Conserved in the archives of the Commissione Nazionale per l’Edizione Nazionale dei disegni e dei manoscritti di Leonardo da Vinci (formed in 1907), preserved today in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, is a collection of more than 6000 photographic glass plates of the da Vinci codexes that was produced during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Another 500 photographic glass plates from folios of the Codex Atlanticus are conserved in the Archivio Storico e Civico in Milan. This collection of plates covers all the manuscripts of Leonardo that were known to exist at the beginning of the twentieth century. They constitute a resource of immense value not only for specialists in Leonardian studies, but also for research in the history of photography, in the technology of printing photographs, and in the history of facsimile editions of Leonardo’s codices.
The photographic glass plates will be scanned creating an archive of nearly 7000 high-definition images which will be stored in an online database.

The database will be hosted on the Museo Galileo website www.museogalileo.it