The Leonardo da Vinci Bicycle Hoax

Recently, a drawing of a bicycle, thought to have been

from the studio of Leonardo da Vinci, is now considered a hoax. 

This drawing was believed to be by Giacomo Caprotti (c. 1493), a pupil of Leonardo.  Only the two circles are originally from the Codex Atlanticus, on the verso of sheet 133.

Professor Dr. Hans-Erhard Lessing, University of Ulm, Germany, presented his paper, The Evidence against 'Leonardo's Bicycle' at the Eighth International Cycling History Conference in Glasgow, September 1997, also printed in The Boneshaker #146, Spring 1998.

Professor Lessing states:

Professor Carlo Pedretti, an art historian and da Vinci scholar at UCLA, is the author of The Codex Atlanticus of Leonardo da Vinci. A Catalogue of its newly restored Sheets. Part One and Two. Harcourt-Brace-Jovanovich, New York 1978. He wrote that in 1961 he examined the versos of the original sheets in translucence by holding them up to the light (they were still attached to the album pages). At the time, he only saw light traces of circles in pen and ink.  The forgery can be dated between 1967 and 1974.

Lessing includes in a Leonardo Update in The Boneshaker #147, Summer 1998, a letter from Jost Pietsch of Muenchen, Germany:

The bicycle is drawn with a pencil. Pencil lead is made from graphite; graphite was discovered decades after Leonardo's death (1519) in 1564 in Cumberland, England

Read (in Italian!) the article that introduced the news to the Italians in the magazine L'Espresso,   Leonardo senza bici, by Professor Federico Di Trocchi, December 12, 2000

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