A Treatise on Painting

superior to the Paris edition, they even copied the printing errors from it. After this Naples edition, which soon also became rare, another edition was repeated in Bologna similar to the previous ones, and another was published in Florence in the year 1792, in which, for the first time, the drawings copied from the original sketches by Leonardo appeared; therefore, this truncated part of the edition would not be despicable if it had been handled more accurately by the printer and the editor. Meanwhile, as taste grew among amateurs and craftsmen for this author, another edition was published again in the year 1804 in Milan, and another likewise came out in Perugia the following year; both of these editions exactly copied the old Parisian one, and only in this second one—to which various notes were added by the editor—were the drawings made on separate plates in unshaded outlines. While this Book appeared so truncated and mangled, it was nonetheless known to the editors themselves—from the citations of books and chapters frequently encountered in the work—that this Treatise was not entirely complete. This was demonstrated more clearly by a codex written on the first pages in the own hand of Vincenzo Pinelli, a man of letters who lived at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th Century, in which it was titled: Discourse on the Drawing of Leonardo da Vinci, Part Second. Toward the middle of the past century, Gori Anton Francesco Gori (1691–1757), a famous Florentine antiquarian. had also affirmed in print that he had found among the codices of the Etruscan Academy a Manuscript with the following title: Opinions of Leonardo da Vinci (containing) the method of painting perspectives, shadows, distances, heights, depths, from near and far, and other things, and precepts of painting. And this, or one similar to it, is the very Book that Benvenuto Cellini The famous Renaissance sculptor and goldsmith. purchased for the price of fifteen gold scudi, and of which he makes honorable mention in his writings (1). Among the codices of the Ambrosian Library in Milan,

(1) I bought for 15 gold Scudi a Book written by the great Leonardo da Vinci . . . Among the other admirable things that were in it, there is a discourse on Perspective, the most beautiful that was ever found by any other man in the world. Discourse published by Morelli in the Catalog of Italian Manuscripts of the Nani Library.