SOURCE: “The Tratatto della Pittura, Some Questions and Desiderata,” in Leonardo's Writings and Theory of Art, edited by Claire Farago, Garland Publishing, 1999, pp. 371-84.

In the following essay, Gombrich calls for a new edition of Leonardo's Trattato della Pittura, one in which the problems of the “derivation and date” of particular items are addressed, and one which provides an analysis of the relationship between Leonardo's theories and practice.

In accordance with traditional usage I mean by Leonardo's Trattato della Pittura the collection of the master's notes compiled by Melzi and preserved for us in the Codex Urbinas 1270 (henceforth abbreviated CU), of which a facsimile edition together with an annotated translation with numbered paragraphs has been published by A. Philip McMahon (Princeton, 1956), (henceforth abbreviated TP McM).¹ Despite its fragmentary nature and somewhat confusing arrangement it represents the outline of a project of awe-inspiring ambition, a project such as only...