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I have profited enormously from previous scholarship on Leonardo da Vinci, a field of study that keeps growing. In the notes to the chapters, I point to the specific sources, but here is a review of the books, exhibition catalogs, and critical editions of Leonardo’s works that I have used throughout.
Numerous biographies have been written on Leonardo. Carmen Bambach, Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered, 4 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019), is a recent, perceptive, and unsurpassed four-volume biographical account that integrates writings, drawings, and paintings. I found most helpful also two classical biographies: Kenneth Clark, Leonardo da Vinci: An Account of his Development as an Artist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939; 2nd ed., 1989), a courageous and early attempt to look at Leonardo’s entire career as an artist, although Clark’s view that Leonardo’s writings were a distraction from his paintings has been superseded; and Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvelous Works of Nature and Man (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981; 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), a superb, comprehensive, and pioneering account of the artist’s work in the arts, sciences, and technology. Equally important is Carlo Vecce, Leonardo (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1998), which adds considerable information on the literary context and provides a useful selection of early primary biographies on the artist. Vasiliy Pavlovich Zubov, Leonardo da Vinci (1st ed., trans. David Kraus, Leningrad, 1961; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), is a significant, early assessment of Leonardo’s scientific work, as is the more recent book by Fritjof Capra, The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance (New York: Doubleday, 2007). Richard Turner, Inventing Leonardo (New York: Knopf, 1993), is an engaging account of how Leonardo’s fame grew over the centuries. David A. Brown, Leonardo da Vinci: Origins of a Genius (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), is a superb study on Leonardo’s early training as an artist, although it does not address the artist’s scientific and technological interests. Accurate, engaging, and well-written biographies are Charles Nicholl, Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of the Mind (New York: Viking, 2004), and Walter Isaacson, Leonardo da Vinci (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017), a masterfully written book.
I have found most useful Martin Kemp’s recent new translation of Giorgio Vasari, The Life of Leonardo da Vinci (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2019), as it integrates the 1550 edition and the expanded version of 1568.
Very useful also are the beautifully illustrated, complete catalogs of Leonardo’s paintings by Frank Zöllner, Leonardo da Vinci, 1452–1519, 2 vols. (Cologne: Taschen, 2007; 3rd ed., 2011); and Pietro C. Marani, Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000). Leonardo’s drawings are in catalogs published by the museums that hold them, but more comprehensive books are Bernard Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, 3 vols., 2nd ed. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1939); A. E. Popham, The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1945; 2nd revised ed. with an introduction by Martin Kemp, London: Pimlico, 1994); Kenneth Clark and Carlo C. Pedretti, A Catalogue of the Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci in the Collection of His Majesty the King at Windsor, 2nd ed. (London: Phaidon, 1968). Extremely helpful, highly readable, and incredibly perceptive are the recent publications by Martin Clayton, especially Martin Clayton with Ron Philo, Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Man (London: Royal Collection Enterprises, 2010); and Martin Clayton, Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2018).
A boost to Leonardo scholarship came in the past twenty years from important exhibitions of his works and their accompanying catalogs, which often include informative reports on recent restorations. Carmen Bambach, ed., Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman, exhibition catalog (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003), is a superb study of Leonardo’s drawings over his entire career. Martin Kemp, ed., Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, and Design, exhibition catalog, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), visualizes Leonardo’s projects with a special attention to Leonardo’s thinking process. Paolo Galluzzi, ed., The Mind of Leonardo: The Universal Genius at Work, exhibition catalog, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence (Florence: Giunti, 2006), focuses on Leonardo’s thought processes in his scientific works. Luke Syson and Larry Keith, eds., Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, exhibition catalog (London: National Gallery, 2011), was a groundbreaking exhibition as it exhibited together, for the first time ever, the two versions of the Virgin of the Rocks; fundamental also is the report on the important restoration of the London painting. Vincent Delieuvin, ed., La Sainte Anne: L’ultime chef-d’-oeuvre de Léonard de Vinci, exhibition catalog, Musée du Louvre, Paris (Paris: Louvre Éditions, 2012), was another pathbreaking exhibition occasioned by the recent restoration of Leonardo’s Saint Anne, which was exhibited together with the London Cartoon. Paolo Galluzzi, ed., L’acqua microscopio della natura: Il codice Leicester di Leonardo da Vinci, exhibition catalog, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence (Florence: Giunti, 2018), is an updated assessment of Leonardo’s research on water. Three recent exhibitions focused on Leonardo’s master, Andrea del Verrocchio: Laurence Kanter, ed., Leonardo: Discoveries from Verrocchio’s Studio, exhibition catalog, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 2018); Francesco Caglioti and Andrea De Marchi, eds., Verrocchio: Master of Leonardo, exhibition catalog, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (Venice: Marsilio, 2019); and Andrew Butterfield, ed., Verrocchio: Sculptor and Painter of Renaissance Florence, exhibition catalog, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019). The recent exhibition, Vincent Delieuvin and Louis Frank, eds., Léonard de Vinci, exhibition catalog, Musée du Louvre, Paris (Paris: Louvre Éditions, 2019), offered an in-depth view of the career of the artist as a painter.
Recent restorations of Leonardo’s paintings and drawings have provided a new archive of information, images, and analysis that help us understand Leonardo’s practice and thought processes when he painted. An overview of recent restorations is the important volume Michel Menu, ed., Leonardo da Vinci’s Technical Practice: Paintings, Drawings, and Influence (Paris: Hermann Éditeurs, 2014), while Alan Donnithorne, Leonardo da Vinci: A Closer Look: Exploring the Beauty and Complexity of Leonardo’s Drawings through a Study of His Materials and Methods (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2019), is a superb, illuminating analysis of a selection of Leonardo’s drawing with a focus on the tools, media, and papers the artist used. More in-depth reports are available for each major restoration; they are mentioned in the notes of the pertinent chapters.
The most comprehensive list of documents pertaining to Leonardo’s life is Edoardo Villata, Leonardo da Vinci: I documenti e le testimonianze contemporanee (Florence: Giunti, 1999). Elisabetta Ulivi, Per la genealogia di Leonardo: Matrimoni e altre vicende nella famiglia da Vinci sullo sfondo della Firenze rinascimentale, 2 vols. (Vinci: Museo Ideale Leonardo Da Vinci, 2008), offers numerous additional details on Leonardo’s family. Vanna Arrighi, Anna Bellinazzi, and Edoardo Villata, eds., Leonardo da Vinci: La vera immagine, documenti e testimonianze sulla vita e sull’opera, exhibition catalog, Florence, Archivio di Stato (Florence: Giunti, 2005), reproduces many documents pertaining to Leonardo’s life.
Leonardo’s writings have been published in facsimile editions to make them available to a broader public since Leonardo’s original notebooks are extremely fragile and basically out of consultation. These facsimiles are always accompanied by transcriptions of Leonardo’s texts and learned apparatus to help their interpretation. Sometimes there are also translations in English. I have used the editions edited by Augusto Marinoni: I manoscritti dell’Institut de France, 12 vols. (Florence: Giunti, 1986–1990), which provide facsimiles, transcriptions, and critical apparatus for the twelve notebooks by Leonardo kept in Paris (Manuscripts A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M); Il Codice Atlantico della Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano, 24 vols. (Florence: Giunti, 1975–1980), which covers the over one thousand loose folios that were assembled in this codex in the late sixteenth century; Leonardo da Vinci: I Codici Forster del Victoria and Albert Museum di Londra, 3 vols. (Florence: Giunti, 1992); and Il Codice 2162 della Biblioteca Trivulziana di Milano (Florence: Giunti, 1980). I also consulted the following critical and facsimile editions: Carlo Pedretti, The Codex Atlanticus of Leonardo da Vinci: A Catalogue of its Newly Restored Sheets, 2 vols. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978–1979); Carlo Pedretii and Carlo Vecce, eds., Il Codice Arundel 263 nella British Library (Florence: Commissione Nazionale Vinciana, 1998); Ladislao Reti, ed., The Madrid Codices of Leonardo da Vinci, 4 vols. (New York: HarperCollins, 1974); Kenneth Keele and Carlo Pedretti, eds., Leonardo da Vinci: Corpus of Anatomical Studies in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, 3 vols. (Florence: Giunti, 1980); Carlo Pedretti, ed., The Codex Hammer of Leonardo da Vinci (Florence: Giunti 1987)—Martin Kemp and Domenico Laurenza are preparing a new edition of this codex (only the facsimile of their volume has been published to date; a new transcription and critical apparatus are expected in the near future); and Edoardo Zanon, ed., Il libro del codice del volo: Dallo studio del volo degli uccelli alla macchina volante (Milan: Leonardo 3, 2009).
A comprehensive discussion of Leonardo’s notebooks is in Carmen Bambach, Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered, 4 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019), vol. 2:61–235; vol. 4:1–3, 29–31.
Among the digital resources, the most helpful is Romano Nanni and Monica Taddei, eds., e-Leo: Archivio digitale di Storia della Tecnica e della Scienza (Vinci: Biblioteca Leonardiana), which contains facsimile pages and transcriptions of all notebooks by Leonardo (https://www.leonardodigitale.com/).
Even in facsimile and with the help of transcriptions and critical apparatus, Leonardo’s writings are extremely hard to handle given his idiosyncratic form of writing and the fragmentary status of his notes. To ease entry into Leonardo’s writings, numerous anthologies have been published that assemble Leonardo’s notes topically, taking them from a variety of notebooks and folios. The great advantage of these anthologies is that they give a sense of Leonardo’s thoughts on a specific topic quite easily. The cautionary note is that these anthologies do not allow for an assessment of what kind of note Leonardo is writing (an early draft of an original thought, a quote from a book by another author, a fully formed thought), nor of the development of his thought over time. Nonetheless they are helpful, and I consulted the classic volumes assembled by Jean Paul Richter over a century ago, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci Compiled and Edited from the Original Manuscripts (London, 1883; 2nd ed., Oxford, 1939; facsimile, London: Dover, 1970). Richter should be complemented with Carlo Pedretti, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci: Compiled and Edited from the Original Manuscripts by Jean Paul Richter; Commentary, 2 vols. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977). Edward MacCurdy, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 2 vols. (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1935–1939), is an anthology that focuses on Leonardo’s scientific writings. Eminently readable and extremely helpful is the anthology by Martin Kemp and Mary Walker, Leonardo on Painting (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989).
On the authors Leonardo read and the books he owned, fundamental is Edmondo Solmi, Scritti vinciani: Le fonti dei manoscritti di Leonardo da Vinci e altri studi (Florence: La Voce, 1924; rist. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1976). Solmi’s work has been updated by Carlo Vecce, La biblioteca perduta: I libri di Leonardo (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2017); and Carlo Vecce, ed., Leonardo e i suoi libri, exhibition catalog, Biblioteca dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e Corsiniana, Rome (Rome: Bardi Edizoni, 2019).
Specifically, on the book on painting that Leonardo planned but never completed, there are some fundamental studies that I have used extensively. Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo da Vinci on Painting: A Lost Book (Libro A) Reassembled from the Codex Vaticanus Urbinas 1270 and from the Codex Leicester (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), reconstructs Leonardo’s last draft of the book on painting, now lost. Carlo Pedretti and Carlo Vecce, eds., Libro di pittura: Codice Urbinate lat. 1270 nella Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Florence: Giunti, 1995), is the definitive edition of Melzi’s compilation titled Book on Painting and based on Leonardo’s notebooks. A. Philip McMahon, Treatise on Painting: Codex urbinas latinus 1270, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956), is an English translation of Melzi’s compilation. Claire Farago, A Critical Interpretation of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Paragone,” with a New Edition of the Text in the Codex Urbinas (Leiden: Brill, 1992), offers an in-depth analysis of the cultural and philosophical context of Leonardo’s art theory. See also Claire Farago, ed., Re-reading Leonardo: The Treatise on Painting Across Europe 1550–1900 (London: Routledge, 2009); and Claire Farago, Janis Bell, and Carlo Vecce, eds., The Fabrication of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Trattato della Pittura,” 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2018), which includes an English translation of the doctored copy of Melzi’s compilation that was printed in 1651. The digital publication Francesca Fiorani, ed., Leonardo da Vinci and His Treatise on Painting, provides online access to Melzi’s Book on Painting, to over forty doctored copies of Melzi’s compilations, to the 1651 printed editions in Italian and French, and to the first English translation from 1721 (http://www.treatiseonpainting.org/home.html).
Significant studies on Renaissance scientific culture that I consulted include (in chronological order) Antony Grafton, Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science and Humanism in the Renaissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature (Cambridge, MA: Zone Books, 1998); Peter Galison and Caroline A. Jones, Picturing Science, Producing Art (New York: Routledge, 1998); Ingrid D. Rowland, The Culture of the High Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); David Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginning of Modern Natural History (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002); Pamela H. Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004); Brian W. Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006); Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, eds., The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 3: Early Modern Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (Cambridge, MA: Zone Books, 2007); Pamela H. Smith and Benjamin Schmidt, eds., Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400–1800 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007); Pamela O. Long, Artisan/Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sciences, 1400–1600 (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2011); Alexander Marr, Between Raphael and Galileo: Mutio Oddi and the Mathematical Culture of the Renaissance (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2011); and Sachico Kusukava, Picturing the Book of Nature: Image, Text, and Argument in Sixteenth-Century Human Anatomy and Medical Botany (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012).
On optics and art, I found most helpful the following books (in chronological order): Graziella Federici Vescovini, Studi sulla prospettiva medievale (Turin, Italy: G. Giappichelli, 1965); Samuel Edgerton, The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective (New York: ACLS History E-Book Project, 1975); David Summers, The Judgment of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Martin Kemp, The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990); Victor I. Stoichita, A Short History of the Shadow (London: Reaktion Books, 1997); David Hockney, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2001); Roberto Casati, The Shadow Club: The Greatest Mystery in the Universe—Shadows—and the Thinkers Who Unlocked Their Secrets (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003); Sven Dupré, Renaissance Optics: Instruments, Practical Knowledge and the Appropriation of Theory (Berlin: Max-Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2003); David Summers, Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism (London: Phaidon Press, 2003); A. M. Smith, “What Is the History of Medieval Optics Really About?,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 147 (2004): 180–94; Jeffrey F. Hamburger and A. M. Bouchè, eds., The Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Vincent Ilardi, Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2007); David Summers, Vision, Reflection and Desire in Western Painting (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); Hans Belting, Florence and Baghdad: Renaissance Art and Arab Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011); Mary Quinlan-McGrath, Influences: Art, Optics, and Astrology in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013); Margaret S. Livingstone, Vision and Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2014); Sarah Dillon, Seeing Renaissance Glass: Art, Optics, and Glass of Early Modern Italy, 1250–1425 (New York: Peter Lang, 2018).
