University of Virginia Library

72. Leonardo da Vinci.

A / TREATISE / OF / PAINTING, / BY / Leonardo da Vinci. /
Translated from / The Original Italian, / And adorn'd with a great

Plate LXIX. From No. 71. "Ariadne" (Pl. 5, No. 59).

Plate LXX. Copy of Ariadne owned by Jefferson. See Plate LXIX.

Number of Cuts. / To which is prefix'd, / The Author's Life; / Done
from / The Last Edition of the French. / LONDON; / Printed for J.
Senex at the Globe in Salisbury / Court; and W. Taylor, at the Ship
in Pater-/Noster-Row. MDCCXXI.

8vo. Engraved frontispiece (1 leaf); two-color title page (1 leaf);
dedication (2 leaves); translator's preface (5 leaves); life of Leonardo
([1]-27); text, with 34 engraved plates, of which 4 are folding ([29]189);
index ( 3 leaves); bookseller's advertisement (1 unnumbered p.).

John Senex (d. 1740) was a cartographer, an engraver, and a bookseller
in London.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian man of the Renaissance
and painter, has towered above most of the other figures of the Renaissance
through the subsequent centuries. His Treatise of Painting has
had many editions in many languages. It was first issued in 1651.
Sowerby notes that this edition in English is the first of this translation,
which was made from the 1716 edition of the French translation by
Roland Fréart de Chambray (No. 46), first issued during the same year
as the first Italian edition.

According to the manuscript catalogues of Jefferson's collection of
paintings and sculpture, he owned a painting copied from the St. John
of Leonardo. The painting hung in the hall at Monticello and is described
by Jefferson in his third catalogue as "a bust of the natural size.
The right han[d] pointing to heaven, the left, deeply shaded, is scarcely
s[een] pressing his breast which is covered by his hair flowi[ng] thickly
over it. It is seen almost full face. On canv[as]. Copied from Leonardo
da Vinci." In the original the hand is covered as much by St. John's hair
shirt as by his own hair.

Jefferson's own copy was sold to Congress. He ordered it for the
University in the section on "Gardening. Painting. Sculpture. Music" of
the want list, but there is no record of its having been received. The
present copy in the library is from the collection of T. W. Tottie.

U. Va.

*ND1130.L6.1721

M

Sowerby 4237