This is Vico's presentation of his New Science of 1744. He called this summary "idea of the work" and decided to illustrate this idea of the entire volume with a figure or emblem that in Italian he called it Dipintura. This dipintura was placed as the frontispiece of the New Science, in its third edition.
Most of the time the readers of the book jump to the first chapter of the first part of the book and disregard introduction or notices given after the table of content. We decided therefore to combine the figure with the text of this summary or idea of the complete book in the same narration. At different points of the text, according to the topic discussed, we located the part of the figure that symbolically represents and explains it. By giving the pertinent piece of the figure with the text, we thought to capture the interest visual and imaginative of the readers. The synopsis condenses the hundred and hundred pages of the New Science into twenty-three that transferred into our format, text and figures, make this small book. The narrative of Vico is continuous and reveals the harmonious continuity of the ideas, which like stairs of a ladder accompany the curious reader through the evolving growth of the beast to the highest points of civilization. It is, after all, a fable or myth.