For Ibn al-Haytham’s Book on Optics, I used the recent edition in six volumes edited by A. M. Smith and published by the American Philosophical Society between 2001 and 2010: Alhacen’s Theory of Visual Perception: A Critical Edition with English Translation and Commentary of the First Three Books of Alhacen’s “De aspectibus,” 2 vols. (2001); Alhacen on the Principles of Reflection: A Critical Edition with English Translation and Commentary of Books 4 and 5 of Alhacen’s “De aspectibus,” 2 vols. (2006); Alhacen on Image-formation and Distortion in Mirrors: A Critical Edition with English Translation and Commentary of Book 6 of Alhacen’s “De aspectibus,” 2 vols. (2008); Alhacen on Refraction: A Critical Edition with English Translation and Commentary of Book 7 of Alhacen’s “De aspectibus,” 2 vols. (2010). On Alhazen’s influence on Renaissance optics, fundamental are the studies by Graziella Federici Vescovini, including her pioneering essay “Contributo per la storia della fortuna di Alhazen in Italia: il volgarizzamento del MS Vat. 4595 e il Commentario terzo del Ghiberti,” Rinascimento 5 (1965): 17–49; and Graziella Federici Vescovini, Arti e filosofia nel secolo XIV: Studi sulla tradizione aristotelica e i “moderni” (Florence: Nuove Edizioni Enrico Vallecchi, 1983).
Specifically on Leonardo and optics, indispensable are Martin Kemp’s studies, especially Martin Kemp, “Il concetto dell’anima in Leonardo’s Early Skull Studies,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 34 (1971): 115–34; Martin Kemp, “Dissection and Divinity in Leonardo’s Late Anatomies,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 35 (1972): 200–225; Martin Kemp, “Leonardo and the Visual Pyramid,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 40 (1977): 128–49; and Martin Kemp, “The Hammer Lecture (1992): The Beholder’s Eye: Leonardo and the ‘Errors of Sight’ in Theory and Practice,” Achademia Leonardi Vinci 5 (1993): 153–62.
Also important are (in chronological order) Anna Maria Brizio, Razzi incidenti e razzi refressi, Lettura Vinciana 3 (Florence: Barbera Editore, 1963); Kenneth D. Keele, “Leonardo da Vinci’s Physiology of the Senses,” in Leonardo’s Legacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 35–56, which provides an effective overview of Leonardo’s thoughts on the senses, although it does not connect it to medieval optics; James Ackerman, “Leonardo’s Eye,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 41 (1978): 108–46; Corrado Maltese, “Gli studi di Leonardo sulle ombre tra la pittura e la scienza,” Arte lombarda 61 (1983): 95–101; Corrado Maltese, “Leonardo e la teoria dei colori,” Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 20 (1983): 209–19; Janis Bell, “Color Perspective, c. 1492,” Achademia Leonardi Vinci 5 (1992): 64–77; Janis Bell, “Aristotle as a Source of Leonardo’s Theory of Color Perspective After 1500,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 56 (1993): 100–118; Claire Farago, “Leonardo’s Color and Chiaroscuro Reconsidered,” Art Bulletin 73 (1993): 63–88; Alexander Nagel, “Leonardo and Sfumato,” Res 24 (1993): 7–20; Frank Fehrenbach, Licht und Wasser: Zur Dynamik naturalphilosophischer Leitbilder im Werk Leonardo da Vincis (Tübingen, 1997); Fabio Frosini, “Pittura come filosofia: Note su spirito e spirituale in Leonardo,” Achademia Leonardi Vinci 10 (1997): 35–59; Frank Fehrenbach, “Veli sopra veli: Leonardo und die Schleier,” in Ikonologie des Zwischenraums: Der Schleier als Medium und Metapher, ed. J. Endres, B. Wittmann, and G. Wolf (Munich, 2005), 121–47; Janis Bell, “Sfumato and Acuity Perspective,” in Leonardo da Vinci and the Ethics of Style, ed. Claire Farago (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 161–88; L. Luperini, ed., L’ottica di Leonardo tra Alhazen e Keplero, exhibition catalog, Museo Leonardiano, Vinci (Milan: Skira, 2008); Alessandro Nova, “Il vortice del fenomeno atmosferico e il grido metaforico: le Tempeste di Leonardo e il Piramo e Tisba del Poussin,” in Wind und Wetter: Die Ikonologie der Atmosphäre, ed. Alessandro Nova and Tanja Michalsky (Venice: Marsilio, 2009), 53–66; Francesca Fiorani and Alessandro Nova, eds., Leonardo da Vinci and Optics: Theory and Pictorial Practice (Venice: Marsilio, 2013); Margherita Quaglino, Glossario Leonardiano: Nomenclatura dell’ottica e della prospettiva nei codici di Francia (Florence: Olschki, 2014).
“nothing was more important to him than the rules of optics”: Paolo Giovio, published in Carlo Vecce, Leonardo (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1998), 355. Vecce published Paolo Giovio’s brief biographical accounts of Leonardo, which are “Leonardi Vincii vita” and “Dialogi de viris et foeminis aetate nostra florentibus,” Vecce, Leonardo, 349–57 (partial English translation in Carlo Pedretti, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci: Compiled and Edited from the Original Manuscripts by Jean Paul Richter; Commentary, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), vol. 1:9–11.
“Every shadow”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 93v. English translation in Jean Paul Richter, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci: Compiled and Edited from the Original Manuscripts (London: Dover, 1970), no. 148; and Martin Kemp and Mary Walker, Leonardo On Painting (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989, 110–11). Facsimiles of Leonardo’s notebooks are available online in Romano Nanni and Monica Taddei, eds., e-Leo: Archivio digitale di Storia e Tecnica della Scienza (https://www.leonardodigitale.com/).
“An opaque body”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript C, fol. 22r.
“Just as the thing”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript C, fol. 4v.
“painting is philosophy”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura (Book on Painting) fol. 4r, published in Carlo Pedretti and Carlo Vecce, eds., Leonardo da Vinci. Libro di pittura. Codice urbinate lat. 1270 nella Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2 vols. (Florence: Giunti, 1995), chapter 9; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 18. Melzi’s Libro di pittura is available online in Francesca Fiorani, ed., Leonardo da Vinci and His Treatise on Painting (University of Virginia: Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, 2012), http://www.treatiseonpainting.org/cocoon/leonardo/pages/vu/array; and in Nanni and Taddei, https://www.leonardodigitale.com/.
“few painters […] their art as science”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 20r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 34; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 13).
“vast accumulation”: Kenneth Clark, Leonardo da Vinci: An Account of His Development as an Artist (London and New York: Penguin, 1989), 97.
“experience does not err”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 417r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 1153; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 10).
“embraces all the ten functions of the eye”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 102v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 23; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 16).
“distance between eye”: A. M. Smith, Alhacen’s Theory of Visual Perception: A Critical Edition with English Translation and Commentary of the First Three Books of Alhacen’s “De aspectibus,” 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Philosophical Society, 2001), vol. 2:588–89 (book 3, 3.5).
“little work”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 102v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 23; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 16).
“grounded in optics […] a rational demonstration”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 3r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 50; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 52).
“the mother of every certainty”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 19v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 33; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 10).
dated it convincingly: Carmen Bambach, Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered, 4 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019), vol. 1:306–11. I thank her for bringing this drawing to my attention.
“soul of painting”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 81r.
“sang beautifully […] arbiter and inventor”: Giovio, in Vecce, Leonardo, 357.
beard that “came to the middle”: Anonimo Gaddiano, in Vecce, Leonardo, 362.
“Read me”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Madrid I, fol. 6r.
“was never quieted”: Anonimo Gaddiano, in Vecce, Leonardo, 361.
perfect works “will bestow upon you”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 34v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 65; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 194).
without touching “the work with his hand”: Matteo Bandello, Tutte le opere, ed. Francesco Flora (Milan: Mondadori, 1933–34), 646–50 (English translation in Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:416).
“he knew so much […] volubility of character”: Antonio Billi, in Vecce, Leonardo, 359.
“nature seemed to have produced a miracle”: Anonimo Gaddiano, in Vecce, Leonardo, 360.
“sciences, particularly geometry”: Giorgio Vasari, “The Life of Andrea del Verrocchio,” in Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors from Cimabue to Our Time, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere, 2 vols. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), vol. 1:549; written in 1550 and revised in 1568, Vasari’s biography is a fundamental document on Verrocchio’s art, vol. 1:549–57. Important studies on Verrocchio are Andrew Butterfield, The Sculptures of Andrea del Verrocchio (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997); Andrea Covi, Andrea del Verrocchio: Life and Work (Florence: Olschki, 2005); Luke Syson and Jill Dunkerton, “Andrea del Verrocchio’s First Surviving Panel Painting and Other Early Works,” Burlington Magazine 153 (2011): 268–78; and Christina Neilson, Practice and Theory in the Italian Renaissance Workshop: Verrocchio and the Epistemology of Making Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). Two recent exhibitions shed further light on Verrocchio and his workshop: Francesco Caglioti and Andrea De Marchi, eds., Verrocchio: Master of Leonardo, exhibition catalog, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (Venice: Marsilio, 2019); and Andrew Butterfield, ed., Verrocchio: Sculptor and Painter of Renaissance Florence, exhibition catalog, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019).
“There was born to me”: Edoardo Villata, Leonardo da Vinci: I documenti e le testimonianze contemporanee (Milan: Castello Sforzesco, 1999): 3 (on Leonardo’s birth); 6–7 (on the 1457 tax return of Leonardo’s grandfather and the 1469 return of Leonardo’s father). Additional documents on Leonardo’s family, their residences in Vinci and Florence, their tax returns, and Leonardo’s possible abacus teachers are in Elisabetta Ulivi, Per la genealogia di Leonardo: Matrimoni e altre vicende nella famiglia Da Vinci sullo sfondo della Firenze rinascimentale (Vinci: Museo Ideale Leonardo Da Vinci, 2008). On the education of children, see Paul Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); and Paul Grendler, “What Piero Learned in School: Fifteenth-Century Vernacular Education,” in Piero della Francesca and His Legacy, ed. Marylin Aronberg Lavin (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1995), 161–74. On the Tuscan fiscal system, see David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and Their Families (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985). On the raising of children in the Renaissance, see Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family and Rituals in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1985).
“come to the shop”: Contract published in Creighton Gilbert, Italian Art, 1400–1500 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1992), 31.
Ugolino Verino’s comment on Verrocchio: Published in Neilson, Practice and Theory, 48.
“to avoid growing weary”: Vasari, “Verrocchio,” vol. 1:552–53. On technical experimentation by artists in the Renaissance see Michael W. Cole, “The Technical Turn,” in Florence and Its Painters: From Giotto to Leonardo da Vinci, ed. Andreas Schumacher, exhibition catalog, Munich, Alte Pinakothek (Munich: Hirmer Publishers, 2018).
Verrocchio’s death masks: Ibid., 555.
Leonardo in Verrocchio’s workshop: Significant studies are David A. Brown, Leonardo da Vinci: Origins of a Genius (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); Jill Dunkerton, “Leonardo in Verrocchio’s Workshop: Re-examining the Technical Evidence,” National Gallery Technical Bulletin 32 (2011): 4–31; and Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:81–193. Also helpful are the pertinent chapters in the many biographies on the artist, especially those by Kenneth Clark, 1939; Martin Kemp, 1984; Carlo Vecce, 1998; Charles Nichols, 2004; Frank Zöllner, 2003; and Walter Isaacson, 2017, as well as Larry Feinberg, The Young Leonardo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Laurence Kanter, Leonardo: Discoveries from Verrocchio’s Studio, exhibition catalog, New Haven, Yale Art Museum (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), is an interesting attempt to identify the hands of Verrocchio, Leonardo, and other artists in works that came out of Verrocchio’s workshop, which, however, downplays the workshop’s collaborative nature. Per Alessandro Cecchi, “New Light on Leonardo’s Florentine Patrons,” in Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman, ed. Carmen Bambach, exhibition catalog (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003), 121–40. Verrocchio was Ser Piero’s client between 1465 and 1471.
“move those who behold”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 61v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 188; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 220).
“folds with dark shadows […] seem to be a pile”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 167r–v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 532; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 153). On drapery and folds as marker of human expressions and emotions in art, see Kurt Foster and David Britt, eds., Aby Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contribution to the History of the European Renaissance (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1999); Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibnitz and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992); and Georges Didi-Huberman, Ninfa moderna: Essai sur le drapé tombé (Paris: Gallimard, 2002).
“as much as you can, imitate”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fols. 168r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 533; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 156–57).
“the most beautiful thing”: Luca Landucci, Diario fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516, continuato da un anonimo fino al 1542, ed. Iodico del Badia (Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1883; new edition, ed. Antonio Lanza, Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1985), 45.
“an immense relief in bronze”: Vincent Delieuvin, “La licence dans la règle,” in Léonard de Vinci, ed. Vincent Delieuvin and Louis Frank, exhibition catalog, Musee du Louvre, Paris (Paris: Louvre Éditions, 2019), 57.
“not only by sight”: Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), vol. 1:30; on this relation between sight and touch, see Neilson, Practice and Theory, chapter 3.
“to draw in company”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 106v (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 205).
casts in Verrocchio’s workshop: Vasari, “Verrocchio,” vol. 1:555.
“Whatever painters have that is good”: Ugolino Verino as quoted in Butterfield, Verrocchio: Sculptor and Painter, 2.
“not to pass on to the second stage”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 108r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 491; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 197).
“a concave sphere that makes fire”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 87r.
“enormous construction towering”: Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. Cecil Grayson (New York: Penguin, 1991), 35. For an engaging discussion of Brunelleschi’s dome for Florence’s cathedral, see Ross King, Brunelleschi’s Dome (New York: Penguin, 2000); and Paolo Galluzzi, Mechanical Marvels: Invention in the Age of Leonardo (Florence: Giunti, 1997), 58–67, 93–115, for a penetrating analysis of Brunelleschi’s machines to build the dome.
golden ball: Andrea Covi, “Verrocchio and the Palla of the Duomo,” in Art, the Ape of Nature: Studies in Honor of H. W. Janson, ed. Moshe Barasch and Lucy Freeman Sadler (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1981), 151–69, on which my discussion is based; and Covi, Andrea del Verrocchio, 63–69, 309–29, for a discussion of pertinent documents. Gustina Scaglia, “Alle origini degli studi tecnologici di Leonardo,” Lettura Vinciana 20 (Florence: Giunti, 1980), 6–16, offers a good overview of Leonardo’s early involvement with technology. Verrocchio’s palla is illustrated in a Florentine abacus book: Pier Maria Calandri, Trattato d’abbacho, Florence Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Codex Acquisti e Doni 154, fol. 219v.
“it should be made by casting […] under no circumstances”: Cesare Guasti, La cupola di Santa Maria del Fiore illustrata con i documenti dell’archivio dell’Opera Secolare (Florence: Barbera Bianchi, 1857), 112 (partially quoted in Covi, “Verrocchio and the Palla,” 152).
Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli: Important essays on Toscanelli are Thomas Settle, “Dating the Toscanelli’s Meridian in Santa Maria del Fiore,” Annali dell’ Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze (1978): 69–70; Alessandro Parronchi, “Introduction,” in Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli: Della prospettiva (Milan: Il Polifilo, 1991); and Eric Apferstadt, “Christopher Columbus, Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli and Fernao de Roris: New Evidence for a Florentine Connection,” Nuncius: Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science (1992): 69–80. On the possible relations between Toscanelli and Leonardo, see Dominique Raymond, “Un Fragment du De speculis comburentibus de Regiomontanus copié par Toscanelli et insérér dans let Carnets de Leonardo (Codex Atlanticus, 611rb/915ra),” Annals of Science 72 (2015): 306–66.
“Remember the welds”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript G, fol. 84v (English translation in Edward McCurdy, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci [New York: 1939], 1178). On Leonardo’s study of burning mirrors, see David Hockney, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters (New York: Viking Studio, 2001), 244; Sven Dupré, “Optics, Pictures and Evidence: Leonardo’s Drawings of Mirrors and Machinery,” Early Science and Medicine 10 (2005): 211–36; and Francesca Fiorani, “Leonardo’s Optics in the 1470s,” in Leonardo da Vinci and Optics: Theory and Pictorial Practice, ed. Francesca Fiorani and Alessandro Nova (Venice: Marsilio, 2013), 265–92.
Biagio Pelacani da Parma: Graziella Federici Vescovini, ed., Blaise de Parme, Quaestiones super perspectiva commini (Paris: J. Biard, 2009), 240–43, for Pelacani’s apparitions in the air; Hans Belting, Florence and Baghdad: Renaissance Art and Arab Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 146–50. On apparitions in the air, see also Sven Dupré, “Images in the Air: Optical Games, Magic and Imagination,” in Spirits Unseen: The Representation of Subtle Bodies in Early Modern European Culture, ed. Christine Goettler and Wolfang Neuber (Brill: Leiden and Boston, 2007), 71–92, who, however, does not discuss Pelacani’s apparitions.
simplified version of Pelacani’s Questions: An important manuscript in Italian that is based on Pelacani’s Questions on Perspective is Codex Riccardianus 2110, in the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence, on which see Parronchi, Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli: Della prospettiva, attributing it to the Florentine polymath Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli; and Eugenio Battisti and Giuseppa Saccaro Battisti, eds., Le macchine cifrate di Giovanni Fontana (Milan: Arcadia Edizioni, 1984), attributing it to Giovanni Fontana (1395–1455), an elusive figure who declared himself Pelacani’s student, although he entered the University of Padua when Pelacani was already dead. There are good reasons to think that the author of this vernacular text was Antonio Manetti (1423–1497), who was listed as a “master of optics” (maestro di prospettiva) in Florence in 1470 (see Benedetto Dei, Descrizioni e rappresentazioni della città di Firence nel XV secolo, ed. Giuseppina Carla Romby [Florence: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, 1976], 73). Manetti was regarded also as a talented translator of science books in the vernacular; he also wrote the first biography of Brunelleschi, which is the main source of our knowledge on the architect and the only one on the perspective panels, now lost, that the architect painted to demonstrate linear perspective. On Antonio Manetti, whom I suggest could be the author of this manuscript, see Domenico De Robertis, “Antonio Manetti copista,” in Tra Latino e Volgare: Per Carlo Dionisotti, ed. Gabriella Bernardoni Trezzini and Ottavio Beson (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1974), 2 vols, vol. 2:367–409; Giuliano Tanturli, “Per l’interpretazione storica della Vita del Brunelleschi,” Paragone Arte 26 (1975): 6–24.
“how to make a concave sphere”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 87r. This folio and others similarly related to burning mirrors and glassmakers’ workshops are dated between 1478 and 1480 by experts on Leonardo’s handwriting: Gerolamo Calvi, I manoscritti di Leonardo da Vinci (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1925; new edition, Bologna: Zanichelli, 2019), and Carlo Pedretti, The Codex Atlanticus of Leonardo da Vinci: A Catalogue of Its Newly Restored Sheets, 2 vols. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978–1979).
“the canons [of the cathedral]”: Landucci, Diario fiorentino, 10–11; and Agostino Lapini, Diario fiorentino dal 252 al 1596, ed. Giuseppe Odoardo Corazzini (Florence: Sansoni, 1900), 24.
“was most skillful in lifting weight”: Anonimo Gaddiano, in Vecce, Leonardo, 361.
“Those who are in love with practice”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript G, fol. 8r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 19; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 52).
“chained books”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 801r.
Brunelleschi’s screw: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fols. 808r, 808v, and 847r.
“Giovanni d’Amerigo Benci and company”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 879v.
list of people: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 42v. The names in this list may refer to individuals or to books written by these individuals: Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli; the astronomer Carlo Marmocchi; the notary Benedetto da Cepperello; the abacus teacher Benedetto, who was possibly Leonardo’s abacus teacher; the painter Domenico di Michelino, who had painted Dante’s Comedy in the cathedral; the architect Pietro Averlino Filarete; and the scholar John Argyropoulos. On this list, see: Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:301.
notes in Toscanelli’s handwriting: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 915r, on which see Raymond, “Un Fragment du De speculis comburentibus.”
“drafts for passages”: Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:306–11. Bambach connected the candle studies on the drawing’s back to a page of Manuscript C, fol. 12r, on light and shadows, datable ca. 1490, a view I share. I would add that the text and diagram on the back of the recently discovered Saint Sebastian, now in private collection, are copied in fol. 8v of the same Manuscript C.
“the wall will be darker or more luminous”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript C, fol. 12r.
“the science of astronomy”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 2v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 6; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 16, but note that I translated “prospettiva” with “optics” rather then “perspective”). A great introduction to Renaissance natural philosophy is Charles B. Schmitt and Quentin Skinner, eds., The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); particularly helpful to understand the place of optics in Renaissance thought is the essay by Katherine Park, “Psychology: The Concept of Psychology,” ibid., 455–63. See also James Hankins, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), especially the essay by Christopher S. Celenza, “The Revival of Platonic Philosophy,” ibid., 72–96. On optics and Renaissance art, see the books quoted in the general bibliography above.
“The light of grace”: Saint Antoninus (Archbishop of Florence), Summa theologica, 2 vols. (Parma: Fiaccadori, 1852), vol. 1, titulus III, caput III, column 118; and vol. 4, titulus IX, caput 1, column 462 (quoted in Samuel Edgerton, The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective [New York: ACLS History E-Book Project, 1975], 63).
“difficult questions involving symmetry”: Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Ingrid Rowland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), book 1:4.
“drawing things of the world”: Ristoro d’Arezzo, La composizione del mondo: testo italiano del 1282, ed. Enrico Narducci (Rome: Tip. delle Scienze matematiche e fisiche, 1859), 68.
“master of optics”: Dei, Descrizioni di Firenze, 73.
“the most highly developed sense”: Aristotle, On the Soul, book 3:4.
“sight can never be in error”: Ibid., book 3:6.
“the optics […] part of philosophy”: Michele Savonarola, Libellus de Magnifici Ornamentis Regies Civitatis Paduae, ed. Arnaldo Segarizzi (Cittá di Castello: Editore S. Lapi, 1902), 55, lines 20–25 (quoted in Edgerton, Rediscovery of Linear Perspective, 63).
“without optics”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript G, fol. 8r (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 52).
“reserve until the end of my book”: Leonardo da Vinci, Notes on the Art of Painting, Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle, RCIN 919076r (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 265). Although this note dates to 1511–13, Leonardo’s meeting with Gherardo di Giovanni di Miniato must date to before 1483, when the artist left for Milan; when he returned in 1500, Gherado was dead (he died in 1492).
“Latin optical source”: Dominique Raymond, “A Hitherto Unknown Treatise on Shadows Referred to by Leonardo da Vinci,” in Perspective as Practice: Renaissance Cultures of Optics, ed. Sven Dupré (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2019), 275.
“Witelo in San Marco”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Arundel, fol. 79v (“Vitolone in San Marco”); on Witelo see also Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 669r (“il libro di Vitolone”); and fol. 611r (“fa d’avere Vitolone ch’è nella libreria di Pavia, che tratta delle matematiche”). On Bacon see Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Arundel, fol. 71v (“Rugieri Bacon fatto in istampa”). On Pecham see Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Madrid II, fol. 2v (“prospettiva comune”).
Alhacen’s book was the only major optical book: On Alhacen, see the studies quoted in the general bibliography. The Italian translation of Alhacen’s Book of Optics survived in a single copy, which is now kept in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Codex Vaticanus Latinus 4595. On this important translation, see the foundational essay by Graziella Federici Vescovini, “Contributo per la storia della fortuna di Alhazen in Italia.” It is worth mentioning that Alhacen also wrote a book by the title Epistle on the Properties of Shadows (Maqala fi kayfiyyat al-azlal) that dealt with shadows and penumbra, but we do not know if this text, documented in Arabic and now kept in Instanbul, was ever translated into Latin or whether it was known to the Latin West, let alone to Leonardo. He also wrote a book On Burning Mirrors or On the Parabolic Section (De speculis comburentibus seu de sectione mukefi), which was known in the Latin West, while another text, “On Twilight” (De crepuscolis), also translated into Italian, that was attributed to him in the Renaissance is regarded today the work of another, unknown author. An Italian copy of “On Twilight” is bound with Alhacen’s Italian translation of his Book of Optics.
“he took an overwhelmingly empirical, or inductive, tack”: A. M. Smith, Alhacen’s Theory, vol. 1:cxv.
“a mere agglomeration of past ideas”: Ibid., cxvii.
“experience does not err”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 417r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 1153; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 10).
“The form of color”: Smith, Alhacen’s Theory, vol. 2:356 (book 1:6.3).
“the quality of colors”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 113r (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 72).
“vision cannot be due”: Ibid., vol. 2:373 (book 1:6.56).
“visual intentions”: Ibid., vol. 2:437 (book 2:3.42).
eight conditions of sight: Ibid., vol. 2:588 (book 3:3.5).
“proper range”: Ibid., vol. 2:593 (book 3:3.34).
“[the] only reason”: Ibid.
“If a sheer cloth”: Ibid., vol. 2:599 (book 3:6.18–22).
“Do not make the boundaries around your figures”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fols. 46r–v (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 210).
“transparency of the air”: Smith, Alhacen’s Theory, vol. 2:599 (book 3:6.18).
“If the air is misty”: Ibid., vol. 2:621 (book 3:7.193–94).
“There is another perspective”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 105v (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 80–81).
hair and texture in painting: Smith, Alhacen’s Theory, vol. 2:607–608 (book 3:7.39, 7:42, 7:43).
beauty as composition: Ibid., vol. 2:504–505 (book 2:3.200–203).
“proportionality or harmony”: Ibid., vol. 2:509–10 (book 2:3.230).
“Proportions create beauty”: Lorenzo Ghiberti, I commentarii, ed. Lorenzo Bartoli (Florence: Giunti, 1998), 159. On Lorenzo Ghiberti, see Richard Krautheimer, Lorenzo Ghiberti, in collaboration with Trude Krautheimer-Hess (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970); and Amy Bloch, Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise: Humanism, History, and Artistic Philosophy in the Italian Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Lorenzo’s workshop was near Santa Maria Nuova and was known by the nickname le porte as Lorenzo cast there his second set of doors for the Baptistery of Florence. The workshop passed to his son Vittore and later to his grandson Bonaccorso. Verrocchio and his apprentices were familiar with the Ghiberti foundry and workshop, and some art historians think that Verrocchio learned in that workshop the art of bronze casting; at the very least he worked with Vittore Ghiberti on major projects for the Florentine Baptistery. It is documented that Pietro Perugino, one of Leonardo’s close friends from his training years, rented studio space from the Ghibertis from 1487 to 1511.
“all the functions of the eye”: Alberti, On Painting, book 1:6, book 1:8, book 1:9.
“Note that Aristotle and Alhacen”: Ghiberti, Commentarii, 102, 282–83. On Ghiberti’s Commentaries, see Federici Vescovini, “Contributo per la storia della fortuna di Alhazen in Italia”; Lorenzo Bartoli, “Introduzione,” in Ghiberti, Commentarii, 5–42; Fiorani, “Leonardo’s Optics in the 1470s”; Fabian Jonietz, Wolf-Dietrich Lohr, and Alessandro Nova, eds., Ghiberti teorico: Natura, arte, e coscienza storica nel Quattrocento (Milan, Officina Libraria, 2019), especially the following essays: Dominique Raynaud, “Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Optical Sources Revisited Through the Traces Method,” 89–102; Mandy Richter, “‘O doctissimo, nessuna cosa si vede senza luce’: Darkness, Light, and Antiquity in Ghiberti’s Third Book,” 183–90.
Bonaccorso Ghiberti, one of Leonardo’s acquaintances: See Gustina Scaglia, “A Miscellany of Bronze Works and Texts in the ‘Zibaldone’ of Buonaccorso Ghiberti,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 120 (1976): 485–513; Gustina Scaglia, “A Translation of Vitruvius and Copies of Late Antique Drawings in Buonaccorso Ghiberti’s Zibaldone,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series 69 (1979): 1–30; Fabrizio Ansani, “The Life of a Renaissance Gunmaker: Bonaccorso Ghiberti and the Development of Florentine Artillery in the Late Fifteenth Century,” Technology and Culture 58 (2017): 749–89. Bonaccorso Ghiberti’s Zibaldone is kept in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (Codex Banchi Rari, 228).
“painters and sculptors should be learned”: Ghiberti, Commentarii, 46.
“I followed art with great study and discipline”: Ibid., 92.
“Men wrongly complain of experience”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 417r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 1153; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 10).
“little work […] will comprise”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 102v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 23; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 16).
“man and the intentions of his mind”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 60v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 180; English translation in Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:427; see also Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 144).
Leonardo and Alhacen: Martin Kemp, “The Hammer Lecture (1992): The Beholder’s Eye; Leonardo and the ‘Errors of Sight’ in Theory and Practice,” Achademia Leonardi Vinci 5 (1993): 156; at the same time Kemp remarked that “there is no evidence that Ghiberti’s translations were known to Leonardo” (156). On Alhacen’s influence on Leonardo, see also Brian S. Eastwood, “Alhazen, Leonardo, and Late Medieval Speculation on the Inversion of Images in the Eye,” Annals of Science 43 (1986): 413–46; Janis Bell, “Leonardo and Alhazen: The Cloth on the Mountain Top,” Achademia Leonardi Vinci 6 (1993): 108–11; Dominique Raynaud, “La perspective aérienne de Léonard de Vinci et ses origins dans l’optique d’Ibn al-Haytham (De aspectibus, III, 7),” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 21 (2009): 225–46; Dominique Raynaud, “Leonardo, Optics and Ophthalmology,” in Leonardo da Vinci and Optics, ed. Fiorani and Nova, 293–314; Fiorani, “Leonardo’s Optics in the 1470s,” ibid., 265–92.
