Читать книгу A Treatise on Painting by Leonardo da Vinci - Leonardo da Vinci - Страница 5

PREFACE.

Since the former edition of this work was published, the able Translator has paid the debt of nature.*

Mr. Rigaud being himself a painter, and highly appreciating the merits of Leonardo da Vinci, felt that he should derive pleasure from exhibiting his well-known Treatise on Painting to the British public with superior advantage. He, therefore, not only gave a new translation, but formed a better arrangement of the materials. The merits of Mr. Rigaud’s Translation having been duly appreciated by the public, and the work having been long out of print, another edition, in a neater and more condensed form, is now produced, which, the Publishers presume, may prove a desirable acquisition to students and amateurs.

The principal novelty, however, of this edition is the new Life of the Author, by the late J. W. Brown, Esq., which was first published, in a separate volume, in 1828. A long residence in Italy, an intimate acquaintance with its language and literature, together with a constant opportunity of studying the most finished specimens of Art, induced that gentleman to undertake the biography of Leonardo da Vinci, who so largely contributed to form a new æra in the History of the Fine Arts. This distinguished Italian is not so well known in England as he deserves.

Among the various biographical sketches of this celebrated character, that written by Giorgio Vasari is perhaps the most authentic, as he had the advantage of contemporaneous information. But this also is rather an account of his works than of himself, containing little more than what is generally known, and forming only one article in Vasari’s Lives of celebrated Painters.

To most of the editions which have been published of Da Vinci’s writings a short biographical notice is prefixed, but they are chiefly copied verbatim from Vasari.

The Signor Carlo Ammoretti, librarian of the Ambrosian Library at Milan, has prefixed the best and most ample account of Leonardo da Vinci to the edition of his “Trattato della Pittura,” published at Milan in 1804 ; which he has entitled “Memorie storiche su la Vita, gli Studj, e le Opere di Leonardo da Vinci.”

In addition to many sources of information, Mr. Brown had the privilege of constant admittance not only to the private library of his Imperial and Royal Highness the Grand Duke of Tuscany, but also to his most rare and valuable collection of Manuscripts in the Palazzo Pitti, where he was permitted to copy from the original documents and correspondence whatever he conceived useful to his subject.

In selecting from the mass of documents relative to the subject of the present work, Mr. Brown rejected whatever appeared unsupported by sufficient proof ; and he has given such historical anecdotes of that period as were necessary to the subject, from their having materially influenced the private fortunes of Da Vinci.

Sept. 5, 1835.

Note

* See a memoir of Mr. Rigaud, p. c.