This is just a sampling of the bounty of drawings found in Johannes de Fontana’s manuscript. Many of the others illustrate fierce siege engines and trebuchets, as well as handsome fountains and playful ornaments. Leafing through the pages we get a glimpse of what it was like to be an imaginative inventor right on the cusp of the Renaissance. He was resourceful and aspirational in ways people of every era would recognize and that we can see in ourselves. We may have more science than he had, but, like Fontana, we still show off our inventions to the wealthy and the powerful, currying their favor and seeking their financial support. War is as much a part of modern life as it was in Fontana’s day, with its ceaseless need for new inventions for murder and destruction. As unfamiliar as Fontana’s drawn line might be, he used his pen and brush for purposes very similar to ours when we draw and paint, write and speak, or imagine and hope: to find, somehow, the opportunity to build what we dream of creating.