“boundary of a thing”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript G, fol. 37r (English translation from Richter, Literary Works, no. 49; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 53).
“the air and natural heavens”: Antonio Manetti, The Life of Brunelleschi, ed. Howard Saalman (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1970), 45. These panels, now lost, are described in detail by Manetti; they have generated intense scholarly debate. For a possible reconstruction, see Edgerton, Re-Discovery of Linear Perspective, 124–52; Martin Kemp, The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 11–14, 344–45; David Summers, Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism (London, Phaidon Press, 2003); and David Summers, Vision, Reflection and Desire in Western Painting (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 61–67.
“subtle engravings”: Smith, Alhacen’s Theory, vol. 2:345 (book 1:4.11).
“sculture sottili”: Ghiberti, Commentarii, 110. See Christopher R. Lakey, “‘Le sottili sculture’: Light, Optics, and Theories of Relief in Ghiberti’s Third Commentary,” in Ghiberti teorico, ed. Jonietz, Lohr, and Nova, 191–205.
“the air between the eye and the visible object”: Smith, Alhacen’s Theory, vol. 2:591 (book 3:3.10).
modern devotion: A good and comprehensive introduction on religious practices in the Renaissance and on devotio moderna in particular is John Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). Rachel Fulton Brown, Mary and the Art of Prayer: The Hours of the Virgin in Medieval Christian Life and Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), is an effective overview of Marian devotion showing how men and women read the Book of Hours in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Leonardo’s landscape of 1473: See Alessandro Nova, “Addj 5 daghossto 1473: L’oggetto e le sue interpretazioni,” in Leonardo da Vinci on Nature: Knowledge and Representation, ed. Fabio Frosini and Alessandro Nova (Venice: Marsilio Editore, 2015), 285–302; Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:136–40; and Roberta Barsanti, ed., Leonardo da Vinci: Alle origini del genio, exhibition catalog, Museo Leonardiano, Vinci (Florence: Giunti, 2019), especially the following essays: Pietro C. Marani, “Leonardo e la natura: paesaggi senza figure, figure nel paesaggio,” 151–59; Carlo Vecce, “I giorni di Leonardo: Santa Maria della Neve,” 159–66; Roberto Bellucci, Cecilia Frosinini, and Letizia Montalbano, “‘Disegnar paesi’: Il foglio 8 P del Gabinetto dei Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi di Leonardo da Vinci,” 241–89, on a recent technical analysis.
“to paint objects in relief”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 69v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 219).
“landscape did not start as an autonomous”: Nova, “L’oggetto,” 298.
“how to portray a place accurately”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 104r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 523; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 216).
Jan van Eyck, Florentine art, and Leonardo: Paul Hills, “Leonardo and Flemish Painting,” Burlington Magazine 122 (1980): 609–15; Paula Nuttall, From Flanders to Florence: The Impact of Netherlandish Painting, 1400–1500 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004); and Paula Nuttall, ed., Face to Face: Flanders, Florence, and Renaissance Paintings, exhibition catalog (Los Angeles: The Huntington Library Press, 2013).
Saint Mary of the Snow: A confraternity named after Santa Maria della Neve had been founded in 1445, and since then it met regularly in the parish of Sant’Ambrogio, where Verrocchio’s bottega was located. It was one of the very few mixed confraternities with both male and female members. And it was steeped in the neighborhood’s life. It had close connections with nearby male and female monasteries, including those of Le Murate, Santa Croce, and San Salvi, all of which were connected somehow to Verrocchio and his patrons. Every year on August 5, the confraternity held public festivities in the neighborhood. On the first Sunday of May, it organized a trip to the Sanctuary of Saint Mary in Impruneta, on the outskirts of Florence, where a miraculous image of the Virgin was kept. It also kept contacts with communities in the countryside through a network of small oratories in and around Florence, one of which was near Vinci, and another at Le Murate in the neighborhood of Santa Croce. On the confraternity of Santa Maria della Neve in the parish church of Sant’Ambrogio, see Eve Borsook, “Cult and Imagery in Sant’Ambrogio,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 25 (1981): 147–202.
commission for a new painting of Gabriel’s visit to Mary: See Brown, Origins of a Genius, 75–99; Antonio Natali, L’Annunciazione di Leonardo: La montagna sul mare (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2000). In Natali’s book are also two important essays by restorers: Alfio Del Serra, “L’incanto dell’Annuncio: Rendiconto di restauro,” which clarified Leonardo’s painting technique and his possible use of spolvero to transfer his figure drawings, although no dots of pouncing are visible in infrared images but only black lines in liquid ink; and Roberto Bellucci, “L’ ‘underdrawing’ dell’Annunciazione e la prospettiva di Leonardo,” which explained how Leonardo built the architecture on the panel. See also Francesca Fiorani, “The Shadows of Leonardo’s Annunciation and Their Lost Legacy,” in Imitation, Representation and Printing in the Italian Renaissance, ed. Roy Eriksen and Magne Malmanger (Pisa and Rome: Fabrizio Serra Editore, 2009), 119–56, for a more detailed analysis of the painting’s optical effects in relation to Leonardo’s writings. On sacred representations, see Nerida Newbigin, Feste d’Oltrarno: Plays in Churches in Fifteenth-Century Florence (Florence: Olschki, 1996), including those by Feo Belcari.
Mary who “looked as if”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fols. 32v–33r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 58; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 200).
golden ratio: Bellucci, “L’ ‘underdrawing’ dell’Annunciazione.” For an engaging study of the golden ratio, see Mario Livio, The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World’s Most Astonishing Number (New York: Broadway Books, 2013).
“I remind you, O painter”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 34r–35r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 65; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 194).
“gradations” of light and shadow: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 534v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 548).
“the resplendent beauty of youth”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fols. 130v–131r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 404; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 196).
“for those colors which you wish to be beautiful”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 62v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 192; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 71).
Copper resin green: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 67v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 211).
“universal light”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript G, fol. 3v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 118).
“shadows generated by the redness of the sun”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 148v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 467; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 76).
“with a single color placed at various distances”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 65r–v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 199; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 78).
“The surface of every opaque object”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 148v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 467; partial English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 76).
“the soul of painting”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 81r.
“if you avoid shadows”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 133r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 412).
“makes very sorry landscapes” … nature “was of no use”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 33v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 60; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 201–202).
Leonardo’s Madonna of the Carnation: See the important restoration report of Jan Schmidt (and others), “The Madonna with a Carnation: Technological Studies of an Early Painting by Leonardo,” in Leonardo da Vinci’s Technical Practice: Paintings, Drawings and Influence, ed. Michel Menu (Paris: Hermann, 2014), 40–55.
“bodies against backgrounds”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 101v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 552; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 209).
Verrocchio’s and Leonardo’s Baptism of Christ: See Antonio Natali, Lo sguardo degli angeli: Verrocchio, Leonardo e il Battesimo di Cristo (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 1998), which contains Alfio Del Serra, “Il restauro,” 95–118, on the painting’s restoration. Natali suggested that Verrocchio began the panel around 1468–1470, then left it unfinished until around 1478, when Leonardo completed it. He also identified the role of Verrocchio’s brother Simone, who was abbot of San Salvi in 1468, and again from 1471 to 1473, and from 1475 to 1478.
women’s portraits in the Renaissance: See David A. Brown, ed., Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo’s Ginevra de’ Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women, exhibition catalog (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2001). Effective overviews of the cultural climate of Renaissance Florence in the 1470s are Patricia Fortini Brown and Alison Wright, eds., Renaissance Florence: The Art of the 1470s, exhibition catalog (London: National Gallery Publications, 1999); Charles Dempsey, The Early Renaissance and Vernacular Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); and Schumacher, Florence and Its Painters.
The Benci family: See Alessandro Cecchi, “New Light on Leonardo’s Florentine Patrons”; Megan Holmes, “Giovanni Benci’s Patronage of the Nunnery Le Murate,” in Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence, ed. Giovanni Ciappelli and Patricia Lee Rubin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 114–34; Raymond de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397–1494 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963). The involvement of Ginevra’s father, Amerigo, in the Pitti plot against the Medici is documented in Jacopo Pitti, Istoria Fiorentina (Naples: Liguori Editore, 2007), 43.
“Giovanni d’Amerigo Benci and company”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 879v. Leonardo also mentioned Ginevra’s brother in Codex Atlanticus, fol. 331r (datable around 1500): “my world map that Giovanni Benci has […] Giovanni Benci’s world map”; Manuscript L, fol. 1v (dated 1502): “Giovanni Benci’s book”; Codex Arundel, fol. 190v: “Giovanni Benci, my book and jaspers” (all published in Richter, Literary Works, nos. 1416, 1444, 1454; and quoted in Cecchi, “New Light,” 138).
“painted with such perfection”: Antonio Billi, in Vecce, Leonardo, 359; another early biographer, the Anonimo Gaddiano, repeated Billi’s judgment almost word by word (ibid., 361). On Leonardo’s Ginevra de’ Benci, see John Walker, “Ginevra de’ Benci by Leonardo da Vinci,” Report and Studies in the History of Art 1 (1967): 1–38; Brown, Origins of a Genius, 100–121; Jennifer Fletcher, “Bernardo Bembo and Leonardo’s Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci,” Burlington Magazine 131 (1989): 811–16; Mary D. Garrard, “Who Was Ginevra de’ Benci? Leonardo’s Portrait and Its Sitter Re-contenxtualized,” Artibus et Historiae 27 (2006–7): 23–56; Caroline Elam, “Bernardo Bembo and Leonardo’s Ginevra de’ Benci: A Further Suggestion,” in Pietro Bembo e le arti, ed. Guido Beltramini, Howard Burns, and Davide Gasparotto (Venice: Marsilio, 2013), 407–20; Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:113–17; Delieuvin and Frank, Léonard de Vinci, 82–84. Its relation to northern portraits is discussed in Hills, “Leonardo and Flemish Painting,” 609–15; and Nuttall, From Flanders to Florence. The portrait’s painting technique is analyzed superbly by Elizabeth Walmsley, “Technical Images and Painting Technique in Leonardo’s Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci,” in Leonardo da Vinci and Optics, ed. Fiorani and Nova, 55–77. The patronage of Ginevra’s portrait is hotly debated. Most scholars think the Venetian humanist Bernardo Bembo commissioned it based on the emblem on the panel’s back (Brown, Fletcher, Bambach, Elam, and Delieuvin, among others); they interpret the portrait as a representation of a platonic lover (no other portraits of platonic lovers exist, although one is mentioned in Renaissance sources). Others (Garrard, first among them) think the portrait is closely related to Ginevra and her family and interpret it as an expression of Ginevra’s mind. I find the latter interpretation more convincing, as it aligns better with conventions of Renaissance women’s portraiture, Leonardo’s artistic interests in depicting the souls of his sitters, and the fact that the painting never belonged to Bembo, the supposed patron.
“a most beautiful thing”: Giorgio Vasari, The Life of Leonardo da Vinci, ed. Martin Kemp (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2019), 94.
“purpose of their soul”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 383r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 593, although I changed Richter’s translation of animo from “mind” to “soul.”)
“The Lord, in a short time”: Giustina Niccolini, The Chronicle of Le Murate, ed. Saundra Weddle (Toronto: Center for Reformation and Renaissance, 2011), 87. On the convent Le Murate, see Kate Lowe, Nuns’ Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Sharon Strocchia, Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
la cella de’ Benci: Niccolini, Chronicle, 89.
Platonic Academy: A great introduction to Marsilio Ficino and his academy is Christopher S. Celenza, “Marsilio Ficino,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (fall 2017 edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/ficino/. Important are also Arthur Field, The Origins of the Platonic Academy of Florence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); James Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 1990); and Michael J. B. Allen, Valery Rees, Martin Davies, eds., Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2001). Still informative, although dated, on the relations between Platonism and Renaissance art is André Chastel, Marsile Ficin et l’art (Geneva: Droz, 1954).
“our co-philosophers”: Marsilio Ficino’s letter to Lionardo di Tone Pagni, August 18, 1462, published in Arnaldo della Torre, Storia dell’Accademia platonica di Firenze (Florence: Tip. G. Carnesecchi e figli, 1902), 553–55, a text that is important more broadly to document the relations between Ficino and the Benci family. Della Torre, Storia, 396–67, reports also on Amerigo Benci, Ginevra’s father, as a diner at the inaugural banchetto platonico, a fact reported also in Marsilio Ficino, Commentarium in convivium de amore (a copy of this book that belonged to Tommaso Benci is now kept in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence [Codex Laurentianus Strozzi 98]). Later, Ficino rewrote the early history of the Platonic Academy and omitted Amerigo Benci from the inaugural banquet and listed instead Bernardo del Nero, who in later years had become a protagonist of the Neoplatonic Academy and who translated (with Antonio Manetti) Ficino’s Latin text of Plato’s Convivium into Italian. See also the important essay by Giuliano Tanturli, “I Benci copisti: vicende della cultura fiorentina volgare fra Antonio Pucci e il Ficino,” Studi di Filologia italiana 36 (1978): 197–313, documenting the extensive relations between Ficino and the brothers Tommaso and Giovanni Benci, and their family connections with the branch of the Benci to which Ginevra belonged.
Ficino was an expert in optics: An early biographer whose identity remains unknown reported that Ficino “wrote a work on perspective, of which I saw some notes on vision and on concave and convex mirrors” (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Codex Palatino 488).
platonic love: Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, ed. Michael J. B. Allen and James Hankins, 6 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001–6) vol. 6:3.2.6.
“the younger artist’s characteristic left-handed”: Brown, Origins of a Genius, 124.
“I ask your forgiveness”: Ginevra’s only surviving line of poetry is mentioned in a letter that an unidentified author who signed himself as “G + H” wrote to Ginevra, August 12–17, 1490 (published in Walker, “Ginevra,” 24–27).
“master of optics”: Dei, Descrizioni, 73. Ficino dedicated to Manetti the Italian translation of his commentary to Plato’s De amore.
Giorgio Antonio Vespucci (1453–1512): See Karl Schlebusch, Giorgio Antonio Vespucci 1434–1514 Maestro canonico domenicano (Florence: Nerbini, 2017). In addition see Luciano Formisano, ed., Amerigo Vespucci, la vita e i viaggi (Florence: Banca Toscana, 1991), on the Vespucci family’s history, art patronage, and connections to Ficino; and Angelo Cattaneo, Shores of Vespucci: A Historical Research of Amerigo Vespucci’s Life and Context (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2017). Ficino wrote personalized dedication letters for Giorgio Antonio Vespucci as a sign of his special connection to this member of the Vespucci family (now available in Marsilio Ficino, Opera omnia, ed. Paul O. Kristeller [Turin, Italy: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1959; facsimile of edition: Basel, 1576], 841). This Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, who was related to the Benci family, engaged in business transactions with the Benci for properties in Florence and in Val d’Elsa. Around 1500, Leonardo jotted a note to himself: “Vespucci wants to give me a book on geometry” (Codex Arundel, fol. 132v). In 1503, another Vespucci, Agostino, who was Machiavelli’s secretary, gave Leonardo a description of the Battle of Anghiari, which the artist had agreed to paint in the Signoria palace. This Agostino Vespucci was also familiar with Leonardo’s portrait Mona Lisa as the artist was painting it.
the garden of San Marco: See Caroline Elam, “Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Sculpture Garden,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 36 (1992): 41–84, which discusses Leonardo’s presence in Lorenzo’s garden.
