Luca Pacioli: A Friend of Leonardo da Vinci De Divina Proportione in Capital Letters

In 1482, Leonardo, who according to Vasari was a talented musician, created a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head. Lorenzo de' Medici sent Leonardo to Milan, bearing the lyre as a gift, to secure peace with Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. At this time Leonardo wrote an often-quoted letter describing the many marvelous and diverse things that he could achieve in the field of engineering and informing Ludovico that he could also paint. Leonardo worked in Milan from 1482 until 1499. In 1496 Fra Pacioli’s fame led to an invitation to join the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. Here Luca met Leonardo da Vinci, who was in Milan from 1482 as court painter and engineer. He taught Leonardo the intricacies of geometry and Leonardo informed Pacioli of the application of geometry to art and Architecture. The text of De Divina Proportione clearly depended on the close collaboration of these two Renaissance scholars. Clearly the interest of Leonardo in this aesthetically satisfying ratio both from a mathematical and artistic point of view was an important influence on the work. Leonardo himself drew the geometrical illustrations for the manuscript. In 1499 the French armies entered in Milan and Pacioli and Leonardo fled together to Mantua, where they were guests of Marchioness Isabella d’Este. Pacioli published, in Venice, among others books, the De Divina Proportione, with a dedication to Pietro Soderini, integrated with the Tractato del’architectura and the Libello tres partiales tractatus divisus quinque corporum regularium et dependentium. The Tractato del'architectura begins with a discussion on the proportions of the human body, in which Pacioli inserts the side profile of the head. In this edition of the De Divina Proportione, Luca also fits the tables with the construction of the capital letters of the alphabet. Pacioli’s alphabet is based on the same square and circle construction that had guided Leon Battista Alberti in the Santa Maria Novella. Pacioli was also in touch with Mantegna and through his circle could have been influenced by Feliciano’s manuscript. It seems likely that he used other alphabetical sources, for example the manuscript of Damianus De Moille. We felt that this beautiful alphabet needed to be restored and we set out to construct an accurate replica with GeoGebra, using the Pacioli’s instructions although it was few and incomplete.