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''A Treatise on Painting'' (''Trattato della pittura'') is a collection of Leonardo da Vinci'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 and gathered together by his heir Francesco Melzi. The treatise was first published in France in 1632; after Melzi's version was rediscovered in the Vatican Library, 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 (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 and
Cennino Cennini Cennino d'Andrea Cennini (c. 1360 – 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. Cennini was born i ...
. Upon Leonardo's death, he left his notebooks to his pupil and heir Francesco Melzi 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. A version of the treatise was published in France in 1632. 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 Vatican Library, the treatise was first published in its modern form in 1817. In 1937, Max Ernst wrote in ''
Cahiers d'Art ''Cahiers d'Art'' is a French artistic and literary journal founded in 1926 by Christian Zervos. ''Cahiers d'Art'' is also an eponymous publishing house which has published many monographs on artists living in France in the first half of the twent ...
'' 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 Elmer Belt (April 10, 1893 – May 17, 1980) was an internationally recognized urologist, a pioneer in sex-change surgery, an important mover in the founding of the UCLA School of Medicine, and a book collector known for assembling a library o ...
Library of Vinciana at
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
.


References


Sources

*


Further reading

*Leonardo da Vinci, ''Treatise on Painting'', odex Urbinas Latinus translated and annotated by P. Philip McMahon, Princeton University Press 1956


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