Leonardo and Lorenzo de’ Medici: Cecilia Frosinini, “L’Adorazione dei Magi e i luoghi di Leonardo,” in Il restauro dell’Adorazione dei Magi di Leonardo: La riscoperta di un capolavoro, ed. Marco Ciatti and Cecilia Frosinini (Florence: Opificio delle Pietre Dure, 2017), 30.
“the resplendent beauty”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 131r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 404; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 196).
“a bit transparent”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 111v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 561).
“the window to the soul”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 99r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 653; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 20).
“the chaste love of Bembo”: Landino’s poems, published in Walker, “Ginevra,” 32–35.
an unidentifiable admirer: Walker, “Ginevra,” 24–27.
Lorenzo’s sonnet for Ginevra: Ibid., 38.
Ginevra’s tomb at Le Murate: Niccolini, Chronicle, 386.
“move those who behold”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 61v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 188; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 220).
“I have universally observed”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 32v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 58; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 200).
Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi: See the early monograph by Tens Thiis, Leonardo da Vinci: The Florentine Years of Leonardo and Verrocchio (London: H. Jenkins, 1913), 181–246, which although written over a century ago is still illuminating (he counted over sixty figures in Leonardo’s Adoration); see also the pertinent chapters in the main artist’s biographies: Kenneth Clark, 1939; Martin Kemp, 1981; Carlo Vecce, 1998; Charles Nichols, 2004; Frank Zöllner, 2003; and Walter Isaacson, 2017. Among the most recent studies on the painting, see Edoardo Villata, L’Adorazione dei Magi di Leonardo: Riflettografie e riflessioni,” Raccolta Vinciana 32 (2007): 5–42, which argues that Leonardo returned to the painting around 1500. Fundamental for our understanding of Leonardo’s Adoration is the important volume on the recent restoration, Marco Ciatti and Cecilia Frosinini, eds., Il restauro dell’Adorazione dei Magi di Leonardo: La riscoperta di un capolavoro (Florence: Opificio delle Pietre Dure, 2017). A summary of this restoration in English is Roberto Bellucci, Patrizia Riitano, Marco Ciatti, Cecilia Forsinini, and Antonio Natali, “Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi at the Uffizi: Preliminary Technical Studies at the OPD,” in Technical Practice, ed. Menu, 32–39. The recent restoration revealed that Leonardo used the same pigment for shadows throughout the panel, a fact that, in my view, provides the strongest evidence that the artist worked on the Adoration in a concentrated period of time. Even if he returned to it later, as it has been suggested (the matter remains debatable), he conceived the entire painting in 1481–1482.
“is with Verrocchio”: The judiciary record is published in Vecce, Leonardo, 55; and Villata, Documenti, 8–10.
contract for the Adoration: Villata, Documenti, 12 (partial English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 268).
“a barrel of red wine”: Ibid., 13–14.
“An angel from the Lord”: Luke 2:8–20. On the Adoration in the Renaissance, see Richard C. Turner, The Journey of the Magi: Meanings in History of a Christian Story (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Rab Hatfield, “The Compagnia de’ Magi,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 33 (1970): 107–61; Stephen M. Buhler, “Marsilio Ficino’s De stella magorum and Renaissance Views of the Magi,” Renaissance Quarterly 43 (1990): 348–71. Paula Nuttall, From Flanders to Florence, discussed the influence of Hugo van der Goes’s Adoration of the Shepherds in Renaissance Florence. Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:199, suggests that Leonardo’s sketches for the Adoration of the Shepherds and for the Adoration of Magi were actually for the same project, the altarpiece for the Augustinian church of San Donato, a view I share.
“typology”: Bonaventura, Legenda maior (Milan: Antonio Zarotto, 1477), Prologus, IV, 505a, quoted in Rona Goffen, Piety and Patronage in Renaissance Venice: Bellini, Titian, and the Franciscans (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 239. Contemporary philosophers have identified the “time of revelation” as the “time of art,” starting with Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935).
“terror, fear, or flight”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 61v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 188; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 220).
“the same pose […] same movements”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fols. 106v–107r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 280; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 220).
“attend first to the movements”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 61v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 189; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 222).
“do not draw the limbs”: Ibid.
painting technique of the Adoration: Roberto Bellucci, “L’Adorazione dei Magi e i tempi di Leonardo,” in Il restauro, ed. Ciatti and Frosinini, 63–107, on which my discussion is based.
“observe and contemplate”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 107v (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 199).
Giovanni Battista da Bologna, the prior of San Donato a Scopeto: Bellucci, “L’Adorazione,” 94. Bellucci also explains that in this figure’s hand the “extreme contrast between dark and light would have been mitigated by a series of successive layers of glazes applied one over another,” ibid., 89.
“Leonardo thought in terms of light and shadows”: Ibid., 64.
“First give a general shadow”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 108v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 555).
“fading into light”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 175r–v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 548).
“what part of a body […] The shadow made by the sun”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 201r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 694; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 93).
Leonardo’s Saint Jerome: Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:322–34. It should be noted, though, that the church Leonardo sketched in the background is very close to Bonaccorso Ghiberti’s sketches from his Zibaldone, thus reinforcing the close relation between the Saint Jerome and the Adoration of the Magi in conception, composition, and technique (see Gustina Scaglia, “Three Renaissance Drawings of Church Facades,” Art Bulletin 47 [1965]: 173–85, fig. 2, for images from Bonaccorso’s Zibaldone).
Leonardo’s Benois Madonna and Study of the Madonna and Child with a Cat: Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:199–229.
“the work with his hand”: Bandello, Tutte le opere (English translation in Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:416).
Leonardo’s drawing for an instrument to measure air pressure: Bambach, Master Draftsman, 324–28.
Evangelista Torricelli: Torricelli’s letter to Michelangelo Ricci, June 11, 1644, published in Opere dei discepoli di Galileo: Carteggio 1642–1648, ed. Paolo Galluzzi and Maurizio Torrini, 2 vols. (Florence: Giunti-Barbera, 1975), vol. 1:122; quoted in Gabrielle Walker, An Ocean of Air: A Natural History of the Atmosphere (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), 10.
Leonardo’s letter to Ludovico il Moro: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 1082r (published in Vecce, Leonardo, 78–79; and Villata, Documenti, 16–17; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 251–53).
“in the shape of a horse’s skull”: Vasari, Life of Leonardo, 82. Excellent books on Renaissance Milan are Evelyn S. Welch, Art and Authority in Renaissance Milan (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996); and Monica Azzolini, The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).
résumé to Duke Ludovico il Moro: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 1082r (published in Vecce, Leonardo, 78–79; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 251–53).
Immaculate Conception: A good introduction to this religious belief, its relation to the Franciscan order, to Pope Sixtus IV, and to art, is Kim Butler, “The Immaculate Body in the Sistine Chapel,” Art History 32 (2009): 250–89.
Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks: The literature on Leonardo’s two versions of the Virgin of the Rocks, currently kept at the Musée du Louvre in Paris and at the National Gallery in London, is extensive and far from unanimous on the interpretation of why Leonardo painted two versions of the same panel, or on when he did it. Part of the difficulty has to do with the incomplete documentary records. All the documents that have thus far surfaced are published in Villata, Documenti, 18–34, 224–26 (English translations of some documents in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 253–55, 268–70). Janice Shell and Grazioso Sironi, “Un nuovo documento di pagamento per la Vergine delle Rocce di Leonardo,” in Hostinato rigore: Leonardiana in memoria di Augusto Marinoni, ed. Pietro C. Marani (Milan: Electa, 2000), 27–31, discovered another document showing that Leonardo and his partners received a payment of 730 scudi by the end of 1484, suggesting that they were almost done with their work. In their first petition to Ludovico il Moro, datable to the early 1490s, the artists imply that they had received the entire agreed sum of 800 scudi, suggesting that they had completed the agreed-upon work, that is the gilding of the entire ancona, and the painting of the main panel with the Virgin and of the two side panels with angels.
Luke Syson and Rachel Billinge, “Leonardo da Vinci’s Use of Under-drawing in the Virgin of the Rocks at the National Gallery and Saint Jerome in the Vatican,” Burlington Magazine 147 (2005): 450–63, discusses important discoveries on the London panel that emerged in 2005. Infrared photography revealed that underneath the painted surface, Leonardo had sketched a different composition, which is now known as Composition A; for unknown reasons, Leonardo abandoned it. He covered it with a grayish preparation that effectively erased it, and proceeded to draw over it the exact same composition of the original Paris Virgin of the Rocks, which he painted together with his partner Ambrogio de’ Predis. In 2011–2012, the London panel went through a major restoration, on which see Larry Keith, A. Roy, R. Morrison, and P. Schade, “Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks: Treatment, Technique and Display,” National Gallery Technical Bulletin 32 (2011): 32–56.
Among the most important studies that attempt to interpret the complex history of the two versions of Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks are Luke Syson and Larry Keith, eds., Leonardo da Vinci Painter at the Court of Milan, exhibition catalog (London: National Gallery of Art, 2012), published on the occasion of a spectacular exhibition that brought together, for the first time, the London and Paris panels. Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:337–49, which offers the interpretation that the Paris panel was done for another patron (possibly a chapel in Milan’s Palazzo Reale) and that the London panel was the only one ever meant for the confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in San Francesco Grande. Delieuvin, “La licence dans la règle,” in Léonard de Vinci, ed. Delieuvin and Frank, 126–39.
“Our Lady with her son”: Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 270.
“stratified stones”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Leicester, fol. 10r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 980). On Leonardo’s view on geology, see Ann Pizzorusso, “Leonardo’s Geology: The Authenticity of the Virgin of the Rocks,” Leonardo 29 (1996): 197–200, and Domenico Laurenza, “Leonardo’s Theory of the Earth: Unexplored Issues in Geology from the Codex Leicester,” in Leonardo and Nature, ed. Frosini and Nova, 257–67.
A sort of cavern: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Arundel, fol. 155r, on which see Carlo Vecce, “Leonardo e il ‘paragone’ della natura,” in Leonardo on Nature, ed. Frosini and Nova, 183–205.
“penetrated the depths of divine Wisdom”: Romans 11:33–36.
Marian symbols: Bernardinus de’ Bustis, Mariale. See also Syson and Keith, Leonardo Painter, 163, who commented that in this work Leonardo “established the ‘living presence’ of Mary and conveyed her spirit.”
collections of saints’ lives: de Voragine, Golden Legend, vol. 1:328–36; vol. 2:132–40; and Domenico Cavalca, Vite de’ Santi Padri, ed. Bartolommeo Sorio and A. Racheli (Milan: Presso l’Ufficio Generale di Commissione ed Annunzi, 1870), 403–40.
Feo Belcari: Feo Belcari, “Rappresentazione di San Giovanni Battista quando andò nel deserto,” in Feo Belcari, Sacre rappresentazioni e laude, ed. Onorato Allocco-Castellino (Turin, Italy: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1926), 31–51; Belcari wrote this text before 1470 and it was later expanded by Tommaso Benci.
sketches from his Florentine years: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 888r (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 263–64).
infrared photography of the Paris panel: Vincent Delieuvin, Bruno Mottin, and Élisabeth Ravaud, “The Paris Virgin of the Rocks: A New Approach Based on Scientific Analysis,” in Technical Practice, ed. Menu, 72–99.
“which best expresses through its actions the passion of its soul”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 109v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 584; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 144, although these authors translated the word animo as “mind,” and I prefer to translate it as “soul”).
addressed a petition to Ludovico: Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 253–55).
“my factory”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Leicester, fol. 9v.
“doctor-architect”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 730r (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 256).
Leonardo on Salai: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript C, fol. 15v.
Leonardo’s factory: Pietro C. Marani, “The Question of Leonardo’s Bottega, and the Transmission of Leonardo’s Ideas on Art and Painting,” in The Legacy of Leonardo: Painters in Lombardy 1490–1530, exhibition catalog, ed. Giulio Bora, Maria Teresa Fiorio, and Pietro Marani (Milan: Skira Editore, 1998), 370–80. Claire Farago, “Leonardo’s Workshop Procedures and the Trattato della Pittura,” in The Fabrication of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Trattato della Pittura,” ed. Claire Farago, Janis Bell, and Carlo Vecce, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2018), vol. 1:81–181.
Bernardo Bellincioni on Cecilia Gallerani: Villata, Documenti, 76.
“Every object devoid of color”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 19v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 281).
total solar eclipse: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Trivulzianus, fol. 6v.
“The moon”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript C, fol. 23r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 251).
“no visible object”: Ibid.
Leonardo’s search for books: Carlo Vecce, La biblioteca perduta: I libri di Leonardo (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2017), which includes the list of books Leonardo owned in 1494 and in 1503. See also Carlo Vecce, ed., Leonardo e i suoi libri, exhibition catalog, Biblioteca dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e Corsiniana, Rome (Rome: Bardi Edizoni, 2019).
“the blueness we see in the atmosphere”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Leicester, fol. 4r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 300).
“all the functions of the eye”: Alberti, On Painting, 41.
“many will say that this is useless work”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 327v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 10; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 9, although they translate the word sapienza as “wisdom,” while I prefer “knowledge,” and the word anima as “mind,” while I prefer “soul”).
“first study science [scienza]”: Leonardo da Vinci from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 32r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 54; English translation in McMahon, Treatise, no. 67).
painters “who are in love with practice”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 207r (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 52).
“the signpost and gateway” of painting: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript G, fol. 8r (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 52, although they translated the word prospettiva as “perspective,” and I prefer to translate it as “optics”).
“narrative paintings [storie] ought not to be crowded”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 97v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 578).
“like a sack of nuts”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript L, fol. 79r (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 130).
“wooden painter[s]”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript E, fol. 19v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 363; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 131).
“best expresses through its actions the passion of its soul”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 109v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 584; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 144).
“The good painter should paint two main things”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 60v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 180; English translation in Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:427; see also Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 144).
“I know well”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 327v (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 9).
“Foolish people”: Ibid.
“Though I may not know”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 323r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 11; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 9).
“soul of painting”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 81r.
“painting is grounded in optics […] a rational demonstration”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol.3r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 50; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 52).
“How shadows fade away at long distances”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 100v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 176).
“On the three kinds of light”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript E, fol. 3v (my translation revising Richter, Literary Works, no. 117).
