Bill Gates To Lend Leonardo Manuscript
Bill Gates is to lend his rare set of Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific writings, the Codex Leicester, to an exhibition at the Uffizi galleries in Florence next autumn. The Microsoft billionaire bought the manuscript, which belonged for centuries to the descendants of the first Earl of Leicester, for a record $30.8m from the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles at Christie’s New York in 1994. Compiled
between 1504 and 1508, the 72 double-sided pages of Leonardo’s detailed notes and drawings on the movement of water are now returning to public view in the Italian city for the first time in more than 35 years.
