Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana

The collection was given to UCLA in 1961 by Dr. Elmer Belt, professor emeritus at the UCLA School of Medicine and a collector of Vinciana for more than sixty years.

Of particular interest are those works directly related to Leonardo. These include all editions of his Treatise on Painting—the collection also contains two rare manuscript copies of the Treatise—and facsimile editions of all his extant drawings and manuscripts. Among its other outstanding holdings is a first edition of the famous architectural treatise of Leon Batista Alberti; rare volumes of the medical writings of Ambroise Pare; a superb copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle, the Divina Proportione of Luca Pacioli, which contains woodcut illustrations based on designs by Leonardo; and the very first book containing a printed mention of Leonardo, Bernardo Bellincioni's Rime of 1493.

Because Leonardo's interests were so diverse and his undertakings so profoundly important to subsequent developments in the arts and sciences, the scope of the collection extends far beyond his own time. The Belt Library contains more than 70 incunabula and many early documents in the history of art and modern studies of Renaissance and post-Renaissance culture. Holdings of materials on human and animal anatomy are complemented by those in the Special Collections for Medicine and the Sciences Reading Room. Early Italian imprints are complemented by those of the Ahmanson-Murphy Reading Room.

Since Dr. Belt donated it, the collection has continued to grow and now encompasses more than seven thousand volumes. In addition to the continuing development of the collection on the part of the university, support has come from generous donors, including Professor and Mrs. Lynn White Jr., who in 1972 gave an essential collection of early books relating to Renaissance and Baroque science. Materials from the Belt collection can be paged at the Ahmanson-Murphy Reading Room in Library Special Collections.