Palatino 766 pipes, pools, cliffs, streams... (by Taccola)

[Bernd]

A more recent look at Taccola from the perspective of an artist:
Fane, Lawrence (2003). The Invented World of Mariano Taccola", Leonardo. Vol. 36. pp. 135–143.

Like Shelby, Fane mostly had to work with facsimiles for reasons stated above. I don't know when BNCF, Palatino 766 was digitized, but clearly after 2003.

It is not easy to gain access to the original drawings of Taccola. The bound volumes drawn in his own hand are in the state libraries of Florence and Munich and, because of their fragility, may never be exhibited. When I first saw the De machinis volume at the Staatsbibliothek in Munich, I was already familiar with the elaborate facsimile edition published in Germany in 1971, edited by Gustina Scaglia.

On Taccola's drawing stye:

Each element is somewhere between a representation and a symbol. The strokes, although freely executed, are codified.
Wavy lines mean water, scalloped edges represent the shore and short curved strokes on one side of each log are used to show roundness and hollowness. In fact, it is doubtful that we would immediately read them as hollowed-out logs without the text. Then, there are the atmospheric symbols of grass, flowers and trees, placed as signs around the lake and the charming bird that stands guard, reminding us of animals in the margins of medieval manuscripts, placed there for reasons we are often not sure of. (In other Taccola drawings, small animals are used for page identification.)
The last coded marking system I will mention is the light wash brushed over the linear waves of the water. In almost all of Taccola’s drawings, washes are used only to represent water, gases and smoke. Everything else is delineated by lines. Shading to show three-dimensional form, when not done with parallel lines, is occasionally indicated with back-and-forth pencil strokes on the ink drawings

Taccola did not brazenly take pen to paper without preliminary sketches to locate and lock in the elements of his drawings. (The same was often true even of such eloquent draftsmen as Leonardo da Vinci.) But unlike many artists, he did not erase most of them. (Perhaps there is a clue here to his intentions.) Often, in fact, the remaining pencil lines reveal multiple positions of elements drawn finally in ink. This puts us in even closer touch with Taccola’s process of thinking and adds a dimension of delight to viewing the drawings. But the pencil had another use as well: it was employed for shading. As stated above, Taccola’s marks were, in a sense, coded. Wavy lines suggested smoke and water, small parallel strokes on the edge of a beam meant roundness, long parallel lines often meant slats of wood, and so on. But washes, which have now faded to a yellowish tone, usually signify fluids. The washes are only occasionally used for accents, like decorating an elaborate letter of the alphabet (De machinis, 27r) or some peripheral element (e.g. the feather on a fawn’s head in De machinis (26v), but they are not used to suggest space or three-dimensionality. Shading, when used, is in pencil. I assume the scratchy penciled planes were drawn by Taccola, but they could have been added by a later hand. In any event, they stand in contrast to the ink washes and are only vaguely readable in the reproductions- and then only after seeing the original.

Interestingly, Fane believes that many of Taccola's drawings represent his 'personal fantasy world' rather than practical inventions. Many are indeed wacky designs, or as already discussed in this thread, outright impossible.

Another intriguing aspect of Taccola’s carefully arranged notebooks is that ware not entirely sure what their function was. Did Taccola consider himself primarily an inventor who drew only to elucidate his mechanical ideas? Did he think of himself as an artist making drawings to be appreciated for their visual qualities? Were the drawings meant as presents to important leaders to elevate his public stature? Did they feed Taccola’s fantasy life as he dealt with daily issues of engineering and administration? Was humor a conscious part of his visual experiments?

Fane concludes:

Taccola’s greatest invention is the strange private world he created in his illustrated notebooks. People, animals, machines, buildings, rafts and ships, mountains and trees—all are placed in atmospheric arrangements creating spaces that are on one hand illogical and, on the other, totally convincing

Parallels to the VM may or may not be coincidential!