This book has been a long time in the making, and along the way I accumulated immense debts of gratitude toward the many students, friends, and colleagues who shared their insights, and to the institutions that supported my research.
I was incredibly fortunate that while I was writing this book, a number of Leonardo’s works underwent extensive conservation analysis and restoration, and that breathtaking exhibitions organized to celebrate the five hundredth anniversary of the artist’s death offered incredible opportunities to see side-by-side works that are usually kept in different museums. These combined events enhanced greatly my knowledge of Leonardo’s painting technique, and I am in debt to the museum directors, curators, and conservators who kindly granted me permission to look at Leonardo’s works up close, without their protective glass, out of their frames, just like Leonardo had them on the easel when he painted them five centuries ago. Antonio Natali and Erik Schmidt, the former and the current director of the Gallerie degli Uffizi, and Marzia Faietti, the director of the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, facilitated immensely my study of Leonardo’s paintings and drawings under their care. Vincent Delieuvin, the chief curator of sixteenth-century Italian painting at the Musée du Louvre, was extremely kind to include me in a study day dedicated to the Mona Lisa, and for allowing me to look at other Leonardo paintings during their restoration. Luke Syson, the former curator at the National Gallery, London, and now the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, U.K., and Larry Keith, Head of Conservation and Keeper at the National Gallery, London, shared their insight on the London Virgin of the Rocks before the painting returned to the galleries after an impressive restoration. Elizabeth Cropper, the former dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, and David A. Brown, the former curator of Italian painting, invited me to view Leonardo’s Ginevra de’ Benci in the restoration lab of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Martin Clayton, Head of Prints and Drawings for the Royal Collection Trust at Windsor Castle, was generous with time and expertise about the Leonardo drawings under his care. Antonio Paolucci and Barbara Jatta, the former and the current director of the Vatican Museums, facilitated my study of Leonardo’s Saint Jerome.
My deepest thanks go to Cecilia Frosinini and Roberto Bellucci, both at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, for welcoming me so many times during the restoration of Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi; their insights have shaped my thinking deeply and I cannot thank them enough for their generosity in sharing their knowledge and for being such inspiring friends. A sincere thank-you goes also to Cinzia Pasquali, a conservator who restored a number of Leonardo’s paintings and who has been an invaluable resource throughout. Elizabeth Walmsley, the painting conservator at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., also generously shared her knowledge of Leonardo’s Ginevra de’ Benci.
I owe an exceptionally big debt to Paul Barolsky, who has always been supportive in more ways that he can imagine; heroically, he read the manuscript as a whole, and as always, his suggestions have been invaluable. I am fortunate to have him as a colleague and friend. I thank also the late Corrado Maltese, who, in myriad Roman conversations, initiated me to the intricacies of art and science and left a lasting mark on the way I look at Renaissance art. The late Carlo Pedretti, who published my first essay on Leonardo when I was a graduate student, was always generous with his expertise, and I wished he could have seen the final result. The scholarship of Martin Kemp has been fundamental to this project, and I keep returning to his inspiring essays on Leonardo’s optics and his groundbreaking monograph that forty years ago changed the way we think about Leonardo. David Summers has been a wonderful colleague and guide on the broadest implications of optics in the western tradition, and I cannot thank him enough for sharing his insight with me over the years. With Alessandro Nova, the director of the Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz, I shared the organization of a symposium and the coauthorship of a scholarly publication, which served as the theoretical basis for this book as it brought together the expertise of historians of art, literature, science, and philosophy as well as conservators and restorers. Carmen Bambach, the curator of Italian and Spanish drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, alerted me to a recently discovered shadow drawing by Leonardo that turned out to be crucial to my book. Paolo Galluzzi, the director of the Museo Galileo, has always been generous with insights. Dominique Raynaud kindly answered my questions on the transmission of Arab optics in the Latin West. Toby Lester read the manuscript at a critical juncture, and I am grateful for his thoughtful and expert feedback.
Conversations with many helped me sharpen my thoughts on the legacy of Leonardo’s art theory. I gratefully thank Juliana Barone, Janis Bell, Francesca Borgo, Michael Cole, Francesco Paolo di Teodoro, Lea Dovev, Angie Estes, Claire Farago, Frank Fehrenbach, Emanuela Ferretti, Judith V. Field, Fabio Frosini, Leslie A. Geddes, Paul Hills, Matthew Landrus, Domenico Laurenza, Pietro C. Marani, Pauline Robison, Anna Sconza, Vita Segreto, Monica Taddei, Carlo Vecce, Frank Zöllner, and the late Romano Nanni. To the formidable team of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) at the University of Virginia, I owe the greatest debt. When it became apparent that traditional art historical tools did not provide satisfactory answers to basic questions on the legacy of Leonardo’s art theory, the team helped me create a new research tool. I warmly thank Worthy Martin, the director of IATH, and the entire team: Daniel Pitti, Shayne Brandon, Cindy Girard, Sarah Wells, and Bernard Frischer, the former director of IATH.
