[1][2] After Melzi's death in 1570, the collection passed to his son, the lawyer Orazio, who initially took little interest in the journals.
[1] In 1587, a Melzi household tutor named Lelio Gavardi took 13 of the manuscripts to Florence, intending to offer them to the grand duke of Tuscany.
However, following Francesco I de' Medici's untimely death, Gavardi took them to Pisa to give to his relative Aldus Manutius the Younger; there, Magenta reproached Gavardi for having taken the manuscripts illicitly.
Gavardi acknowledged his fault and asked Magenta, who had finished his studies and was going home to Milan, to return them to Orazio.
When news spread of these lost works of Leonardo's, Orazio retrieved seven of the 13 manuscripts from Magenta's brother, and gave them to Pompeo Leoni for publication in two volumes; one of these was the Codex Atlanticus.