Trattato della pittura, Parigi, coll. A.B.2.6, 1651

Accademia di Belle Arti, Firenze

Around 1490, at almost forty years of age, Leonardo began thinking of compiling his Trattato di pittura, starting from the prolific amount of annotations which filled his notebooks. He considered painting to be the supreme accomplishment of spiritual activity – it is the mirror of the cosmos, encompassing all reality and all imagination. The project suffered continuous delays, however, as Leonardo relentlessly added new annotations, edited developments and changed the initial idea. This work in constant evolution was never completed and none of the illustrations Leonardo planned to include were ever made. The first, posthumous edition of the work based on Leonardo’s notes was compiled by Rafaelle du Fresne and dates from around the middle of the Seventeenth Century.