SOURCE: “Supplement to Giovio's Leonardi Vincii Vita,” and “The Codex Huygens,” in The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, Vol. 1, edited by Jean Paul Richter, University of California Press, 1977, pp. 9-11, 48-75.

In the following excerpts, Pedretti discusses Leonardo as a teacher of art and analyzes the Codex Huygens, a compilation of Leonardo's writings that deals with, among other things, the form, structure, and movement of the human figure.

The short biography of Leonardo da Vinci written by Paolo Giovio around 1527 has been well known since 1796, the date of its first publication in Tiraboschi's Storia della letteratura italiana.¹ Giovio's account of the life of Leonardo, written in Latin, is based on information that he must have obtained from Leonardo himself. It was Giovio who reported that Leonardo intended to publish his own anatomical studies by means of copper plates.² Furthermore, his report on Leonardo's studies on optics and...