- Translated from the Italian, with sixty illustrations

For anyone who wants to unlock their inner potential as an artist, this book is the REAL Da Vinci Code.

There are lots of books that promise to teach you how to paint like an Old Master, but only this one was written by the Old Master himself. In this lively and practical guide, which has been used for centuries as a basic textbook in the finest art schools, Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest painters who ever lived, reveals the secrets of his art. The most practical and down-to-earth of the great Masters, Da Vinci provides usable advice on a wide variety of topics, from constructing perspective to mixing paints, as well as reflecting on the nature of art itself. The text is designed to be useful to beginners and experienced painters alike, and is enlivened with sixty illustrations, prepared by Nicole Poussin and Alberti based on da Vinci’s own specifications. Like his paintings themselves, da Vinci’s advice to artists is every bit as valuable now as when it was composed centuries ago.

Da Vinci’s Treatise On Painting is here presented in an authoritative and fluid English translation, meticulously edited and formatted for Kindle. The lavish illustrations render beautifully on both black-and-white Kindles and color tablets such as the Fire and iPad.

“Those who become enamoured of the practice of art, without having previously applied to the diligent study of the scientific part of it, may be compared to mariners, who put to sea in a ship without rudder or compass, and therefore cannot be certain of arriving at the wished-for port. Practice must always be founded on good theory.” Leonardo da Vinci, from On Painting