Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Urb. lat. 1270

Treatise on Painting Facsimile Edition

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The Treatise on Painting is a collection of Leonardo da Vinci's writings on painting compiled after his death by his student and heir Francesco Melzi. The manuscript was produced in Milan around 1530-1540. The work conveys Leonardo's theoretical and scientific considerations in his artistic process. Melzi edited and compiled his teacher's work from eighteen notebooks Leonardo produced while in the service of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. Melzi included a wide range of ink illustrations after Leonardo to accompany the text.

We have 1 facsimile edition of the manuscript "Treatise on Painting": Il Libro di Pittura facsimile edition, published by Giunti Editore, 1995

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Manuscript book description compiled by Dongwon Esther Kim.
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Il Libro di Pittura

Florence: Giunti Editore, 1995

  • Commentary (Italian) by Pedretti, Carlo; Vecce, Carlo
  • Limited Edition: 998 copies
  • Full-size color reproduction of the entire original document, Treatise on Painting: the facsimile attempts to replicate the look-and-feel and physical features of the original document; pages are trimmed according to the original format; the binding might not be consistent with the current document binding.
Complete facsimile edition with the original colors, sub-divided into eight sections for a total of 336 sheets (672 pp). Commentary volume contains an introduction, transcriptions, and a critical apparatus that sums up three centuries of studies on Leonardo’s celebrated "Treatise on Painting", here restored to its original title Libro di Pittura ("Book on Painting"), as intended by the author himself. A Leather-covered box (size 250 x 360 mm) with gold tooling contains the facsimile and a 544-page volume of text (both volumes 158 x 219 mm size).

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