A Treatise on Painting

nor that by the death of Duke Francesco Maria della Rovere, the last of that family, those States were reunited with the Papal Domain The Duchy of Urbino was incorporated into the Papal States in 1631. It is written on paper in quarto format, and must be judged to be from the 16th Century. The handwriting is not bad, and only errs somewhat in spelling and in punctuation, which is entirely defective; the figures are drawn in pen and placed in their proper locations in the middle of the chapters. One encounters very rare little notes by the copyist, which I have placed in the present edition exactly as they stand in the Codex; I have not done this by chance, because from them one discerns his diligence and faithfulness. He must have been, without any doubt, a scholar of Vinci; and from the dialect he uses, it is evident that he was Lombard. Attributing the merit of this copy either to Francesco Melzi, or to Salai, or to another of his disciples, I believe we would not be far from the truth. However, whoever deserves such credit—for refinement of judgment, for diligence, and for excessive scrupulousness in not altering the author's mind in any point—deserves to be ranked alongside that much-celebrated Mannelli, thanks to whom we read Boccaccio correctly in his purity A reference to the "Ottimo" manuscript of the Decameron copied by Francesco d'Amaretto Mannelli. And it pleases me to prove this by reporting at the foot of the page a note that was not placed with the others in the Text, because it could have no place there, being a correction of an error made by the copyist himself (1). Furthermore, the drawings of this Codex, being copied from the author's original, must alone be held in high esteem and value; and it is a ridiculous thing that, for greater embellishment, these figures were given shading and invented by whim, as the painter Errard practiced in the Paris edition to the indignation of Poussin, who had drawn some of them, and where they were missing, imagined them from his own mind. When Poussin saw them so "dressed up," he affirmed that he no longer recognized those drawings because they had been spoiled by that painter (2). And

(1) Error occurred because of the Lettering which is left-handed, and because it was traced onto another paper in reverse. original: "Errore occorso per la Littera che è mancina..." – This refers to Leonardo's famous mirror-writing
(2) It pleases me to report here, with the same words and spelling, the following Letter written by him on this subject to Monsieur Bosse: Poussin to Monsieur Bosse: I have sometimes taken pleasure in, and have profited from, the various judgments that have been made of me in such haste, as... original: "J’ai eu quelquefois du plaisir..." – A letter from Nicolas Poussin to Abraham Bosse regarding the 1651 edition of Leonardo's Treatise on Painting