vinci', 13 November 1994. Gates's undertaking to show the manuscript publicly about half the time, and the identification of the Cariplo Foundation of Milan as underbidder. - [12] Los Angeles Times, 'Microsoft's Gates Revealed as Leonardo's Mystery Buyer', 13 November 1994, and 'Leonardo Work Fetches Record $30.8 Million', 12 November 1994. The underbidder and the two minutes forty seconds of bidding. - [13] Orlando Sentinel, 'Gates Set to Lend Da Vinci to Loser of Bidding Battle', 16 November 1994. Gates's plan to lend the manuscript to the Italian institution he outbid. Retrieved as an index record only; the article body is region-blocked and is flagged for verification. - [14] The New York Times, 'Codex Leicester Adds to the Inaugural Luster', 18 January 1981. The Corcoran showing and the return to London pending a definitive export licence. Retrieved as an index record with quoted text; the full article is behind a paywall and is flagged for verification. - [15] The New York Times, 'A New York Stop for Leonardo's $30.8 Million Notebook', 14 May 1996. Records that Gates promised at the time of purchase to lend the manuscript to museums. Retrieved as an index record with quoted text; flagged for verification. - [16] Guinness World Records, 'Most expensive manuscript that is illustrated'. Gives USD 30,802,500 and GBP 19,246,489 at Christie's New York, 11 November 1994, and describes it as the only Leonardo manuscript in private hands. - [17] Fine Books and Collections, 'Codex Sassoon Becomes Most Valuable Manuscript Ever Sold at $38.1m', 2023. - [18] Artnet News, 'The Codex Sassoon, an Ancient Hebrew Bible, Raked in $33.5 Million at Sotheby's'. Separates the USD 33.5 million hammer from the USD 38.1 million total. - [19] CNN, 'First-edition copy of US Constitution sells for record $43.2M at Sotheby's', 18 November 2021. The record for any book, manuscript or printed text, and the Griffin bidding contest. - [20] Museo Galileo, 'La mente di Leonardo': Leonardo's Library. The 116-volume inventory at Madrid manuscript II, folios 2v-3v, around 1503, and the collection of over 150 volumes. - [21] Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 'Maestlin, Michael', via Encyclopedia.com: 'Earthshine was correctly explained for the first time in print by Maestlin.' The work and date are not given in the entry. - [22] Wikipedia, 'Priory of Sion'. Tertiary; used for the 1956 registration at Annemasse, the Dossiers Secrets planted 1965-67, the grand master list naming Leonardo for 1510-1519, and Plantard's admission under oath in September 1993. Flagged for replacement with the French court record and with Jean-Luc Chaumeil's documentation. - [23] The British Library, 'Curators on Camera: Leonardo da Vinci's observations of natural phenomena', 2 May 2019, film note accompanying the exhibition 'Leonardo da Vinci: A Mind in Motion', 7 June to 8 September 2019: 'Please note the Codex Leicester and Codex Forster in this short film are facsimile copies.' - [24] Fine Books and Collections, 'Codex Leicester Goes on Exhibit'. Page dimensions of 11 2/3 by 8 1/2 inches and the 2015-16 American tour schedule. - [25] The Spectator archive, 'A sordid saga of greed and Weiss', 17 September 1994. Reports that the codex was bought with USD 5 million of Occidental Petroleum funds and that this produced shareholder litigation, and gives the background to the Weiss claim. Retrieved as an index record only; the article body could not be loaded and every claim taken from it is marked as reported. - [26] Manuscriptum, facsimile publisher's description of the Codex Leicester. Commercial and tertiary; used only for the statement that the manuscript was originally bound and is now individually mounted between glass panes, and for the 29 x 22 cm page size. Flagged for replacement with a conservation report. - [27] Andrea Baucon, 'Leonardo da Vinci, the Founding Father of Ichnology', PALAIOS 25 (2010), 361-373. Cited as further reading on the Codex Leicester's fossil observations; only the abstract was consulted for this record. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.