LOT 308

Leonardo da Vinci.

Treatise on Painting… published and translated from the Italian by R.F.S.D.C.

[Paris, printed by Jacques Langlois, 1651].

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Treatise on Painting… published and translated from the Italian by R.F.S.D.C.

[Paris, printed by Jacques Langlois, 1651].

Small folio, 128 pp. on laid paper, with numerous illustrations in the text. Marbled fawn sheepskin from the late 18th–early 19th century, smooth spine decorated with decorative metal fittings (fire pots and

flourishes), gilt fillets, title label on shell paper, gilt title, gilt scrolls, red edges, marbled endpapers (side restorations to the paper at the foot of the page on approximately two-thirds of the leaves, scattered brown stains and pinholes, the leaves , some soiling, binding rubbed and cracked at the top of the upper joint, traces of water damage on some quires).

First French edition.

A very special copy of this rare and famous work.

Part of the volume is entirely handwritten, reproducing almost identically the text, images and layout it replaces: the first 4 folios, on blue laid paper with the frontispiece title page featuring a wash drawing of da Vinci’s portrait, the title page and the page of dedication to Poussin, and pp. 1–4, on blue laid paper.

Complete with 56 fine black etchings (figures occupying a third or half a page), including a depiction of the Mona Lisa (inverted), considered to be the very first engraved reproduction of the famous painting.

Translated from the Italian by Roland Fréart, the original French edition appeared in the same year and from the same printer as the Italian edition, and is illustrated with the same etchings. Engraved on copper by René Lochon after drawings by Nicolas Poussin or diagrams by Pier Francesco degli Alberti, and retouched by Charles Errard.

Graesse, VI-2, 327.