This is the first scholarly edition of Leonardo da Vinciâs Trattato della pittura (Paris: Jacques Langlois, 1651), and it has been an enormous undertaking involving an international team of eight Leonardo manuscript specialists working together for over a decade. The 1651 version of Leonardoâs Treatise on Painting is one of the most famous art books ever published, the core of academic methods of artistic instruction, translated into all of the major European languages by the end of the eighteenth century, an important historical contribution to the theoretical literature on art, and the only form in which Leonardoâs ideas were widely known until the nineteenth century. It has never been edited in modern times.
Leonardo da Vinciâs writings on painting, excerpted from his notes by his student Francesco Melzi (ca. 1491/1493âca. 1570), first appeared in print when an abridged Italian version edited by Raphaël Trichet du Fresne and a French translation by Roland Fréart Sieur de Chambray were published in the same year by the same printer in the same format, with nearly the same engraved illustrations. The Italian first edition that is the main subject of this study was originally published with a number of paratexts: there are two dedications signed by Du Fresne, two bibliographies, two artistsâ biographies, and two additional treatises on painting and on sculpture by Leon Battista Alberti, reprinted from Cosimo Bartoliâs Florentine edition of 1568. The 1651 version of the Leonardo text itself (without the paratexts) appeared in many subsequent editions and translations over the next three centuries; Mario Valentino Guffanti (âBibliography of Printed Editions of Leonardo da Vinciâs âTreatise on Painting,ââ in Farago, Re-Reading Leonardo, 569â605) gives a complete list, of which all but one were based on the 1651 editio princeps or its French translation. The sole exception is the 1792 edition based on Stefano della Bellaâs prepublication copy of the abridged Libro di pittura (Trattato della pittura di Lionardo da Vinci, ed. Francesco Fontani [Florence: Presso Giovacchino Pagani Libraio e Iacopo Grazioli Stampatore, 1792]).
The much longer anthology that Melzi originally compiled from Leonardoâs autograph notes, entitled Il Libro di pittura di M. Lionardo da Vinci pittore et scultore fiorentino on the first page of the manuscript, survives in a unique copy rediscovered in the Vatican Library in 1797. Catalogued then as Codex Urbinas Vaticanus Latinus 1270, Melziâs original manuscript was first published with the title Trattato della pittura di Lionardo da Vinci, edited by Guglielmo Manzi (1784â1821), librarian of the Barberini Library, and dedicated to the king of France, Louis xviii (Rome: Stamperia de Romanis, 1817).
After the publication of Manziâs edition, Melziâs original compilation not only gradually replaced the much shorter, extensively edited version that had been in print circulation for more than 150 years, but also seamlessly assumed the name of its predecessor. (On the history of the reception of the Codex Urbinas, see Pedretti and Vecce, and Pedretti, Commentary, 1: 3â8.) Today scholars routinely refer to the Libro di pittura bound in the Codex Urbinas 1270 as Leonardoâs treatise on painting. Yet, strictly speaking, Leonardoâs Trattato della pittura originates with its seventeenth-century French editors. They established the title, replacing the titles that had appeared previously in manuscript copies, such as Libro, Discorso, Opinioni, Precetti, Scritti, Aphorismi, and Regole, with âtreatise,â which had distinctly legalistic resonances at the time and place of publication. (The words for âtreatyâ and âtreatiseâ are the same in French: both are translated as traité. The legalistic nature of both the French civil war known as the Fronde, and the efforts of French artists to establish a modern institutional structure are discussed in the Introduction.) Arte della pittura was the working title when the royal license for publication was granted on 30 April 1650 (see fig. I.1).
For the sake of clarity and historical accuracy, in these volumes the unabridged
text is designated as the Libro di pittura (or Codex Urbinas)
following Melziâs title; prepublication copies are referred to as
abridged versions of the Libro di pittura; and only the 1651
editions are identified as the Trattato della pittura and the
Traitté de la peinture, sometimes abbreviated as
An Overview of the History of the Text
In this study, there are two overviews: the introduction in volume 1, âDefining a Historical Approach to Leonardoâs Trattato della pittura,â provides a historical background to the final stages of editing that took place in Rome and Paris between ca. 1634 and 1651; and the editorial procedures essay in volume 2 of this study provides a summary of the textual analyses used by the present editors to establish the text, the critical apparatus, and the English translation that are published in that volume. How the intermediate manuscripts contributed to the 1651 printed edition is discussed in the Readerâs Notes. Our study of the transmission process documented in the Codex Urbinas, the twin printed editions of 1651, and the intermediate prepublication manuscripts led us to identify four principal stages of editing:
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Melziâs original compilation, left incomplete at his death, ca. 1523â1570
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The initial abridgment, also ca. 1570
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Cassiano dal Pozzoâs editing activities, including Nicolas Poussinâs and PierFrancesco Albertiâs drawings, documented ca. 1634â1643
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Editorial activities of the French team of Du Fresne, Roland Chambray, and Charles Errard, ca. 1640â1651
These four editorial stages are reflected in the organization of the book, which is roughly chronological and subdivided according to the primary location of editorial activity. In the first chapter Carlo Vecce examines evidence for the earliest publication plans, preserved in Melziâs original manuscript compiled in Milan. The initial abridgment is the subject of two later chapters: Claire Faragoâs on the origins of the abridged version in a Catholic Reformation context, and Anna Sconzaâs on early interest in Florence. Juliana Barone examines Cassiano dal Pozzoâs editorial procedures, carried out in Rome in the 1630s, and Janis Bell reports on the work of the final editorial team in Paris, composed of Raphaël Trichet du Fresne, the editor; Roland Chambray, his collaborator and a financial backer of the project; and Charles Errard, painter to the king and a founding member of the Académie royale, who together played a fundamental role in shaping the final printed book.
