2013.005

Lukacs, Claire

Gift

Museum Collections. Gift of a Friend of the Museum.

Mabbott, Maureen Cobb

1st thus

Stevens Institute of Technology

1936

English

Copy No.: 1

Good

Notes: Library 2013.005.0127 CATALOGUE OF THE LIEB MEMORIAL COLLECTION OF VINCIANA Compiled by MAUREEN COBB MABBOTT STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY 1936 ==== Copyright 1936 Stevens Institute of Technology Composed, Printed and Bound by George Banta Publishing Company Menasha. Wisconsin ==== ACKNOWLEDGMENTS By the publication of this catalogue, Stevens Institute of Technology invites scholars engaged in research and laymen to use and enjoy a remarkably fine library of papers, books, and manuscript reproductions displaying the universality of Leonardo's genius. The collection, now methodically listed for the first time, was assembled by John W. Lieb, Stevens '80, between 1893 and 1929. After his death, it was acquired by Mr. Samuel Insull who presently proposed to present it to Mr. Lieb's alma mater. It was then that Mr. William S. Barstow and others of Mr. Lieb's friends became interested and a fund was provided to permit the construction of a group of special rooms in which the Lieb collection could be safely and appropriately housed. To these gentlemen the College is indebted for one of its most precious possessions, the John W. Lieb Memorial Library of Vinciana. The frontispiece of this volume reproduces a portrait of Mr. Lieb which was given to the College by the Electrical Testing Laboratories and is now hung in the Lieb Memorial Rooms. For the preparation of the catalogue, a task requiring expert knowledge and painstaking devotion, we are grateful to Maureen Cobb Mabbott; and for its publication to Mr. Barstow. Harvey N. Davis, President, Stevens Institute of Technology ==== THE JOHN W. LIEB MEMORIAL A young man of twenty-two just two years out of Stevens Institute of Technology, John W. Lieb was chosen by Thomas A. Edison in 1882 to design and install the first Edison central station and system in Europe at Milan, Italy. This commission was destined to play an all important part in a dominating cultural and educational interest which from that time on persisted through the lifetime of Mr. Lieb. In the short interval between the day of his graduation and his work in Milan, Mr. Lieb had been active in electrical development. In 1880 he entered the employ of the Brush Electric Company of Cleveland where he worked on the arc light systems as a draftsman. In a few months he made up his mind that the arc light had reached the limit of its develop- ment and he left his position to accept one with Mr. Edison, beginning work in January 1881, first as a draftsman, and shortly in the experi- mental and testing department of the Edison Machine Works under the personal direction of Mr. Edison. So he became engaged in the design, erection, and operation of the historic Pearl Street Station. It was Lieb's hand that closed the switch giving the first central station service of elec- trical energy to New York City. When a man was wanted in Milan to install and direct the central station and system to be built there, Mr. Edison naturally sent his well- tried young associate, Lieb, to be appointed chief electrician of the Societa Generale Italiana di Elettricita Sistema Edison, later its chief engineer, and finally its technical manager and director of stations. He command- ed the largest and most successful light and power system then in Europe. He placed in service the electric trolley installation of Milan, providing regular service from the Piazza del Duomo to the outer reaches of the city. He directed there some of the first experiments in the use of an alternating current system of distribution, and in the transmission of high-tension alternating current. It was a minor incident in the performance of his professional duties that gave Mr. Lieb his first contact with Leonardo. The Italian Edison Company had obtained, in 1890, a franchise from the Italian government for the construction of an hydro-electric plant at Paderno on the River Adda. Under the terms of the concession the company guaranteed to maintain the Martesana Canal which served both as the intake for the plant and as a link in the canal and irrigation system of the Plains of ==== Lombardy. When he came to inspect the old canal, Mr. Lieb found that the locks at either end were designed in accordance with the best modem practice in hydraulic engineering. He caused an inquiry to be made and learned that the original of these locks, identical with those in use, had been built about the year 1500, and that the designer of them was Leonardo da Vinci who probably laid out the plans for the canal itself. "Is it at all remarkable," writes Mr. Lieb in a memorandum, "that an engineer should have been attracted to the study of this stupendous personality and have early sought to learn as much as possible of his life and work and to become possessed of as many as possible of the authoritative works concerning his activities." In 1892 I called on Mr. Lieb in Milan. He was the same gracious gentleman as when he left the States, full of energy (Mr. Edison often referred to him laughingly as the "human dynamo") and interested in every new and recent discovery in electrical development. He had just at the time of my arrival come across some evidence of the engineering of Leonardo da Vinci and talked very enthusiastically of his discoveries. Upon his return to the States, after spending twelve years in Italy with the Milan Edison interests, Mr. Lieb continued to collect and study the works of Leonardo da Vinci and many were the occasions when he described to me the contents of some new manuscript which he had just received and which gave further evidence of the wide field of Leonardo's studies. The da Vinci library which he assembled was a constant concern through forty years of his life. It contains every published facsimile of Leonardo's manuscripts, many of them issued in limited editions long out of print, almost unobtainable. Every worthwhile book or pamphlet on Leonardo in English, French, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, or the Scandinavian languages was sought for by foreign antiquaries under Mr. Lieb's instructions. Among his many professional undertakings, Mr. Lieb found time to acquaint himself with the many manuscripts of Leonardo, texts