A Treatise on Painting, by Leonardo Da Vinci. Faithfully Translated from the Original Italian, and Now First Digested Under Proper Heads.

RIGAUD, John Francis. [Leonardo Da Vinci].

$2,500.00

Item Number: 147281

London: Printed for J. Taylor, 1802.

First edition thus of English painter and Royal Academician John Francis Rigaud’s English translation of Leonardo da Vinci’s Treatise on Painting, compiled from manuscripts written during his lifetime, but only first published in Italian in 1651. Octavo, bound in three quarter contemporary calf over marbled boards with gilt ruling to the spine, morocco spine label lettered in gilt, illustrated with twenty-three copper-plates and other figures, engraved frontispiece portrait of Da Vinci from a picture in the Florentine Museum. New Life of the Author by John Sidney Hawkins. In very good condition, bookplate to the front free endpaper.

Compiled from manuscripts written during his lifetime, Da Vinci's Treatise on Painting details his theories on anatomical drawing, perspective, and the elements of composition. The text was revolutionary and enormously influential in its approach to defining and understanding the laws of painting within a scientific framework. "Leonardo's writings and notes long remained in manuscript. Shortly after his death an industrious compiler brought together those passages from his posthumous papers dealing with painting and combined them into a Treatise of Painting (Trattato della pittura); but this important manuscript, which also preserves much that is no longer to be found in Leonardo's own notes, was only edited and published in the 17th century in France" (E.H. Gombrich, The Literature of Art).