Our interpretation throughout emphasizes the transmission of knowledge
through artistsâ workshopsâplaces that combined business with
artistic education and functioned as important sites of knowledge production
in early modern times. Recently, the production of artisanal knowledge has
become a subject of great interest, especially with respect to works of art.
Study of Leonardoâs treatise on painting in a longitudinal framework
illuminates how artisanal knowledge was articulated in theoretical terms.
Farago examines how workshop practices are embedded in the treatise on
painting by focusing on Melziâs principal source: Leonardoâs
autograph notebook Paris
The Trattato played an influential role in the history of optical naturalism and academic art. The fierce debates that ensued at the Académie royale shortly after its 1651 release are well known, as is the problematic state of the text in its printed form. Imperfect though it was, the luxurious 1651 publication was highly regarded in the seventeenth century. What the present study adds to our knowledge of its reception is to elucidate how Leonardoâs ideas were significantly reinterpreted over the eighty years leading up to its publication: how modern, initially European ideas of art came to have institutional authority; how Leonardoâs treatise was adapted to Catholic Reformation needs around 1570; and how that same text was radically reconceptualized six decades later to educate artists eager to serve the seventeenth-century state through their mastery of anatomy, perspective, proportions, and all the other intellectually demanding and often highly technical subjects that had been introduced to the visual arts in the past century and before. Refracted through the lens of the printed page, Leonardoâs ideas were utterly transformed, yet his knowledge of optics, figurative movement, and human expression were still largely comprehensible and formed the backbone of the academic tradition.
The actual records that constitute his artistic legacy enabled us to produce
an unprecedented account of how painting came to be defined and
institutionally valued in the modern Western tradition. Our chief primary
source materials were the many prepublication manuscript copies of the
abridged text that survive in libraries in Europe and the United States.
Most of these are now available in digital form at
http://www.treatiseonpainting.org, a site conceived by
Francesca Fiorani at the Institute of Advanced Technology in the Humanities
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A Note to the Reader
The word âfabricationâ in the title deserves a brief explanation. In daily usage, âfabricationâ has become nearly synonymous with âfalse fabricationâ but that was not the case in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when it was closely associated with artistic invention. The literal sense of its Latin root, fabricor, is anyone who makes or constructs anything, and the Oxford English Dictionary definition of fabricate is still âto make anything that requires skill.â The primary meaning of âfabricate,â according to Samuel Johnsonâs Dictionary published in 1755, âis the act of buildingâ but he said it could also be defined as âdevising falsely.â When Robert Burton chose the word a century earlier, it resonated in this ambivalent sense to readers who caught the reference to Icarus: â[o]ur later Mathematitians haveâ ⦠fabricated new systemes of the World, out of their own Dedalian headsâ (Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621, ii. ii. iii.328).
What other word in English carries the same range of connotations? In calling attention to the many shades of meaning historically associated with âfabrication,â we want to emphasize that artistry was necessarily involved in editing Leonardoâs fragmentary notes, and also to alert readers to the very different stakes held by the various individuals who âbuiltâ Leonardoâs Treatise on Painting. Our own fabrication is not intended to entrap you, the reader, in a hall of mirrors, but to signal that the generations of editors who went to extreme lengths to get Leonardo ârightâ and to âfixâ problems they encountered in their inherited texts, had their own audiences in mind. âThe act of buildingâ more nearly describes the work of those who edited Leonardoâs Treatise on Painting over the 130 years of its gestation than any subversive attempt to falsify its contents. This richly textured history and the shifting epistemological grounds to which it attests are important to bear in mind as you read. How the translators of Leonardoâs ideas approached their task is what this book is all about.