Vitruvian Man: Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 2:226. See Toby Lester, Da Vinci’s Ghost (New York: Free Press, 2012), for an engaging overview of this famous image.
“spiritual virtue”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Arundel, fol. 151r (English translation in Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:428).
“accomplish little […] which chord or muscle”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fols. 110v–11r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 303; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 130).
“lips with teeth clenched”: Leonardo da Vinci, Notes on Topics to Be Investigated, 1489, Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle, RCIN 919059v; this note is on the back of one Leonardo’s skull studies.
“sketch in the bones”: Alberti, On Painting, 41.
“The ancient called man”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 55v.
“embraces all the ten functions of the eye”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 102v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 23; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 16).
“The painter […] must pay great attention […] manner of smoke”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 107v (partial English translation in Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:446).
“Which is best”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 105v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 486).
“Begin with drawing”: Cennino Cennini, Il libro dell’arte: A New English Translation and Commentary and Italian Transcription, ed. Lara Broecke (London: Archetype Publications, 2015), 26–27.
“The boundaries [termini] of two conterminous bodies”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Arundel, fol. 130r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 46).
“wooden effect”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 94v.
three kinds of perspective: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 98r.
“the convergence of shadow [rays] with light rays”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript C, fol. 4r.
“a mixed and blurred appearance”: Ibid., fol. 9v.
“no object […] will ever”: Ibid., fol. 23r.
“optics adds knowledge”: Ibid., fol. 27v.
“the master and guide of optics”: Ibid., fol. 27v.
first studies dedicated to these shadow drawings: Anna Maria Brizio, Razzi incidenti e razzi refressi, Lettura Vinciana 3 (Florence: Barbera Editore, 1963), 3.
“shadow partakes of the nature of universal matter”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 101v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 122).
“eminent orators”: Luca Pacioli, De divina proportione (Venice: Paganino Paganini, 1509), 1r.
“crowned with poetry”: Cennini, Libro dell’arte, 20.
“subtle speculations”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 99r.
“higher mental discourse”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 24v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 40).
“depict transparent bodies”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 105r (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 42).
“show the colors”: Ibid.
“veiled figures which show their nude skin”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 25r–26v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 41).
“aerial perspective is absent”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 105r (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 42).
“the lord and creator”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 5r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 13).
“kin of god […] granddaughter of nature”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 100r (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 13).
“Let no one”: Leonardo da Vinci, The Heart and Coronary Vessels, 1511–13, Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle, RCIN 919073v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 3).
“On the Order of the Book”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 676r (per Pedretti, Richter: Commentary, vol. 1:153, this folio was once part of Manuscript C) (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 111; and Martin Clayton and Ron Philo, Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Man [Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010], 10).
“a group of artists”: Marani, “Leonardo’s Bottega,” 15.
“here a record shall be kept”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Madrid II, fol. 157v.
Leonardo’s Last Supper: See Ross King, Leonardo and the Last Supper (London: Bond Street Books, 2012), for an overview; and Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:412–57, for a detailed assessment. On the last restoration, which lasted twenty years, from 1977 to 1997, see the important book by Pinin Brambilla Barcilon and Pietro C. Marani, Leonardo: The Last Supper (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2001). For a detailed analysis of the gestures of each figure and of the moments of the history that are represented in Leonardo’s mural, see Leo Steinberg, Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper (New York: Zone Books, 2001), which is an enlarged and revised version of his foundational essay from 1973. See Villata, Documenti, 262–65, on Cardinal d’Aragona and Antonio de Beatis’s visit to the Last Supper in December 1517; de Beatis remarked that the apostles were “portraits made from life after many figures from the court and after Milanese men of that time who were of great stature.”
“started to fall into ruin”: Steinberg, Leonardo’s Incessant, 16.
“the dump in the wall”: Ibid.
“nothing but a blurred stain”: Ibid.
“in a state of total ruin”: Ibid.
“[Of] the horse I shall say nothing”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 914r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 1345; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 255).
“One, who was drinking”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Forster II, fols. 62v and 63r (English translation in Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:435–36; see also Richter nos. 665 and 666; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 227–28).
“Many times he used to go”: Bandello, Tutte le opere, 646–50 (English translation from Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:416).
“with hushed voices”: Ibid.
“an exquisite image”: Pacioli, De divina proportione (English translation from Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:417); Pacioli wrote his comments in February 1498, although they were published eleven years later, in 1509.
“the duke lost his duchy”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript L, inside of front cover.
“You must first represent the smoke”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fols. 110v and 111r (English translations in Richter, Literary Works, nos. 601 and 602; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 228–33). On this passage by Leonardo, see the beautiful essay by Carlo Vecce, Le battaglie di Leonardo: Codice A, ff 111r e110v, “Modo di fare una battaglia,” Lettura Vinciana 51 (Florence: Giunti, 2012). For an engaging overview, see Jonathan Jones, The Lost Battles: Leonardo, Michelangelo and the Artistic Duel That Defined the Renaissance (London: Vintage Books, 2013). For a thorough scholarly analysis, see Michael W. Cole, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and the Art of Figure (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015); and Roberta Barsanti, Gianluca Belli, Emanuela Ferretti, and Cecilia Frosinini, eds., Leonardo e la Sala Grande: Un nuovo approccio (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2020). The size of Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari is estimated in Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 2:370; see ibid., 346–80, for an exhaustive discussion of Leonardo’s mural. On the Tavola Doria, the oldest copy of Leonardo’s battle scene, see Cecilia Frosinini, “Del cartone e della pittura nella vexata questio della Battaglia di Anghiari,” in La Tavola Doria tra mito e storia, ed. Cristina Acidini and Marco Ciatti (Florence: Edifir, 2015), 23–34.
“If you, poet”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 6r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 15; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 28).
“at the very moment”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Madrid II, fol. 1r (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 264).
la scuola del mondo: Benvenuto Cellini, La Vita, ed. Lorenzo Bellotto (Parma, Italy: Fondazione Pietro Bembo and Ugo Guanda Editore, 1996), 45. On these cartoons, see the important essay by Carmen Bambach, “The Purchase of Cartoon Paper for Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari and Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascina,” I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 8 (1999): 105–33. Leonardo worked on another mural painting for the duke of Milan, the Sala delle Asse in the Sforza Castle, but did not move beyond the drawing stage in that work, on which see the important book by Michela Palazzo and Francesca Tasso, eds., Leonardo da Vinci: The Sala delle Asse of the Sforza Castle: Diagnostic Testing and Restoration of the Monochrome (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2017).
“Excellent painters […] when the judgment”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 131v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 406; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 197).
“from time to time he puts his hand”: Pietro da Novellara’s letter from Florence to Isabella d’Este in Mantua, April 3, 1501, about his visit to Leonardo (Villata, Documenti, 134–35; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 271–75).
Leonardo’s Leda: In addition to chapters in biographies on the artist, see Gigetta Dalli Regoli, Romano Nanni, and Antonio Natali, eds., Leonardo e il mito di Leda: Modelli, memorie e metamorfosi di un’invenzione (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2001); and Romano Nanni and Maria Chiara Monaco, eds., Leda: storia di un mito dalle origini a Leonardo (Florence: Zeta Scropii, 2007).
“If you will study”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 34v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 65; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 194).
Leonardo’s Virgin and Child with Saint Anne: In addition to chapters in biographies on the artists, see Vincent Delieuvin, ed., La Sainte Anne: L’ultime chef-d’-oeuvre de Léonard de Vinci, exhibition catalog, Paris Musée du Louvre (Paris: Louvre Éditions, 2012); and Cinzia Pasquali, “Leonardo’s Painting Technique in the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne,” in Leonardo da Vinci and Optics, ed. Fiorani and Nova, 185–93, for an excellent assessment of the painting technique.
componimento inculto: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Book on Painting, fol. 62r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 189).
“Apelles the painter”: Agostino Vespucci, published in Delieuvin, La Sainte Anne, 120.
Leonardo’s Mona Lisa: The scholarship on the Mona Lisa is extensive. In addition to chapters in biographies on the artist, I have found most helpful the following books: Paul Barolsky, Why Mona Lisa Smiles and Other Tales by Vasari (University Park: Penn State University, 1991), for an important interpretation of Vasari’s famous text; Donald Sassoon, Becoming Mona Lisa (New York: Harcourt, 2001), as a great introduction to the painting and to how it became an icon of Western civilization; Jean-Pierre Mohen, Michel Menu, and Bruno Mottin, eds., Mona Lisa: Inside the Painting (New York: Abrams, 2006), for a superb analysis of its painting technique; Martin Kemp and Giuseppe Pallanti, Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), for a thorough analysis of documents pertaining to the Gherardini and del Giocondo families; and Delieuvin, La Sainte Anne, 162–65, 234–35, for discussion of the Madrid Mona Lisa and in general the issues of copies made in Leonardo’s workshop.
Leonardo and the del Giocondo family: Kemp and Pallanti, Mona Lisa, 47–51.
Mona Lisa’s smile: Vasari, Life of Leonardo, 94–97; Barolsky, Why Mona Lisa Smiles.
“paint layers used in flesh tones”: Laurence de Viguerie, Philippe Walter, Eric Laval, Bruno Mottin, and V. Armando Solé, “Revealing the Sfumato Technique of Leonardo da Vinci by X-Ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy,” Angewandte Chemie International Edition 49 (2010): 1.
Leonardo’s Saint John the Baptist: Valeria Merlini and Daniela Storti, eds., Leonardo a Milano: San Giovanni Battista (Milan: Skira, 2009); Delieuvin and Frank, Léonard de Vinci, 314–15.
“the problematic relation between the spirit”: Paul Barolsky, “The Mysterious Meaning of Leonardo’s Saint John the Baptist,” Source: Notes in the History of Art 8 (Spring 1989): 15.
“In the pit of the throat”: Vasari, Life of Leonardo, 94; on this important sentence, see Fredrika H. Jacobs, The Living Image in Renaissance Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
“on the night of Saint Andrew”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Madrid II, fol. 112r.
“the transformation of a body”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Forster I, fol. 3r.
“As man has in him bones”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 55v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 929).
“This [notebook] will be a collection”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Arundel, fol. 1r (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 264–65). On Leonardo’s anatomical studies, see the excellent book by Clayton and Philo, Mechanics of Man, on which my discussion is based: 10 (on the four “universal conditions of man”); 20 (on the order of his anatomy book around 1510, and on Leonardo’s intention to bind his anatomical studies); 20 (on Leonardo’s claim that he did “more than thirty” dissections); 21 (on Paolo Giovio’s comment that Leonardo intended to publish his anatomy “from copper engravings for the benefit of art”); 77 (on “the purpose of each muscles” and why it is good for sculptors to know about it); 97 (on views showing the turning of shoulders). See also Domenico Laurenza, De figura humana: fisiognomica, anatomia e arte in Leonardo (Florence: Olschki, 2001).
“A shadow is made of infinite darkness”: Leonardo da Vinci, Notes on Painting, Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle, RCIN 919076r.
“without optics nothing can be done”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript G, fol. 8r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 19; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 52).
“Of the usefulness of shadows”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 752r (English translation in Pedretti, Richter: Commentary, vol. 1:154.
vetturale della natura: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript K, fol. 2r. On Leonardo and water, see Leslie A. Geddes, Watermarks: Leonardo da Vinci and the Mastery of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020).
“My depiction of the human body”: Leonardo da Vinci, Notes on the structure of the treatise on anatomy, 1489 and c. 1508, Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle, RCIN 919037v.
“cosmography of the Microcosmos”: Leonardo da Vinci, Notes on the Study of Anatomy, c. 1510–13, Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle, RCIN 919061r.
“begin the anatomy”: Leonardo da Vinci, The Throat and the Muscles of the Leg, Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle, RCIN 919002r (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 800).
“dissected the corpses of criminals”: Giovio, in Vecce, Leonardo, 355.
“in the winter of this year, 1510”: Leonardo da Vinci, The tendons of the lower leg and foot, 1510–11, Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle, RCIN 919016 (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 265).
“have your books on anatomy bound”: Leonardo da Vinci, miscellaneous notes and anatomical sketches, Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle, RCIN 919070v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 7).
“I left Milan for Rome”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript E, fol. 1r (English translations in Richter, Literary Works, no. 1465; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 267).
called him “Donnino”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript M, fol. 53v (English translations in Richter, Literary Works, no. 1427).
“a cordial, dear and delightful associate”: Donato Bramante, Antiquarie prospettiche Romane (Rome, c. 1500), 1.
Leonardo’s lodging in the Vatican: Villata, Documenti, 244–46.
on finishing a book on geometry: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 244v (English translations in Richter, Literary Works, no. 1376B; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 265).
“rules for proceeding to infinity”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 124v.
“Observe the motion of the surface of water”: Leonardo da Vinci, Studies of Water and Seated Old Man, Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle, RCIN 912579.
“Write of swimming under water”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 571r.
“You will show the degress of falling rain”: Leonardo da Vinci, Studies of Clouds, Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle, RCIN 912380.
Baldassare Castiglione: Baldassarre Castiglione, Il libro del cortigiano (Turin, Italy: Einaudi, 1998), 176 (quoted in Roberto Antonelli and Antonio Forcellino, eds., Leonardo a Roma: Influenze ed Ereditá, exhibition catalog, Rome, Villa La Farnesina [Rome: Bardi Edizioni, 2019], 133).
visitor at Cloux: Report by Antonio de’ Beatis on the visit of Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona to Leonardo in 1517, published in Vecce, Leonardo, 332–33; and Villata, Documenti, 262–65.
Leonardo’s death: Vasari, Life of Leonardo, 102–104.
Giovanni Francesco Melzi: See the brief but important essay by Kenneth Clark, “Francesco Melzi as Preserver of Leonardo da Vinci’s Drawings,” in Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art Presented to Anthony Blum on His 60th Birthday (London: Phaidon, 1967), 24–25, which first identified Melzi’s fundamental role in preserving Leonardo’s drawings and notebooks. Also important are Bora, Fiorio, and Marani, eds., The Legacy of Leonardo, 370–80; Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 3:519–33), which elucidates how Melzi retouched Leonardo’s drawings and writings; Cecilia Frosinini, Claudio Gulli, Letizia Montalbano, and Francesca Rossi, “La Testa di Leda del Castello Sforzesco fra Leonardo e Francesco Melzi,” OPD Restauro: Rivista dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure e Laboratori di Restauro di Firenze 25 (2013): 324–42, for an assessment of Melzi’s work as an artist; and Rossana Sacchi, “Per la biografia (e la geografia) di Francesco Melzi,” ACME (2017): 145–61, for documents on the Melzi family, including those showing that from 1531 onward, Francesco Melzi no longer resided in the Villa at Vaprio, where Leonardo had stayed, but in a nearby villa at Pontirolo, in a locality called Canonica, where he must have kept Leonardo’s papers.
“the consuming and passionate love”: Melzi’s letter from Cloux to Leonardo’s brothers in Florence announcing the artist’s death, June 1, 1519, published in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 279.
