The aim of the Study Days is to focus the attention of international scholars working in a variety of fields, and of Leonardo experts and enthusiasts, on studies and research regarding the transmission of da Vinci’s ideas and writings and their circulation and reception in Italy and across Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
In the abridged version known as the Treatise on Painting, the Libro di Pittura compiled by Francesco Melzi was widely circulated in the decades following Leonardo’s death. Avidly read by artists and collectors closely associated with the accademie del disegno, it profoundly influenced the theory, practice and teaching of the time.
The speakers will examine previously unexplored or little-known aspects (biographical, linguistic, theoretical, graphic and collection-related) of the complex historical process via which Melzi’s re-elaboration of a group of Leonardo’s original manuscripts, and his subsequent compilation of the Codex Vaticanus Urbinas 1270, eventually led to the production of numerous manuscript copies and to the Italian editio princeps: the Trattato della Pittura di Lionardo da Vinci.
Participating speakers will include: Carlo Vecce (Università “L’Orientale”, Napoli), Giulio Bora (Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milano), Francesca Fiorani (University of Virginia), Anna Sconza (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris), Janis Bell (Brown University, Providence), Matthew Landrus (University of Oxford), Barbara Tramelli (University of Oxford), Salvatore Carannante (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa), Macarena Moralejo Ortega (Universidad de Granada), Rossana Sacchi (Università degli Studi, Milano) e Furio Rinaldi (Christie’s, New York), Prof.ssa Sabine Frommel (École Pratique des Hautes Études, PSL Université, Paris).