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THE LIFE

 

OF

 

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Leonardo da Vinci, the Author of the following Treatise, was the natural son of Pietro da Vinci, a notary of Vinci, in Tuscany^[1], a village situated in the valley of Arno, a little below Florence, and was born in the year 1452^[2].

Having discovered, when a child, a strong inclination and talent for painting, of which he had given proofs by several little drawings and sketches; his father one day accidentally took up some of them, and was induced to shew them to his friend Andrea Verocchio, a painter of some reputation in Florence, who was also a

1. Vasari, Vite de Pittori, edit. Della Valle, 8vo. Siena 1792, vol. v. p. 22. Du Fresne, in the life prefixed to the Italian editions of this Treatise on Painting. Venturi, Essai sur les Ouvrages de Leonard de Vinci, 4to. Paris, 1797, p. 3, 36.
2. Venturi, p. 3.