“Salai, I want peace”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 663v, published in Pedretti, Richter: Commentary, vol. 1:342.
“Good day Messer Francesco”: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 1037v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 1350; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 259–60).
“to imitate with very simple marks”: Giovio in Vecce, Leonardo, 355 (English translation in Pedretti, Richter: Commentary, vol. 1:11).
Melzi’s first drawing: Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 3:519–33.
“paints extremely well”: Giovanni Ambrogio Mazenta, Alcune memorie de’ fatti di Leonardo da Vinci a Milano e de’ suoi libri (Milan: Editori Alfieri e Lacroix, 1909); Mazenta wrote this text in the early 1630s.
Leonardo’s will: Published in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 275–78. On Salai’s inheritance of Leonardo’s paintings, see Janice Shell and Grazioso Sironi, “Salaì and Leonardo’s Legacy,” Burlington Magazine 133 (1991): 95–108.
Melzi’s letter to Leonardo’s stepbrothers: Published in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 279.
“as if they were relics”: Vasari, Life of Leonardo, 92.
Melzi’s work on Leonardo’s notebooks: Fundamental and unsurpassed is Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, on which my discussion is based. Another important book for an in-depth analysis of the cultural and philosophical context of Leonardo’s art theory is Claire Farago, A Critical Interpretation of Leonardo da Vinci’s Paragone, with a New Edition of the Text in the Codex Urbinas (Leiden: Brill, 1992).
“optics is the signpost and gateway of painting”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript G, fol. 8r (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 52).
“Whether Painting Is a Science or Not”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 1 (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 1; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 13–14).
“the mother of every certainty”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 19r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 33; English translation, Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 10).
“a mental discourse”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 1 (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 1).
“greater mental exertion”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 20v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 36).
“ten different discourses”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 21v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 36).
“how the eye”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 4v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 11).
“man and the intentions of his mind”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 180; English translation in Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 1:427; see also Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 144).
“ought to move those who behold”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 61v (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 188; English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 220).
“to show the disposition”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 167r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 529).
fifth section, “On Shadow and Light”: In his list of notebooks by Leonardo that he used to compile the Libro di pittura, Melzi mentioned two notebooks on light and shadow although he ended up using only one. One notebook was marked with the letter G and corresponds to the notebook known today as Manuscript C (it still has Melzi’s identifying G on its cover); Leonardo had written it in 1491–1492, when he was in his forties, had completed the first version of the Virgin of the Rocks, and had taken Salai into the workshop, but Melzi did not use this notebook. The second notebook was marked with the letter W but unfortunately did not come down to us; Melzi must have used this second notebook as his primary source for section five; we can surmise that he knew that this notebook marked W was more advanced than the notebook marked G. This means that section five of Melzi’s compilation is the best source we have to document Leonardo’s most advanced thoughts on light and shadow, a fundamental part of his art theory.
The previous sections of the book: A glaring omission from Melzi’s Book on Painting is anatomy. As we know, anatomy was fundamental to Leonardo’s science of art and the artist had illustrated it in numerous, stunning drawings, many at an advanced stage of elaboration. We do not know why Melzi did not include human anatomy in his compilation. But one possible explanation is that he planned to do so but that after 1543 that section became obsolete. That year, Andreas Vesalius, On the Fabric of the Human Body (De humani corporis fabrica) (Basel: Ex officina Joannis Oporini, 1543), was published, a fact that made Leonardo’s anatomy for artists obsolete. Vesalius’s book followed closely Leonardo’s scheme in stripping the body down to the bones step-by-step in a series of splendid anatomical tables that moved from the general body to its parts. Today, Melzi’s Libro di pittura has some missing pages, the folios from 86r to 103v, which were originally placed between sections 2 and 3 and which most likely were discarded later. One wonders, though, what Melzi had in mind for those pages—were they reserved for human anatomy?
Lomazzo on Melzi: Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Trattato della pittura, scoltura et architettura (Milan: Pier Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1584), 106.
Mazenta on Melzi: Mazenta, Alcune memorie, no pagination.
Vasari on Melzi: Vasari, Life of Leonardo, 92.
Renaissance rulers and art for political legitimacy: Loren Partridge and Randolph Starn, Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy 1300–1600 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); and Julian Klieman, Gesta dipinte: La grande decorazione nelle dimore italiane dal Quattrocento al Seicento (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 1993).
Cosimo I de’ Medici and art for political legitimacy: Janet Cox Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X, and the Two Cosimos (1984); Partridge and Starn, Arts of Power, 151–255; Francesca Fiorani, The Marvel of Maps: Art, Cartography, and Politics in Renaissance Italy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 17–139.
Giorgio Vasari’s Lives: Patricia Rubin, Giorgio Vasari: Art and History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995); Paul Barolsky, Why Mona Lisa Smiles; Thomas Frangenberg, “Bartoli, Giambullari and the Prefaces to Vasari’s ‘Lives’ (1550),” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 65 (2002): 244–58; Charles Hope, “Vasari’s Vite as a Collaborative Project,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Giorgio Vasari, ed. David J. Cast (London: Routledge, 2013), 11–22; Eliana Carrara, “Reconsidering the Authorship of the ‘Lives’: Some Observations and Methodological Questions on Vasari as Writer,” Studi di Memofonte 15 (2015): 53–90. For further reading in Italian: Barbara Agosti, Giorgio Vasari: Luoghi e tempi delle “Vite” (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2013).
“as a historian”: Vasari from Lives, quoted in Rubin, Vasari, 40–41.
“It is my task to dwell upon those actions”: Ibid.
“If you wish to study well”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 107v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 492; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 198).
Vasari’s biography on Leonardo: Vasari, Life of Leonardo integrates the 1550 and the 1568 editions of Vasari’s biography of Leonardo; for an analysis of Vasari’s biography see Patricia Rubin, “What Men Saw: Vasari’s Life of Leonardo da Vinci and the Image of the Renaissance Artist,” Art History 13 (1990): 34–46; Paul Barolsky, “Vasari and the Historical Imagination,” Word and Image 15 (1990): 286–91; Richard Turner, Inventing Leonardo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 55–67; Charles Hope, “The Biography of Leonardo in Vasari’s Lives,” in The Lives of Leonardo, ed. Thomas Frangenberg and Rodney Palmer (London: Warburg Institute, 2013), 11–28. None of these studies comment on Vasari’s view of Leonardo’s optics.
Paolo Giovio: Giovio, in Carlo Vecce, Leonardo, 355, and in Villata, Documenti, 291. No other biographer mentioned optics among Leonardo’s accomplishments. Antonio Billi, who wrote his biography between 1516 and 1525, is silent on the matter. Anonimo Gaddiano briefly mentions that Leonardo “was knowledgeable in mathematics and optics” (quoted in Vecce, Leonardo, 360). See also Barbara Agosti, “Qualche nota su Paolo Giovio (‘gonzaghissimo’) e le arti figurative,” Prospettiva 97 (2000): 51–62, for an important assessment of Giovio’s biography vis-à-vis Vasari’s. Giovio was among those who suggested to Vasari to dedicate his book to Cosimo I (Silvia Ginzburg, “Filologia e storia dell’arte: Il ruolo di Vincenzio Borghini nella genesi della Torrentiniana,” in Testi, immagini e filologia nel XVI secolo, ed. Eliana Carrara and Silvia Ginzburg (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2007), 147–203.
“And it shows!”: Annibale Caro’s letter to Giorgio Vasari, May 10, 1548, published in Annibale Caro, Lettere familiari, ed. Aulo Greco, 3 vols. (Florence: Le Monnier, 1957–61), vol. 2:62–64.
“in 100 months […] done the whole thing myself”: Giorgio Vasari, “Descrizione delle opere di Giorgio Vasari pittore e architetto Aretino,” in Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori, nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Paola Barocchi and Rosanna Bettarini, 6 vols. (Florence, Sansoni, 1966–1987), vol. 6:388.
“Alas! This man will not do anything”: Vasari, Life of Leonardo, 102.
relations between Vasari, Borghini, and Cosimo: Richard Scorza, “Borghini and the Florentine Academies,” in Italian Academies of the Sixteenth Century, ed. David S. Chambers and Francois Quiviger (London: Warburg Institute, 1995), 137–53; Robert Williams, “Vasari and Vincenzo Borghini,” in Companion to Giorgio Vasari, ed. Cast, 23–39; Richard Scorza, “‘Ricerca storica e invenzione’: la collaborazione di Borghini con Cosimo I e Francesco, rapporti con gli artisti, gli apparati effimeri,” in Vincenzo Borghini: Filologia e invenzione nella Firenze di Cosimo I, ed. Gino Belloni and Riccardo Drusi, exhibition catalog, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence (Florence: Olschki, 2013), 61–148.
Accademia del Disegno: Nikolaus Pevsner, Academies of Art: Past and Present (New York: Da Capo Press, 1973; reprint of 1st ed., 1940), which investigates also how later academies were modeled after the Accademia del Disegno; Zygmunt Wabiski, L’Accademia medicea del Disegno a Firenze nel Cinquecento (Florence: Olschki, 1987), 2 vols.; K. Barzman, The Florentine Academy and the Early Modern Discipline of Disegno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Eliana Carrara, “Vincenzo Borghini, Lelio Torelli e l’Accademia del disegno di Firenze: alcune considerazioni,” Annali di critica d’arte (2006): 556 (on the Vincenzo Borghini quote “That pig of Benvenuto”); Chambers and Quiviger, Italian Academies. Alyna Paine, The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance: Architectural Invention, Ornament and Literary Cultue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), on textbooks on architecture used at the academy. Robert Williams, “Leonardo and the Florentine Academy,” in Re-reading Leonardo, 61–76, discusses a lecture on Leonardo delivered at the academy.
Borghini’s inaugural lecture at the art academy: Published in Karl Frey, Der Literarische Nachlass Giorgio Vasaris, 3 vols. (Munich: G. Muller, 1923–30; reprint edition, Hildeshiem, Germany: 1982); Borghini delivered it at the first meeting of the academy on January 31, 1563.
“an academy to DO rather than TALK”: Published in Robert Williams, Art, Theory, and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 61.
“a tortoise”: Vincenzo Borghini, “Sulle lettere del Tribolo, del Tasso e di Michelangelo,” in Paola Barocchi, Scritti d’arte del Cinquecento, 2 vols. (Turin: Einaudi, 1979), see vol. 1:614; vol. 1:613–73, for Borghini’s views on the paragone, which were inspired by the letters written by various artists around 1540 but possibly also by knowledge of Leonardo’s views as they were reported in Melzi’s Book on Painting, which may have been in Florence in the 1560s.
“a universal HISTORY”: August 11, 1564, published in Frey, Nachlass, vol. 2:98.
“in ugly characters”: Vasari, Life of Leonardo, 92.
“It is a remarkable thing”: Ibid., 77–78.
The doctored copies of Melzi’s Book on Painting (Libro di pittura): Kate T. Steinitz, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Trattato della Pittura”: A Bibliography (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1958), is a pioneering study, and although it is now largely superseded, it did gather for the first time the then-known doctored copies. Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo da Vinci on Painting: A Lost Book (Libro A), 95–174, is a fundamental study of Leonardo’s intention in writing his own book on painting and a perceptive assessment of the genesis and circulation of the doctored copies. Carlo Pedretti, Richter: Commentary, vol. 1:12–86, studies the doctored copies. See also Ernst Gombrich, “The Trattato della Pittura: Some Questions and Desiderata,” in Leonardo e l’etá della ragione, ed. Enrico Bellone and Paolo Rossi (Milan: Scientia, 1982), 141–58; Francesca Fiorani, “Danti Edits Vignola: The Formation of a Modern Classic on Perspective,” in The Treatise on Perspective: Published and Unpublished, ed. Lyle Massey (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2003), 127–59; Francesca Fiorani, “The Shadows of Leonardo’s Annunciation”; Claire Farago, Re-reading Leonardo, especially the following essays: Martin Kemp and Juliana Barone, “What Might Leonardo’s Own Trattato Have Looked Like? And What Did It Actually Look Like up to the Time of the Editio Princeps?,” 39–60; Claire Farago, “Who Abridged Leonardo da Vinci’s Treatise on Painting?,” 77–106; and Michael W. Cole, “On the Movement of Figures in Some Early Apographs of the Abridged Trattato,” 107–26. Farago, Bell, and Vecce, The Fabrication, especially the following essays: Claire Farago, “On the Origins of the Trattato and the Earliest Reception of the Libro di pittura,” 213–40; and Anna Sconza, “The Earliest Abridged Copies of the Libro di pittura in Florence,” 241–62. Most of the existing doctored copies of Melzi’s Book on Painting are available digitally in Leonardo da Vinci and His Treatise on Painting, ed. Francesca Fiorani.
“Painter, if you want to be universal”: Leonardo da Vinci, from Melzi, Libro di pittura, fol. 34r (Pedretti and Vecce, Libro di pittura, chapter 61). In one of the earliest doctored copies, titled “Discorso sopra il disegno di Lionardo da Vinci, Parte second a,” this passage corresponds to chapter 9 (Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Codex Riccardiano 3208, fol. 3r).
place of origin of doctored copies: Farago, “On the Origins,” argues that Melzi’s Book on Painting was abridged in Milan, while Pedretti, Richter: Commentary, vol. 1:12–46, and Sconza, “The Earliest Abridged Copies,” argue that it was abridged in Florence. I share the latter view.
“First a youth needs to learn optics”: Florence, Biblioteca Riccardinana, Codex Riccardiano 3208, fol. 1v.
“wrote some very beautiful precepts”: Raffaello Borghini, Il Riposo (Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1584), 371.
“for the common good”: Galeazzo Arconati’s letter from Milan to a “Reverendissiomo Padre” in Rome, August 7, 1635 (published in Steinitz, Trattato, 218). An excellent introduction to art and patronage in seventeenth-century Rome, with special attention to Urban VIII, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, and Cassiano dal Pozzo, is Francis Haskell, Patrons and Painters: Art and Society in Baroque Italy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980), 3–166. David Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002), is a superb study on the interactions between art and science in Baroque Rome.
Cassiano dal Pozzo: Donatella L. Sparti, Le collezioni dal Pozzo: Storia di una famiglia e del suo Museo nella Roma seicentesca (Modena, Italy: Panini, 1992); Francesco Solinas, ed., I segreti di un collezionista: Le straordinarie raccolte di Cassiano dal Pozzo 1588–1657, exhibition catalog, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome (Rome: Edizioni De Luca, 2000); Anna Nicolò, ed., Il carteggio di Cassiano dal Pozzo: Catalogo (Florence: Olschki, 1991).
“paper museum”: These volumes are now kept at Windsor Castle, Royal Collection Trust, and other European museums. They are available digitally at https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/research/research-projects/paper-museum-cassiano-dal-pozzo.
