Trattato della Pittura di Lionardo da Vinci.

DA VINCI, Leonardo.

Item Number: 95780

Paris: Appresso Giacomo Langlois, 1651.

First edition, the preferred work in Italian of da Vinci’s work on painting. Folio, Bound in full calf, gilt titles and tooling to the spine, front and rear panels, raised bands, engraved portrait, engraved vignette on title, engraved initials, head and tail pieces, engraved text illustrations. In very good condition with some dampstaining to the page edges. First editions are rare.

“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).