A 72-page manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci's scientific diagrams and notes in his distinctive backward "mirror script" sold at auction Friday for a record $30.8 million.
The volume, consisting of everything from why the sky is blue to advice on building dams, brought the highest price ever paid for a manuscript, said Christopher Burge, chairman of the auction house Christie's America.The buyer was an anonymous private collector, bidding by telephone. The seller was the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center in Los Angeles. It had been expected to bring in $10 million to $15 million.
The late oil tycoon Armand Hammer had bought the work in 1980 at an auction in London for $5.6 million. It was known as the Codex Hammer. Codex is Latin for a book or bound manuscript.
In the manuscript, dated 1508 to 1510, Leonardo explores such topics as astronomy, geography, geology, hydraulics and canal building.
Fascinated with optical tricks and paradoxes, the left-handed Leonardo often wrote right to left, with the letters backward so the text is legible only when read in a mirror.
On one page, he remarks that the light of the moon is reflected sunlight. He wrote that a century before Galileo proved that the moon does not shine of its own accord.
"I saw that as the moon has no light of itself and yet is luminous, it is inevitable but that its light is caused by some other body," he writes, later adding that this other body is the sun.
He correctly explains the presence of marine shells and fossils on mountains and plains far from the sea. He offers advice on flood control, dams and canals. He explores the principles of siphons and steam power. He presents engineering designs for the snorkel and submarine.
He explains why the sky is blue: "Experience shows us that air must have darkness beyond it and hence it appears blue."