Cassiano’s volume on citrus: David Freedberg and Enrico Baldini, eds. (with contributions by Giovanni Continella, Eugenio Tribulato, and Eileen Kinghan), Citrus Fruit (London: Harvey Miller, 1997).
Cassiano’s visit to Paris: Cassiano dal Pozzo, “Diarium,” published in Daniela del Pesco, “Au château de Fontainebleau avec Cassiano dal Pozzo en 1625,” in Fontainebleau: La vraie demeure de rois, la maison des siècles (Paris: Swan Editeur, 2015), 21–71; 55 (for comments on the Mona Lisa).
“lie neglected under the roof”: Mazenta, Memorie, no pagination. On the dispersion of Leonardo’s writings after Francesco Melzi’s death, see Bambach, Leonardo Rediscovered, vol. 4:1–3, 30–31, which discusses also the notebooks by Leonardo Mazenta may have owned.
Cassiano’s editorial work on Leonardo’s book on painting: Juliana Barone, “Seventeenth-Century Transformations: Cassiano dal Pozzo’s Manuscript Copy of the Abridged Libro di pittura,” in Farago, Bell, and Vecce, Fabrication, vol. 1:263–99, on which my discussion is based. Barone clarified that “Cassiano’s project aimed at rescuing textual accuracy, while the illustrations offered a different visual message in the service of a new aesthetic ideal” (vol. 1:263). On Cassiano’s work on Leonardo’s writings as well as his relations to Mazenta, Arconati, and other scholars and collectors, see Janis Bell, “Zaccolini, Dal Pozzo and Leonardo’s Writings in Rome and Milan,” Mitteilungen des Kusthistorishes Institutes im Florenz 61 (2019): 309–33; and Janis Bell, “Zaccolini e Milano: Nuove indagini, nuove attribuzioni,” in L’ereditá culturale e artistica di Matteo Zaccolini, ed. Marino Mengozzi (Cesena: Biblioteca Malatestiana, 2020), 43–72.
“chapters in which we have difficulty”: Arconati’s letter from Milan to Cassiano in Rome, Milan, Venerabile Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Codex H 227 inf., fol. 125, published in Barone, “Seventeenth-Century Transformations,” 269–70. The twelve notebooks by Leonardo that Arconati owned and used to answer Cassiano’s queries were eleven notebooks Leonardo himself assembled, and one gigantic volume that had been assembled by the sculptor Pompeo Leoni in the early seventeenth century, out of thousands of loose folios, known today as Codex Atlanticus because its size is as big as the Atlantic Ocean.
“to receive what I am expecting”: Cassiano dal Pozzo’s letter from Rome to Padre Gallo and Galeazzo Arconati in Milan, October 16, 1639 (published in Steinitz, Trattato, 228).
“the capricious, or better still”: Milan, Venerabile Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Manuscript H227 inf., fol. 57r–57v, published in Carlo Pedretti, “Copies of Leonardo’s Lost Writings in the MS H227 inf. of the Ambrosiana Library in Milan,” Raccolta Vinciana 19 (1962): 64–65.
shadow drawing from Milan: Milan, Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Codex H227 inf., fols. 1–54, on which see Pedretti, “Copies of Leonardo’s Lost Writings”; Pedretti established that the shadow drawings were copies of Leonardo’s originals contained in the notebook known today as Manuscript C.
Cassiano’s handwritten master copy: Milan, Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Codex H228 inf. Cassiano included in this master copy the text of the doctored version of Melzi’s Book on Painting and some additional materials he thought would be useful for the editing work, including Vasari’s chapter on Leonardo and Mazenta’s Memorie, the essay Mazenta had written at Cassiano’s request to document the whereabouts of Leonardo’s notebooks. On this master copy, see Barone, “Seventeenth-Century Transformations.”
Nicolas Poussin: Engaging introductions on Poussin are Jacques Thuillier, Nicolas Poussin (Paris: Fayard, 1988); and Elizabeth Cropper and Charles Dempsey, Nicolas Poussin: Friendship and the Love of Painting (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). Jacques Thuillier, ed., Nicolas Poussin: Lettres et propos sur l’art (Paris: Collection Savoir Hermann, 1989), is a collection of Poussin’s letters and his writings on art.
Poussin’s work on Leonardo’s sketches: Elizabeth Cropper, “Poussin and Leonardo: Evidence from the Zaccolini MSS,” Art Bulletin 62 (1980): 570–83; Janis Bell, “Cassiano dal Pozzo’s Copy of the Zaccolini Manuscripts,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988): 103–25; Francesca Fiorani, “Abraham Bosse e le prime critiche al ‘Trattato della Pittura’ di Leonardo,” Achademia Leonardi Vinci 5 (1992): 78–95; Francesca Fiorani, “The Theory of Shadow Projection and Aerial Perspective: Leonardo, Desargues and Bosse,” in Desargues en son temps, ed. Jean Dhombres and Jean Sakarovitch (Paris: Librairie scientifique A. Blanchard, 1994), 267–82; Juliana Barone, “Illustrations of Figures by Nicholas Poussin and Stefano della Bella in Leonardo’s Trattato,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 143 (2001): 1–14; Juliana Barone, “Seventeenth-Century Illustrations for the Chapters on Motion in Leonardo’s Trattato,” in The Rise of the Image: Essays on the History of the Illustrated Art Book, ed. Thomas Frangenberg and Rodney Palmer (London: Routledge, 2003), 23–49; Donatella L. Sparti, “Cassiano dal Pozzo: Poussin and the Making and Publication of Leonardo’s Trattato,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 66 (2003): 143–88; Juliana Barone, “Poussin as Engineer of the Human Figure: The Illustrations for Leonardo’s Trattato,” in Re-reading Leonardo, ed. Farago, 197–236; Pauline Robison, “Leonardo’s Trattato della pittura, Nicolas Poussin, and the Pursuit of Eloquence in Seventeenth-Century France,” in Leonardo da Vinci and the Ethics of Style, ed. Claire Farago (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 189–236; Barone, “Seventeenth-Century Transformations.”
not “satisfied to simply read”: André Félibien, Life of Poussin, ed. Claire Pace (London: Zwemmer, 1981), 114.
“Mr. Poussin must return one [book]”: Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Codex H227 inf., title page, published in Steinitz, Trattato, 99–100). This manuscript contains added materials Cassiano had received from Milan, including the shadow drawings copied from Leonardo’s Manuscript C (see Pedretti, “Copies of Leonardo’s Lost Writings,” 62 and fig. 1).
“without cease”: Félibien, Life of Poussin.
“a young man who has the fury”: Giovambattista Marino’s letter to Cardinal Barberini, quoted in Poussin: Lettres, 11.
“I beg you”: Poussin’s letter to Cassiano, 1629, in Poussin: Lettres, 35.
Poussin’s friends in Rome: The sculptor François Duquesnoy (1597–1643), with whom Poussin lodged for a while in 1626, when he had no other place to go. The painters Jean Lemaire (1598–1659) and Jacques Stella (1596–1657), who were already in Rome when Poussin arrived in 1624. The engraver Charles Errard (1606–1689), who worked for Cassiano and later engraved the illustrations for Leonardo’s printed book. Raphael Trichet Du Fresne (1611–1661), an avid book collector and expert in numismatics and antiquity who lived in Rome from 1637 to 1639 and who edited Leonardo’s printed book. The libertine philosopher Pierre Bourdelot (1610–1685), to whom Trichet dedicated the Italian printed book. The French brothers Roland Fréart de Chambray (1606–1676) and Paul Fréart de Chantelou (1609–1694), who were steeped in artistic matters at the French court as their uncle François Sublet de Noyers (1589–1643) was the secretary of state of the French king and his superintendent of royal buildings.
Poussin on Caravaggio: Félibien, in Poussin: Lettres, 196.
“did not neglect anything”: Quoted in Thuillier, Poussin, 21.
Poussin “spoke cleverly on optics”: Félibien, in Poussin: Lettres, 195.
Poussin’s comments on the Israelites: Poussin’s letter from Rome to Chantelou in Paris, April 28, 1636, published in Poussin: Lettres, 45.
“the procedure” … was “very difficult to execute”: Abraham Bosse, Manière universelle de Mr. Desargues, pour pratiquer la perspective par petit-pied, comme le geometral (Paris, 1648), 177–78, reporting the opinion of his master, Girard Desargues, which was first expressed in an essay on stone cutting that Desargues wrote in 1640, on which see Judith V. Field and J. J. Gray, The Geometrical Works of Girard Desargues (London: Springer-Verlag, London, 1987), 14–15. Bosse’s book includes over one hundred pages (out of three hundred) and fifteen illustrations on aerial perspective and on light and shade, a discussion that was based on Leonardo’s shadow drawings, although Bosse never credited Leonardo for it. Poussin could have sent this shadow drawing to either Jacques Stella, who had left Rome for Paris in 1635, become royal painter, and lived at the Louvre (the two wrote each other regularly, and their letters were treasured in the Stella family for centuries but have since been lost), or to Jean Lemaire, who also was back in Paris from at least 1637 and who often helped Poussin as an intermediary with his Parisian patrons; or to one of the Fréart brothers. See also Fiorani, “The Theory of Shadow Projection.”
rule for the use of strong and delicate colors: Field and Gray, Desargues, 157.
shadow drawings Poussin brought to Paris: Félibien, Life of Poussin, 110; although Felibien says that the copies came from Matteo Zaccolini rather than Leonardo, it should be pointed out that Zaccolini was following closely Leonardo’s art theory and thus his shadow drawings were deeply “Leonardo-inspired.” On the Fréart brothers, see Isabel Pantin, Les Fréart de Chantelous. Une famillie d’amateurs au XVIIe siècle, entre le Mans, Paris et Rome (Le Mans: Creation and Recherche, 1999).
“bagatelles”: Poussin’s letter from Paris to Cassiano in Rome, April 4, 1642, published in Poussin: Lettres, 64.
“Poussin is comfortable where he is”: Abbé Bourdelot’s letter from Paris to Cassiano in Rome, April 18, 1643, ibid., 86.
editorial work for the printed book: Janis Bell, “The Final Text,” in Farago, Bell, and Vecce, Fabrication, vol. 1:300–372; Bell, “Zaccolini, Dal Pozzo and Leonardo’s Writings in Rome and Milan,” which discusses that copies of Leonardo’s shadow drawings were available in Paris during the editorial work for the printed edition. I suggest Leonardo’s shadow drawings were available there as early as 1639, when Poussin sent one shadow drawing to a friend and Desargues wrote about it.
“did not give it the final edit”: Trichet, “Vita di Leonardo da Vinci,” in Leonardo da Vinci, Trattato della pittura (Paris: Langois, 1651), no pagination. A modern English translation of the 1651 Italian printed book is now available in Farago, Bell, and Vecce, Fabrication, vol. 2:611–874. Trichet added to his Italian edition of the Trattato two seminal essays by Leon Battista Alberti written two centuries earlier. Allegedly, Trichet added Alberti’s On Painting “for the conformity of the topic” and Alberti’s On Statua because it was very hard to find. But in reality he did much more than that. Knowing that Leonardo’s Treatise on Painting was doctored and that sections on linear perspective, shadows, and sculpture were absent, Trichet complemented it with Alberti’s essays, thus creating an intellectual genealogy between Alberti and Leonardo. To make sure nobody missed the connection, he had the texts by the two authors printed in the exact same way as if they were sections of the same book. Typesetting, engravings, and page layout made tangibly visible that Alberti and Leonardo’s books were one and the same thing.
Poussin as the second author: Chambray, “A Monsieur Poussin Premier Peintre du Roy,” in Leonard de Vinci, Traité de la Peinture (Paris: Langlois, 1651), no pagination.
“the queen of Parnassus”: Trichet, “Alla Serenissima e Potentissima Principessa Cristina,” in Leonardo da Vinci, Trattato della Pittura (Paris: Langlois, 1651), no pagination.
Trichet’s biography of Leonardo: Leonardo da Vinci, Trattato, no pagination. See Catherine M. Soussloff, “The Vita of Leonardo da Vinci in the Du Fresne Edition of 1651,” in Re-reading Leonardo, ed. Farago, 175–96; and Juliana Barone, “The ‘Official’ Vita of Leonardo: Raphael Trichet Du Fresne’s Biography in the Trattato della Pittura,” in Frangenberg and Palmer, The Lives of Leonardo, 61–83.
“Here is the book”: Charles Le Brun quoted in André Blum, Abraham Bosse et la societé française au XVIIe siècle (Paris: A. Morancé, 1924), 18.
“the clumsy landscapes”: Poussin’s letter to Abraham Bosse, first published in Abraham Bosse, Traité des pratiques geometrales et perspectives, enseignées dans l’Académie Royale de la Peinture et Sculpture (Paris: Chez l’Auteur, 1665), 128–29; now in Poussin: Lettres, 161–62.
the reception of Leonardo’s Treatise on Painting: Martin Kemp, “A Chaos of Intelligence: Leonardo’s Traité and the Perspective Wars in the Académie Royale,” in Il se rendit en Italie: Études offertes à André Chastel (Rome: Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1987), 415–26; Fiorani, “Abraham Bosse e le prime critiche”; Thomas Frangenberg, “Abraham Bosse in Context: French Responses to Leonardo’s Treatise on Painting in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 75 (2012): 223–60; Judith Field, “Perspective and the Paris Academy,” in Re-reading Leonardo, ed. Farago, 255–66; Pauline Robison, “Leonardo’s Theory of Aerial Perspective in the Writings of André Félibien and the Paintings of Nicolas Poussin,” in Re-reading Leonardo, ed. Farago, 299–326.
Leonardo and André Félibien: Robison, “Leonardo’s Theory of Aerial Perspective,” discusses how Félibien included Leonardo’s theory in his Discussions concerning the lives and works of the most excellent painters, ancient and modern, or Entretiens, without ever acknowledging the origins of his thoughts on aerial perspective, light, and shadows in Leonardo. In addition, it is worth considering that Félibien could have direct knowledge of—and continuous access to—the shadow drawings the Milanese team had sent to Cassiano (now in Milan, Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Codex H227 inf., fols. 1–54), either directly from Cassiano or from Poussin; otherwise he would not have ben able to write in detail about them (V Entretiens, 20–52). Félibien’s comments on Poussin’s interest in optics are in Poussin: Lettres, 194–96; and Entretiens, preface; 21 (on their close friendship, une amitié très étroite); 48 (“M. Poussin did not ignore” the study of optics).
only “part of this treatise was published”: Guglielmo Manzi, Trattato della pittura di Lionardo da Vinci tratto da un codice della Biblioteca Vaticana (Rome: Stamperia De Romanis, 1817), 7.
“truncated and mutilated”: Ibid., 8.
“ornaments of the world”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 102v (English translation in Richter, Literary Works, no. 23; and Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 16).
Paolo Giovio: Giovio in Vecce, Leonardo, 355.
“The first painting was merely”: Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript A, fol. 97v (English translation in Kemp and Walker, On Painting, 193).