Luca Pacioli: A friend of Leonardo da Vinci De Divina proportione in capital letters

Abstract

In 1496 Fra Pacioli’s fame led to an invitation to join the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. Here Luca met Leonardo da Vinci and taught Leonardo the intricacies of geometry and in the meantime Leonardo informed Pacioli of the application of geometry to art and Architecture. The text of De Divina Proportione clearly depended on the close collaboration of these two Renaissance scholars. Leonardo himself drew the geometrical illustrations for the manuscript. In 1509 Pacioli published De Divina Proportione, integrated with the Tractato del’architectura, that begins with a discussion on the proportions of the human body. In this edition, Luca fits the tables with the construction of the capital letters. Pacioli’s alphabet is based on the same square and circle construction that had guided Leon Battista Alberti. We felt that this beautiful alphabet needed to be restored and we set out to construct an accurate replica with GeoGebra, using the Pacioli’s instructions although it was incomplete.