Leonardo da Vinci and His Treatise on Painting is a digital archive dedicated to the Treatise on Painting, the pivotal text for disseminating Leonardo's art theory in Renaissance and Baroque Europe.
Leonardo da Vinci and His Treatise on Painting is a digital archive dedicated to the Treatise on Painting, the pivotal text for disseminating Leonardo's art theory in Renaissance and Baroque Europe. Rather than focusing on Leonardo's original manuscripts, which remained largely unavailable until the early nineteenth century, the digital archive focuses on the Treatise on Painting, the only text by Leonardo that circulated widely in Renaissance and Baroque Europe.
In collaboration with institutional partners and private collectors from across the globe, the digital archive gathers for the first time, in a single place, critical resource materials on the legacy and reception of Leonardo's art theory.
These materials include over forty manuscript copies of the Treatise on Painting, dating from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, as well as early printed editions of Leonardo's Treatise on Painting in Italian (1651), French (1651), and English (1721). The digital archive anticipates expanding its coverage of materials as new manuscripts and printed editions of the Treatise on Painting become available for inclusion.
The digital archive makes it possible to analyze the text and images of these materials systematically, comprehensively, and comparatively.