www.universalleonardo.org

About every decade or two it pays to geographically retrace some of the global avenues of higher ancient thought, to touch "terra firma" in Florence and perhaps to reacquaint ourselves with the perpetually unique olfactory character of the canals of Venice. And, maybe it also helps to keep us humble as clinicians to be reminded of what was known, what was not known and was being thought and taught any number of centuries ago - not just in the schools of medicine but also in the schools of science and the arts.

For many people the genius and versatility of Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) are so immense as to be difficult to fully appreciate in our era of Harrison's (yes, the "bigger and better" 17th edition has already come out!). At the same time in the last five to 10 years there have been great advances in multimedia and technology. It seems every few months (and no less often since the recent publication and production of the book and movie The Da Vinci Code) new websites appear to pop up dedicated to Da Vinci, and to records and archives of his manuscripts, drawings and portraits. Travelling through Europe one is ceaselessly reminded of the brilliance of Da Vinci - from his works in the Louvre and Florence to his mausoleum at Amboise Chateau in the Loire Valley.

Da Vinci spent his last years in the Loire Valley presumably to enjoy the natural beauty of the area and for some peace and solitude. He asked for his remains to be buried at Amboise and the small chapel and tomb there really are a great understatement of Da Vinci's significance to world medicine, science and art.

Some time ago, I heard of various projects dedicated to archiving the works of Da Vinci. After getting back home it was perhaps opportune to do a web search, and it appears there are certainly a number of such sites, mostly based in Italy, where access to the works for imaging purposes is more practicable. Some have English versions of their site content but the main one at E-Leo in fact only has the Italian version. After finding the site, in true Italian fashion, to be in a state of partial suspended animation ("This page is still under construction" in Italian is "La pagina desiderata è in costruzione"), I decided to have a look around the web for something a little more finished. The experience of registering on a website which only talks Italian is probably not something which happens too often but it was - thanks to Google Translate - quite entertaining.

The mother tongue Universal Leonardo site comes from the University of the Arts in London and is supported by a broad range of European philanthropists and benevolent organisations including a certain Bill Gates. It is a not-for-profit project and appears as a brilliant, academically informative and very comprehensive overview of the life and works of Da Vinci.

Last year's Universal Leo-nardo exhibitions programme in Europe and the UK appears to have been the stimulus for this well-maintained website - and these exhibitions in turn were part of the 28th Council of Europe art exhibition. The Council of Europe has organised, for almost 50 years, a series of prestigious exhibitions to increase knowledge and appreciation of European art as an expression of European culture and common value.
On the website we can retrace the life and times of Da Vinci in authoritative and well-illustrated text. We can explore, discover and browse. In discovery mode we can analyse portraits of Da Vinci with CT scans, PIXE (Particle Induced X-ray Emissions), IR (Infrared Reflectography), UV analysis, and 3-D profilometric analysis. We can browse the variety of the Da Vinci works: the paintings (25), the manuscripts, the inventions (10) and the drawings (49). The original manuscripts are by nature voluminous (eg, Codes Atlanticus, Codex Trivulzianus, Codex Madrid, Codes Forster, Codex on the Flight of Birds etc), and, accordingly, only excerpts are presented on this site

(22 pages) but full access to other comprehensive manuscript archive sites such as e-Leo are available elsewhere for the true enthusiasts.
The images - most notably of the portraits - are quick to view and very good quality but are not produced in high definition. While this may seem disappointing, it is probably logical to remove the temptation to download large numbers of these images which we are not likely to want to actually print ourselves. There are a large number of very high definition archived images of the Da Vinci works available through other sites but without the excellent web infrastructure of Universal Leonardo.

In the explore section, Universal Leonardo has constructed trails of knowledge and timelines to enable us to better appreciate the thought processes involved in Leonardo's genius. The trails include: The Body of Man, Imagination and Invention, Remaking Nature, Forces of Nature, The Natural World, Light and Vision and, lastly, the Rule of Mathematics.

Da Vinci is a fascinating and inspiring subject and Universal Leonardo is a very rewarding site to visit.

And, if we really want some better pictures, we could look at www.drawingsofleonardo.org or maybe eventually resort to the old-fashioned printed option. There is a beautiful high quality commemorative publication from Taschen titled Leonardo da Vinci - The Complete Paintings and Drawings $175 from Whitcoulls, ISBN 9783822838273.

Sometimes books really are hard to beat.