Leonardo

Published on the occasion of the celebrations for the 500th anniversary of the death of the Renaissance genius, this mighty volume stems from the need to reconsider the evolution of Leonardo’s art in the light of the latest studies and attributive, chronological and interpretative proposals. The book traces, in an analytical and comprehensive manner, the entire career of Leonardo the painter and emphasizes the exceptional nature of his creations, establishing a precise relationship between them and sculptural art.

In fact, for the first time ever, the work of Leonardo the painter is retraced by emphasizing his constant attention to sculpture, both that of his predecessors and contemporaries, such as precisely Verrocchio, Donatello, and Tullio Lombardo, and that of the ancients-the bas-reliefs and monumental sculpture he appreciated on his trips to Rome. The constant reference to the plastic arts is constantly intertwined with painting, explaining the extraordinary three-dimensional power of his pictorial creations and, consequently, their success among his contemporaries.

Bolstered by an extraordinarily rich iconographic apparatus, the book is complemented by a catalog of the paintings and a collection of all the documents recalling the commissions received by the artist and the engagements he undertook-an authentic volume within a volume-as well as a bibliography that goes far beyond the specific subject of Leonardo’s painting.

BY
Pietro C. Marani – Lecturer in Modern Art History, Contemporary Art History and Museology at the Polytechnic University of Milan, and in Renaissance Art History in the School of Specialization in Art History at the Catholic University of Milan. The author and co-author of numerous articles and volumes on art, architecture and thought in the Italian Renaissance, he has edited more than twenty volumes on Leonardo, Leonardo’s painting and the Last Supper, of whose restoration he was co-director.