The Fabrication of Leonardo da Vinci’s Trattato della pittura (2 vols.)

The basis for our understanding of Leonardo’s theory of art was, for over 150 years, his Treatise on Painting, which was issued in 1651 in Italian and French. This present volume offers both the first scholarly edition of the Italian editio princeps as well as the first complete English translation of this seminal work. In addition, It provides a comprehensive study of the Italian first edition, documenting how each editorial campaign that lead to it produced a different understanding of the artist’s theory. What emerges is a rich cultural and textual history that foregrounds the transmission of artisanal knowledge from Leonardo’s workshop in the Duchy of Milan to Carlo Borromeo’s Milan, Cosimo I de’ Medici’s Florence, Urban VIII’s Rome, and Louis XIV’s Paris.

Claire Farago (Ph.D., 1988) is Professor of Renaissance Art, Theory, and Criticism at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her books include Leonardo da Vinci’s Paragone (1992); Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450-1650 (1995); Leonardo da Vinci: Selected Scholarship in English, 5 vols. (1999); Leonardo da Vinci and the Ethics of Style (2008); Re-Reading Leonardo: The Treatise on Painting across Europe 1550-1900 (2009); and Art Is Not What You Think It Is, co-authored with Donald Preziosi (2012).

Janis Bell (Ph.D., 1983) is an independent scholar. She has published widely on early modern art and art theory, particularly on Leonardo da Vinci, Matteo Zaccolini, Raphael, Caravaggio, Cassiano dal Pozzo, and on the legacy of ancient and medieval optical theory. She is contributing co-editor (with Thomas Willette) of Art History in the Age of Bellori (2002).

Carlo Vecce (Ph.D., 1986) is Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Naples “L’Orientale.” He is a widely published scholar of Italian literature and Renaissance culture. He is co-author of the critical edition of Leonardo’s Book on Painting (1995); editor of the Codex Arundel (1998); and author of a biography of Leonardo (1998; rev. ed. 2006), which has been translated into several languages.

“monumental” […] “a masterpiece of primary source publication”.
Anthony Colantuono, University of Maryland. In: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 161, No. 1397 (August 2019), pp. 693-695.

“This edition reaches – without any doubt – one of the highest peaks in the history of the scholarly-oriented investigations thus far devoted to Leonardo’s teachings and writings […]. A truly exceptional achievement.”
Ricardo De Mambro Santos, Willamette University. In: Journal of Art Historiography, Vol. 21 (December 2019).

“A truly remarkable publication: a publication that not only marks a turning point in the studies dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci and the narratives of his intertwined textual migrations, but also offers a collection of essays that will most certainly become, from now on, indispensable for any future research in the field.”
Ricardo De Mambro Santos, Willamette University. In: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 73 , No 4 (Winter 2020), pp. 1339–1341.