veiled by the changes of language in four centuries, an inextricably confused miscellany, thousands of notes, sketches and observations, baf- fling to decipher because the author had written from right to left, in mirror writing. Those who knew the versatility, force and economy of Lieb realize that he was not one to be disconcerted by his problems. He himself had some of Leonardo's universal genius. It is a scholar's collec- tion, made by a scholar, and serviceable, as perhaps no other library in the country is, to scholars investigating the life and mind of Leonardo. "I am very anxious," my friend Lieb said to me when he came toward ==== the end of his curatorship, "that this collection should find lodgment in some public institution, where it could be studied by engineers, scientists, artists and professional men." John Lieb died on November 1, 1929. One is tempted to recite the list of honors and responsibilities that had been his; to review his career with the New York Edison Company where he was Vice President and Gen- eral Manager, and Senior Vice President; to name the national associa- tions and international congresses over which he presided; to make record of the friendships he enjoyed with the great of our time, scientists, teach- ers, industrialists, and engineers of all nations. There are other and more complete biographies than can be written here, among them the memorial volume published by the Electrical Testing Laboratories and Mr. Orrok's appreciative essays in "Mechanical Engineering" and the "Stevens Indi- cator." It is more appropriate that I tell briefly how the Lieb collection found the lodgment which he wished for it. After Mr. Lieb's death, the collection was acquired by Mr. Samuel Insull who, desiring to keep the collection intact and safe, considered where he might most suitably place it. He offered it to Mr. Lieb's alma mater, Stevens Institute of Technology, of which college Mr. Lieb had been a Trustee. Properly he prescribed that the collection, if accepted, must be housed in fireproof rooms under conditions favorable to its preser- vation. A long time friend and intimate admirer of Mr. Lieb made pro- vision for the construction of the John W. Lieb Memorial Rooms in the library of the college and there the collection is kept and exhibited. It was presented to the College on the anniversary of Thomas A. Edison's birth- day, February 11, 1932. William S. Barstow ==== INTRODUCTION The first part of this catalogue lists editions of Leonardo's works, the second part lists works on Leonardo. The plan, for the sake of clarity and consistency, is based on the most nearly complete Leonardo bibliography, Ettore Verga's Bibliografia Vinciana, 1493-1930. Those items in the Lieb collection which are in the Bibliografia Vinciana are herein given the Verga number, designated by V., and the student may refer to that bibliography for a full description of the contents and impor- tance of items thus numbered. Items not listed by Verga are designated by V— and naturally include everything dated after 1930. Most of the works without Verga numbers are described by him in differing editions or are mentioned in his notes; or are works referring only indirectly to Leonardo. Apparently the Lieb collection of Vinciana is the only one in the world formed by an engineer with emphasis on Leonardo's mechanical genius. It thus contains general works on the history of aviation and technics outside the province of the Bibliografia Vinciana. In the years since Mr. Lieb's death in 1929 a small number of items have been added by friends of the library and by means of a very small endowment fund, but at present the library has no means of growing after the large and comprehensive plan of its original collector. Each item has been examined carefully. Some of the earlier Treatises (numbers 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, and 23) differ in size, paging or otherwise from Verga's descriptions. In other items slight changes have been silently made correcting Verga's misprints and confused treatment of English names. In compiling the catalogue I have enjoyed the constant advice and encouragement of Miss Enid Hawkins, Mr. James Creese, and Dr. Thomas Ollive Mabbott. The unusually complete collection of editions of Leonardo's works, listed in Part One, is not only the largest in this country, but includes all the facsimiles that have been published to date. One comes to feel that Leonardo's greatest contribution to humanity was not the Mona Lisa, not any particular drawing, painting or manuscript. What, above all things, he gave to the world was a method and an attitude. He was his own masterpiece. That masterpiece may be studied fully and at one's leisure in the Lieb Memorial Rooms. 1 Dec. 1936. Maureen Cobb Mabbott ==== PART ONE WORKS BY LEONARDO DA VINCI ==== I. THE TREATISES A. Treatise on Painting 1651 1. TRATTATO DELLA PITTURA di L. da V., novamente dato in luce, con la Vita dell'istesso autore, scritta da Rafaelle Du Fresne. Si sono giunti i tre libri della pittura, et il Trattato della statua di L. B. Alberti, con la Vita del medesimo. Parigi, Langlois, f.°, pp. 16 not num. +112 + 30 not num. + 62; ill. V. 1 2. TRAITÉ DE LA PEINTURE de L. de V., donné au public et trauduit de l'italien en franqais par R. F. S. d. C. Paris, Langlois, 4°, pp. 16+128; ill. V. 2 1716 3. TRAITÉ DE LA PEINTURE par L. de V., revu et corrige. Nou- velle édition augmentée de la Vie de l'Anttaur.. Paris, Giffart, 16°, pp. liv +34 not num. +324+20 not num.; ill. V. 3 Two copies. One lacks frontispiece portrait of Vinci. 1721 4. A TREATISE OF PAINTING by L. da V. Trans. from the Orig- inal Italian and adorn'd with a great number of cuts. To which is prefixed the Author's Life, done from the last edition of the French. London, Printed for J. Senex, at the Globe in Salisbury Court; and W. Taylor, at the Ship in Pater-Noster-Row, 8°, pp. 16 not num. ;+189+16 not num.; ill. V. 4 First English edition. 1733 5. TRATTATO DELLA PITTURA di L. da V., nuovamente dato in luce, colla Vita dell'istesso autore scritta da R. Du Fresne. Si sono giunti i tre libri della pittura, ed il Trattato della statua di L. B. Alberti, colla Vita del medesimo. E di nuovo ristampato, corretto, ed a maggior perfezione condotto . .. Napoli, Ricciardo, 4°, pp. 12 not num. +115+18 not num. +57; ill. V. 7 ==== Status: OK Status By: dw Status Date: 2013-06-09