Guido da Vigevano

crank wagon, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris

Guido da Vigevano (* around 1280; † around 1349) was an Italian physician and inventor. He is notable for his sketchbook "Texaurus regis Francie" which depicts a number of technological items and ingenious devices, allowing modern scholarship an invaluable insight into the state of medieval technology. Although still attached in style and spirit to the Middle Ages, Da Vigevano can be regarded as a distant forerunner of later Renaissance artist-engineers like Taccola, Francesco di Giorgio and Leonardo da Vinci.

Da Vigevano was personal physician of the queen of France, Joan I. For an envisaged crusade, he drew sketches of armoured chariots, wind-propelled carriages and siege engines. He was also one of the first to add drawings of organs to his anatomical descriptions. His sketches were typically medieval in that they lack perspectivity, invented only at the beginning of the Renaissance by Brunelleschi.

Further reading

* Hall, Bert Stewart: "Guido da Vigevano's Texaurus Regis Francie, 1335", in: Eamon, William (Ed.), Studies on Medieval Fachliteratur, Brussels 1982, pp.33-44
* Hall, Bert Stewart, Giovanni de Dondi and Guido da Vigevano: "Notes Toward a Typology of Medieval Technological Writings", "Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences" (1978), pp.127-142
* Hall, Alfred Rupert: "Guido's Texaurus, 1335", in: Hall, Bert Stewart / West, Delno C. (Eds.): On Pre-Modern Technology and Science (Undena Publications), Malibu 1976, pp.11-51
* Hall, Alfred Rupert: "The military inventions of Guido da Vigevano", "Actes du Congrès International d'Histoire des Sciences", 8, Vol. 3 (1956), pp.966-969

See also

* Medieval technology
* Villard de Honnecourt
* Taccola
* Francesco di Giorgio Martini
* Leonardo da Vinci

External links

* [http://www.histinst.rwth-aachen.de/ext/tma/tema/windwagn/texaurus.htm Crank- and wind wagon (plus international bibliography)] de icon
* [http://www.zeit.de/archiv/2001/02/200102_windwagen.xml Article on wind wagon] de icon
* [http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/563099 The Neuroanatomical Plates of Guido da Vigevano]