ENGLISH VERSION Re-Reading Leonardo. The Treatise on Painting across Europe, 1550-1900 PART 15

Leonardo, Treatise on Painting
Senex and Taylor edition (1721)

Richard Woodfield
The 1721 English Treatise of Painting: a Masonic Moment in the Culture of Newtonianism

in

Re-Reading Leonardo. The Treatise on Painting across Europe, 1550-1900
Edited and introduced by Claire Farago

[On Leonardo see in this blog also :

Leonardo da Vinci, On the Motion and Measurement of Water, Nine Books Ordered by Brother Luigi Maria Arconati. Published using the Barberini Archetypal Code, Edited by Enrico Carusi and Antonio Favaro. With an introductory essay by Francesco P. Di Teodoro

Claire Farago, Janis Bell, Carlo Vecce, The Fabrication of Leonardo da Vinci’s Trattato della pittura, with a scholarly edition of the editio princeps (1651) and an annotated English translation, With a foreword by Martin Kemp and additional contributions by Juliana Barone, Matthew Landrus, Maria Rascaglia, Anna Sconza, Mario Valentino Guffanti. Two volumes. Leiden, Boston, Brill, 2018. Part One, Two, Three, Four and Five.

Carlo Vecce, The Lost Library - Leonardo's Books, Rome, Salerno editrice, 2017

Leonardo da Vinci, The Book of Painting, Codex Vaticanus Urbinas lat. 1270 in the Vatican Apostolic Library, Edited by Carlo Pedretti, Critical transcription by Carlo Vecce, 2 Volumes, Firenze, Giunti, 1995

Giovanni Mazzaferro, Vasari and the 'Homeric Question': conflicting interpretations of the Lives in the light of the biography of Leonardo da Vinci.

Giuseppe Bossi, About Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. Facsimile reprint of the 1810 Milan edition, Skira editore, 2009

Re-Reading Leonardo, The Treatise on Painting across Europe, 1550-1900, Edited by Claire Farago, Ashgate Publishing, 2009. Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeenth, Eighteenth.

Giovanni Ambrogio Mazenta, Some memoirs of the facts of Leonardo da Vinci in Milan and of his books, Republished and illustrated by D. Luigi Gramatica, prefect of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, La Vita Felice, Milano, 2008]

[1] The first English edition of the Treatise on Painting by Leonardo dates back to 1721. The translation is anonymous (and according to what reported by Woodfield p. 488 n. 1, it is even incomplete; however, it is not explained what are the missing parts). The work was published by John Senex and William Taylor. It is likely that the true financer of publication was William Taylor, who had achieved economic success, two years before, with the release of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe . However, the most significant character, to our views, is undoubtedly John Senex. The thesis of Woodfield is that the publication of Leonardo’s Treatise is to be inscribed in the framework of the promotion of the Newtonian culture and of proselytizing in favour of Freemasonry, conducted by Senex himself. Senex in fact published both before and after 1721 a series of texts closely linked to the philosophy of experimental science of Isaac Newton; of particular importance were his activities as cartographer and the printing of maps not based on the repetition of questionable patterns, but on account of new scientific data. His cartographic production, moreover, earned him the appointment as a member of the Royal Academy in 1728. The spirit with which Senex, in 1721, published the Treaty is also clearly explained by the reference to other volumes he edited, contained at the bottom of the work: reported are only works of Isaac Newton or his students. “For Senex, Leonardo’s experimental approach, both to the observation of the natural world and to its depiction and its emulation by contemporary artists, would have contributed to the development of a Newtonian culture and the ultimate glory of the art of painting... Senex placed him [note of the editor: Leonardo] in the pantheon of heroes of the experimental method” (p. 477).

[2] The English translation of the Treatise can therefore be seen as the first in a series of publications of scientific or philosophical nature for the benefit of the fine arts. It should not be forgotten that the English art literature at the time was almost non-existent. It was based primarily on the (numerous) translation of texts produced in France, related to the world of the Académie. Between the second half of the '600 and the beginning of 1700 among others texts by Roland Fréart de Chambray (An Idea of the Perfection of Painting, 1668 and A Parallel of Architecture, 1664), Charles-Alphonse Du Fresnoy (De Arte Graphica, 1695), Charles Le Brun (The Conference... upon Expression, 1701) and Roger de Piles (The art of painting and the lives of the painters, 1706 and Dialogue upon colouring, 1711) were translated into English. Woodfield does not fail to point out that there is a clear dichotomy between all of this literature and Senex’s purposes: for the former “fundamental... was Bellori’s doctrine of the Idea. The artist had a duty to rise above the contingencies of observed nature to capture the ideal. This had a real impact on the effect of empirical discovery on artists’ practices: some features of nature should not be observed in the painted image... Senex, by contrast, was engaged with science in its practical form of technology” (p. 479). As mentioned, the Treatise was the first of a series of texts of this kind which Senex rapidly published. Among others, it is worth mentioning: in 1721, the translation of Ordonnance des cinq espèces de colonnes selon la méthode des anciens (Order of five species of columns according to the method of the ancient) by Claude Perrault (already published in English; the first English translation was of 1708); in 1724 the Treaty of architecture by Sebastien Le Clerc; in 1725 the translation of the first book of the Treatise on Architecture by Andrea Pozzo. 

[3] Woodfield put this whole series of publications also in terms of promotion of Freemasonry. 1717 is the creation of a Grand Lodge of Freemasonry, 1721 and the approval of its statutes, and 1723 (right on the part of Senex and John Hooke ) is the publication of The Constitutions of The Free-Masons and of that most Ancient and Right Worshipful Fraternity, written by James Anderson. Senex played leading roles in the Grand Lodge. “Senex’s publication of treatises devoted to a scientific, and mathematical, approach to the visual arts promoted a core element of the new Masonic ideology: God the architect of a Newtonian universe” (p. 484). 

[4] According to us, while Woodfield hits the mark when he speaks of the Newtonian spirit of which Senex had absorbed, he overstretches his reasoning, when he wants to explain his entire book production with the Masonic ideology. Let's try to clarify with an example: the first edition made by Senex (in partnership with R. Gosling) of the Treaty of Andrea Pozzo (in addition, a Jesuit) is dated 1707, and is therefore much to the previous years of his membership in Freemasonry. This seems unknown to Woodfield. That of 1725 (in fact many quote the years 1723 or 1724) is the second edition. We must not forget that John Senex liked to call himself first and foremost a "bookseller" and reasoned thus also according to an economic logic. The second edition can almost exclusively and very simply explained by the huge publishing success that distinguished, in the light of the British passion for architecture that led , for example, to the phenomenon of Neo-Palladianism.