Thirty years ago, Emanuel Winternitz, the Curator of the Department of Musical Instruments at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, complained of the scant attention devoted at that time to the study of Leonardo da Vinci as a musician.
The only references quoted in this context were Vasari’s observations in Lives of the Artists and those of Leonardo himself in his Treatise on Painting.
Despite the fame that he enjoyed during his lifetime, Leonardo was consigned to oblivion for almost three hundred years. Until the Louvre was opened in 1800, he was remembered only for his Treatise on Painting, a book which was a best-seller from the time of its publication in 1651.
Velázquez, with his keen interest in culture, had a first edition of the book in his large library.
Leonardo is better known to us today, thanks to a number of recent discoveries: notarial records, drawings, letters, the reconstruction of his musical instruments, and particularly the chance discovery of the previously lost Madrid Codices I and II, which were found in 1965 in the National Library of Madrid. |
|
|
|