Traitté de la Peinture

The page features a delicate graphite or black chalk study of a pensive child positioned at the bottom of a sheet from a 1651 edition of Leonardo's treatise. Above the drawing, an early owner has performed several arithmetic operations in ink, including multiplications and additions related to financial accounts. The paper shows characteristic 17th-century aging, with visible foxing and rough-hewn edges.

This leaf is part of the 1651 'Traitté de la Peinture', the first published edition of Leonardo da Vinci's notes, which formalized his scientific approach to art as a branch of natural philosophy. The presence of mundane calculations alongside a sketch demonstrates how these early modern texts served as functional, everyday objects for their owners while disseminating Leonardo's Neoplatonic theories on the 'motions of the mind'.