Apr 20, 2006 - Sale 2075

Sale 2075 - Lot 45

Price Realized: $ 9,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,000
LEONARDO DA VINCI. Trattato della Pittura . . . si sono giunti Tre Libri della Pittura, & il Trattato della Statua di Leon Battista Alberti, con la Vita del medesimo. Engraved text illustrations, partly after Nicolas Poussin. [20], 112, [16], [16], 62, pages, including engraved additional title, leaf with 2 engravings, and portrait of Alberti. Folio, early 19th-century speckled boards backed with gilt-stamped black calf, initials A.N. stamped in gold on front cover, some professional repairs; worm holes in lower gutter and outer margin of last third of contents, contemporary marginal sketches in sepia on title recto and verso and elsewhere, small circular owner's stamp to right of title vignette. Paris: Jacques Langlois, 1651

Additional Details

first edition of leonardo's first published work, which appeared over a century after his death. "Leonardo's most important literary contribution was his approach to painting as a natural science, grounded in geometry and direct observation of natural phenomena. Through the Trattato della Pittura . . . Leonardo's ideas formed the core of academic artistic instruction for three centuries in many institutional settings" (OCIL). Cicognara 232 ("prima e magnifica edizione"); Gamba 1164; Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy, pages 23-38; Brunet V; 1257; Millard I, 95.