''A Treatise on Painting'' (''Trattato della pittura'') is a collection of

Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 - 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested o ...

's writings entered in his notebooks under the general heading "On Painting". The manuscripts were begun in Milan while Leonardo was under the service of

Ludovico Sforza Ludovico Maria Sforza (; 27 July 1452 – 27 May 1508), also known as Ludovico il Moro (; 'the Moor'), and called the "arbiter of Italy" by historian Francesco Guicciardini,

and gathered together by his heir

Francesco Melzi Francesco Melzi, or Francesco de Melzi (1491–1570), was an Italian painter born into a family of the Milanese nobility in Lombardy. He became a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci and remained as his closest friend and professional assistant throughout h ...

. An abridged version of the treatise was first published in France in 1651. After Melzi's manuscript was rediscovered in the

Vatican Library The Vatican Apostolic Library (, ), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City, and is the city-state's national library. It was formally established in 1475, alth ...

, the treatise was published in its modern form in 1817.

Content

The main aim of the treatise was to argue that painting was a science. Leonardo's keen observation of expression and character is evidenced in his comparison of laughing and weeping, about which he notes that the only difference between the two emotions in terms of the "motion of the acialfeatures" is "the ruffling of the brows, which is added in weeping, but more elevated and extended in laughing." This manuscript contains the famous branching rule:

All the branches of a tree at every stage of its height when put together are equal in thickness to the trunk elow them

History

The manuscripts were begun in Milan while Leonardo was under the service of

Ludovico Sforza Ludovico Maria Sforza (; 27 July 1452 – 27 May 1508), also known as Ludovico il Moro (; 'the Moor'), and called the "arbiter of Italy" by historian Francesco Guicciardini,

(between 1482 and 1499), being worked on substantially for the last 25 years of Leonardo's life. The works later published in this collection drew from writing of

Leon Battista Alberti Leon Battista Alberti (; 14 February 1404 – 25 April 1472) was an Italian Renaissance humanist author, artist, architect, poet, Catholic priest, priest, linguistics, linguist, philosopher, and cryptography, cryptographer; he epitomised the natu ...

and

Cennino Cennini Cennino d'Andrea Cennini (; – before 1427) was an Italian painter influenced by Giotto. He was a student of Agnolo Gaddi in Florence. Gaddi trained under his father, called Taddeo Gaddi, who trained with Giotto. He is remembered mainly f ...

. Upon Leonardo's death, he left his notebooks to his pupil and heir

to be published, a task of overwhelming difficulty because of its scope and Leonardo's idiosyncratic writing. Sometime before 1542, Melzi gathered together the papers for ''A Treatise on Painting'' from 18 of Leonardo's "books" (two-thirds of which have gone missing). After Melzi's death in 1570, the collection passed to his son, the lawyer Orazio, who initially took little interest in the journals, but they were later dispersed. It was printed in an abridged form in French and Italian as ''Trattato della pittura'' by Raffaelo du Fresne in 1651. After Melzi's version was rediscovered in the

, the treatise was first published in its modern form in 1817. In 1937,

Max Ernst Max Ernst (; 2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German-born painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism in Europe. He had no formal artistic trai ...

wrote in '' Cahiers d'Art'' that Leonardo's advice on the studying of stains on walls caused him an "unbearable visual obsession". All editions of the treatise are kept at the Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

References

Sources

External links

Leonardo Da Vinci, ''A treatise on painting'', full text, archive.org

Leonardo Da Vinci and His ''Treatise on Painting''

Google Books: ''Treatise on Painting''

''Leonardo Da Vinci's Treatise of Painting: The Story of The World's Greatest Treatise on Painting - Its Origins, History, Content, And Influence''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Treatise on Painting Codices by Leonardo da Vinci Renaissance art Works by Leonardo da Vinci 1542 works Treatises

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History

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Further reading

External links