SOURCE: “Leonardo as a Writer,” in Leonardo's Legacy: An International Symposium, edited by C. D. O'Malley, University of California Press, 1969, pp. 57-66.

In the essay that follows, Marinoni traces the critical opinion of Leonardo's literary work from the disdain it garnered from early scholars to the “mythological” image of Leonardo established by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century critics.

The fame of Leonardo as a writer—if we can speak of real fame—remained for some centuries limited to the Treatise on Painting, which was in great demand and deeply appreciated by the artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A medal struck about the middle of the eighteenth century can be considered a symbol and synthesis of this fame; it bears Leonardo's head on the obverse and a crown, a pen, and the words scribit quam suscitat artem on the reverse. This means that Leonardo was considered as...