LEONARDO DA VINCI A Treatise of Painting to which is prefix'd, The Author's Life

LEONARDO DA VINCI. A Treatise of Painting . . . to which is prefix'd, The Author's Life. Engraved frontispiece and 35 plates, some folding. [16], 189, [19] pages. 8vo, old calf rebacked with most of original backstrip, average wear; minor foxing, hole over page number on leaf G1, long thin chip to blank margin of G3, occasional marginalia; extraneous plate of Da Vinci's death bed tipped to blank verso of biography. London: J. Senex and W. Taylor, 1721

first edition in english. The only printed book bearing his name before publication of several reproductions of codices. Compiled from various manuscripts in the Barberini Library, edited by Raphael Dufresne, and first published in Paris in 1651. One of the major works of the Renaissance era, it is one of the first attempts to treat painting as a science governed by fundamental laws.