Leonardo da Vinci [antikvár]

Author's Note A note on currencies and measurements. The reader will find a confusing range of Renaissance currencies here. The imperial lira, divided into 2.0 soldi of 12 denari each (like the L.s.d. of pre-decimal Britain), was a benchmark of sorts, but throughout Italy regional coinage was minted: florins, ducats, scudi, giuli, etc. For much of the period covered in this book, the Florentine florin and the Venetian ducat were worth around 4 lire. These are the three currencies chiefly used by Leonardo da Vinci. To give some broad guidelines of value, in late-fifteenth-century Milan I lira would buy a month's supply of bread for a family of four, or 12 pounds of veal, or 20 bottles of country-wine, or iVi pounds of candle-wax, or just over a pound of that luxury item, sugar. In the 1490s Leonardo purchased a 600-page book on mathematics, in folio, for 6 lire, and a silver cloak with green velvet trim for 15 lire. A fine horse cost 40 ducats or 160 lire. In Florence a building worker earned 2 florins a month, and a senior civil servant in the Signoria 11 florins a month. The great mansions of the Medici and the Strozzi cost in the region of 30,000 florins to build. In a tax return, Cosimo de' Medici declared assets of over 100,000 florins, and one may imagine that this was an understatement. A measurement of length frequently used by Leonardo is the braccio. The word means 'arm', and is thus equivalent to the old English ell (no longer in use as a measure but still heard in 'elbow', which is where your ell bows). According to one interpretation, a Florentine braccio was 55.1 cm (21.6 inches) and a Milanese braccio 59.4 cm (23.4 inches), but some calculations in one of Leonardo's notebooks work out at 61.2 cm (24.1 inches) per braccio. 1 have rounded these out to a general conversion rate of i braccio = 2 feet. In measurements of distance Leonardo uses the miglia (mile) of a thousand passi (paces). A staio, or bushel, was a volumetric measure for crops, but is met here as a measurement of land-area. A staio of land was a plot capable of producing I staio of barley per annum. Judging from tenancy agreements of the period