Equally important have been the conversations on the broadest themes of Renaissance culture with Ingrid Rowland, while many friends informed my thoughts on how to do research today and train the next generation of researchers. Rossella Caruso, Suzanne Moomaw, Nadia Cannata, Tatiana String, Babette Bohn, Maria Careri, Simona Rinaldi, Lynn Isabel, Simona Filippini, Laura Gottwald, and LZ have all contributed to this book more than they know.
Numerous graduate students (several of whom by now have students of their own) have been invaluable collaborators on the book and the digital platform. I warmly thank Tracy Cosgriff, Elizabeth Dwyer, Emily Fenichel, Justin Greenlee, Yoko Hara, Eric Hupe, Elizabeth McMahon, Emily Moerer, and Jessica Stewart. A special thank-you goes to the undergraduate students of my spring 2020 Leonardo class: in the midst of a global pandemic, they were the first who heard this book in its final form as I lectured from it, a chapter each week, first in person and then remotely. Their questions helped me give the final polish to the manuscript.
I thank my colleagues at the University of Virginia. They are a congenial group of scholars, artists, and friends with whom I shared many a conversation on art, the humanities, pedagogy, and much more. The insights from those daily conversations fill every page of this book. I gratefully acknowledge that the book would not have been materially possible without the unfailing support of two successive deans of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Science—Meredith Jung-En Woo and Ian Baucom—and three chairs of the art department—Lawrence O. Goedde, Howard Singerman, and Carmenita Higginbotham; all of them have helped in more ways that they can imagine.
It is a great pleasure to express my gratitude to the institutions that generously contributed to the making of this book: the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies supported the initial steps of my research, and Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, hosted me for a year. A special thank-you goes to Joseph J. Connors, the former director of Villa I Tatti, who warmly welcomed me in that scholarly paradise. The National Endowment for the Humanities supported a postgraduate summer institute in Florence that proved essential to refine my ideas and form a new group of Leonardo experts. The Samuel H. Kress Foundation generously funded the creation of a digital research tool, and I am grateful to its president, Max Marmor, himself a Leonardo specialist, for his support. The Buckner W. Clay Dean of Arts and Sciences and the Vice President for Research at the University of Virginia supported my work at every step of the way.
In addition, I wish to thank the institutions that granted me access to their collections and permission to reproduce their artifacts: in Florence, the Archivio di Stato, the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, the Biblioteca Riccardiana, the Museo Galileo, the Galleria degli Uffizi, the Galleria Palatina at Palazzo Pitti, the Opificio delle Pietre Dure; in Milan, the Archivio dell’Ospedale Maggiore and the Venerabile Biblioteca Ambrosiana; in the United Kingdom, the British Library, the British Museum, the National Gallery, and the Royal Collection Trust at Windsor Castle; in Paris, the Bibliotèque de l’Institut de France, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and the Musée du Louvre; in Saint Petersburg, the State Hermitage Museum; at the Vatican, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana and the Vatican Museums; in Rome, the Biblioteca Hertziana and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale; in Germany, the Hamburg Kunsthalle and the Alte Pinakothek, Munich; in Poland, the National Museum, Krakow; and in the United States, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., and the University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville.
My agent, Susan Rabiner, believed in this book from the very start. Her inquisitive mind is legendary, and thankfully she never stopped asking probing questions. Her encouragement, advice, and friendship have been crucial throughout the process, and I cannot express how deep my gratitude to her is. At Farrar, Straus and Giroux, I was fortunate to enjoy the support of Alexander Star, whose expert advice has been a steady source of inspiration. I was lucky to have the careful and energetic assistance of Ian Van Wye, who expertly supervised the publication process.
Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my family. My mother, Paola, and my late father, Paolo, were a constant source of personal support. With my siblings Vera, Laura, Brenno, and Lorenzo, I shared laughs, conversations, and great dinners.
This book is dedicated to my sons, Paolo and Davidi, who from a young age traveled with me all over the world to look at art. They lived with this book as they transitioned from adolescence to adulthood and I thank them from the bottom of my heart for their love and forbearance throughout.