Ad astra

Very deep is the well of the past, it is no small effort to pick out all the garbage that has been thrown into it. Our recent post on medieval and Renaissance bicycles has been honored first of all by the original Russian “translator”, Boris Indrikov, who also provided us with the reproduction of Van Gogh’s posthumous painting Self-portrait with bicycle, without the artist’s left ear and all the rest.


Then our estimated Greek friend Poly Hatjimanolaki congratulated through us to Boris, at the same time reminding us of Paco Ignacio Taibo II.’s absurd thriller, The bicycle of Leonardo. The idea that the great Renaissance master was also the inventor of the bike among so many other things, has stirred the fantasy of others as well and inspired a novel by Guy Davenport.


And it is no mere accident. Do you see the conspicuous similarity of the vehicles on the covers? All of them are based on the drawing discovered by Augusto Marinoni in the Codex Atlanticus of Milan which has preserved the sketches of Leonardo. He published his discovery in 1974 in a paper delivered precisely in Vinci, the birthplace of Leonardo. Subsequently the bicycle of Leonardo run a brilliant career, it has been also modeled in life size for the Florentine exhibition in honor of the millennium traveling all over the world. Its only fault was the impossibility of being steered. Apparently this minor problem did not excite the master.


It was only in 1997 that Dr. Hans-Erhard Lessing pointed out in a detailed study that the design was a forgery, and a quite recent one at that, drawn into the codex (!) after its restoration in the 60s, more precisely between 1967 and 1974. No trace of it can be seen on the photos made before and during the restoration, only some circles and lines appear through from the other side of the page, and these were complemented into a bike by the forger. It is noteworthy, writes Lessing, that in all the literature on bicycle history none else has accepted the attribution except for Marinoni and his Italian followers.

No, this design of Leonardo is surely not authentic: it has been made for the Photoshop competition of Worth1000.

For the stake, writes Lessing, was not small. The Italians had to demonstrate that the first paleo-bicycle before the patent of the modern bike in 1817 was not the célérifère of 1791 of Comte de Sivrac as it has been asserted by the French for a century. Bicycle, in fact, must be an Italian invention. For Malaparte made it clear already in 1949:

In Italy, the bicycle belongs to the national art heritage in the same way as Mona Lisa by Leonardo, the dome of St. Peter or the Divine Comedy. It is surprising that it has not been invented by Botticelli, Michelangelo, or Raffael. Should it happen to you, that you voice in Italy that the bicycle was not invented by an Italian you will see: All miens turn sullen, a veil of grief lies down onto the faces. Oh, when you say in Italy, when you say loudly and distinctly in a café or on the street that the bicycle—like the horse, the dog, the eagle, the flowers, the trees, the clouds—has not been invented by an Italian (for it were the Italians that invented the horse, the dog, the eagle, the flowers, the trees, the clouds) then a long shudder will run down the peninsula’s spine, from the Alps to the Etna.

Reconstruction of the célérifère.

But in the reality all the noble efforts of the Italians were just shots in the air. For Comte de Sivrac never existed, and consequently neither the célérifère. Both were invented in 1891 by the journalist Louis Baudry de Saunier who in his national pride wanted to dispute the primacy of the German Baron Karl Drais, the actual inventor of the bicycle.

Meanwhile, if not Leonardo, then who was the one who scratched a host of small Renaissance bicycles in the external fresco of the church of Arbore in Bukovina, painted in the 1530s?


However, the series of surprising discoveries has not yet come to an end. The document sent to us in a comment by Syr Wullam cuts every petty cause among modern European nations already at the roots. Already ancient Greeks knew the bike! What is more, writes our blue-blooded expert,

the Greek did not need to strain themselves with pedals as the poor chaps in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. No, they just gave it the gun as the peasant to his Berva (© my granny).


We have also checked some other works of the artist Robert Weigand. Most of his drawings are in the style of the illustrations of Reader’s Digest which, interestingly, reintegrate the allegoric and emblematic pictorial language of the Early Modern period to 20^th-century applied graphics – but this problem deserves a post of its own and will also receive it. However, what we have discovered with surprise – why should always other make the surprising discoveries? – was the fact that even the topics of Weigand’s other pictures are in line with the article by Indrikov. In several illustrations we find the bicycle, the Sun and the Moon, and even their modern knight balancing between them as if he did it on two wheels. Is it not possible that the master is a secret member of the Order of the Sun and the Moon which has survived until today?




However, the greatest and most breathtaking coming out was yet to come. The person exposed was no less than Wang Wei himself, co-author of our blog, founding father of Studiolum, whom after several years of bosom-friendship we have thought to know like our palm. Indeed, after reading the previous post he wrote to us:

Te mando un documento único. Que en realidad es una confesión secreta: yo pertenezco a la venerable «Order of the Sun and of the Moon». Una de las pruebas que tenemos que pasar es subir al Tourmalet intentando pasar completamente desapercibidos entre la masa de absurdos deportistas plebeyos que, ataviados con ropajes ridículos, exhiben su vanidad y se pavonean ante las damas. La hazaña no es pequeña, pues los aspirantes a caballeros de la Orden pueden ser requeridos por el Gran Maestre para pasar la prueba en cualquier momento del día o de la noche, en cualquier época del año, llueva o truene, con luna o bajo un sol de justicia. Cuando esa llamada ocurre, tenemos que dejar nuestra casa inmediatamente, coger la primera bicicleta que encontremos en la calle y, vestidos tal como estábamos en nuestros aposentos, lanzarnos a la carretera y subir la mítica montaña. Ello exige un permanente estado de vigilia física y espiritual que muchos no pueden soportar. Otros fracasan repetidas veces en sus intentos de escalada de las durísimas rampas y van repitiendo la prueba cada vez que son requeridos hasta que, convencidos de su inferioridad, deben abandonar sus pretensiones de entrar en la Orden. En fin, esta es una de las pruebas que mandó mi escudero al Gran Consejo de la Orden y que ahora te revelo en primicia.

Hereby I send you a unique document which is actually a secret confession: I belong to the venerable “Order of the Sun and of the Moon.” One of the tests we must pass is to climb the Tourmalet completely unnoticed among the mass of plebeian mock-athletes dressed in ridiculous clothes showing off their vanity to the ladies. The feat is not small, as the aspiring knights of the Order may be required by the Grand Master to pass the test at any time of the day or night all year round, in rain or frost, in moonlight or under the sun of justice. As soon as we hear this call, we must immediately leave our home, take the first bike that we find in the street and, dressed just as we were in our homes, take the road and climb the mystical mountain. This requires a constant state of physical and spiritual vigilance that many can not endure. Many fail repeatedly in their attempts to climb the hard ramps and try to repeat the test several times until, convinced of their inferiority, they abandon their claim to enter the Order. This is thus one of the tests that my squire recorded for the Grand Council of the Order with the following document which is now revealed to you as the first person outside the Order.


This unique document which can be dated to several years before, almost to the Middle Ages, attests not only for how long Wang Wei has been a knight of the Order of the Sun and of the Moon. But it also sheds light on something he has not unrevealed in one of his previous posts: the reason why his Mallorcan Catalan compatriots are so enthusiastic fighters for the freedom of Transylvania.

Coat of arms of Transylvania