This collection of drawings,
arranged and introducted by Carlo Pedretti and catalogued by Patricia
Trutty-Coohill, is particularly important for the imposing amount of its
unpublished material, such as the complete series of caricatures in the Spencer
Collection of the New York Public Library -104 copies made in the sixteenth
century direct from Leonardo's originals, mostly lost, and therefore first-hand
documents for the study of the complex problem of Leonardo's preoccupation with
physiognomy at the time of his studies for the Last Supper, c. 1495.
Caricatures and figure
studies are of course present among the 15 autograph drawings by Leonardo in
the American collections, 8 of which are found in the Metropolitan Museum in
New York. These include the first study for the composition of the Virgin of the Rocks, the study for the
head of the Virgin in the Louvre St Anne,
the allegory of the lizard, and the project for the staging of the Danae by Bardassare Taccone.
Among the drawings recently
acquired and presented here for the first time in facsimile, are the drapery
studies formerly in the collection of the Marquis De Ganay in Paris and
mentioned by Vasari, the sheet of figure and technological studies formerly in
the Granducal Collection at Weimar Castle and now at the Getty Museum in
Malibu, California, where there is also one of the caricatures from the
collection of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth.
Drawings by every Leonardo
pupil and follower from any time are gathered in the remaining facsimiles for a
total of about 200 drawings arranged on 80 plates, 5 of which double.
A text volume of 118 pages
in English, with catalogue, includes tables of concordance, history of the
collections, indexes and a full bibliography -a work of impeccable scholarship
presented in a splendid design.
A leather-covered box (size 335 x 488 mm), with gold stamping, contains
80 plates with facsimile reproductions of the drawings, recto and verso, a text
volume of 118 pages printed on hand-made paper and bound in Fabriano paper.
Facsimile edition of 998 numbered copies for the whole world.