The work should begin with the conception of man. Describe the form of the womb, and how the child lives in it, and to what stage it resides in it, and in what way it is given life and food. Also its growth, and what interval there is between one stage of growth and another; and what it is that pushes it out of the body of the mother, and why it sometimes comes out of the mother’s belly before due time.

Then describe which parts grow more than others after the infant is born, and give the measurements of a child of one year.

Then describe the grown man and woman, and their measurements, and the nature of their constitution, colour and physiognomy.

Then describe how they are composed of veins, nerves, muscles and bones. Do this at the end of the book.

Then in four drawings depict the four universal conditions of man, that is: joy, with different ways of laughing, and draw the cause of the laughter; weeping in different ways, with their cause; fighting, with the different movements of killing; flight, fear, ferocity, boldness, murder, and everything belonging to such events.

Then draw labour, with pulling, pushing, carrying, stopping, supporting and similar things.

Attitudes

Then describe attitudes and movement.

Effects

Then treat perspective through the function of the eye; on hearing, I shall speak of music; and describe the other senses.

Leonardo’s First Outline for his Treatise on Anatomy, 1489