At some time during the years 1497/9, Leonardo da Vinci wrote a little memorandum in one of the notebooks now preserved at the Institut de France in Paris. Evidently he had been puzzling over certain problems concerning the trajectory of javelins, for he sketched what appears to be a technique for hurling spears by means of a sort of sling, and he noted: ‘Parla con Pietro Monti di questi tali modi di trarre i dardi’. And so we meet the man who taught Leonardo darts.
