A Treatise on Painting. With a Life of Leonardo and an Account of His Works by John William Brown

While the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci have affected viewers in an incredibly visceral and emotional way for over 500 years, few other artists' works were created with such scientific rigor and fastidious observation. For da Vinci, painting was the natural extension of science, and only through an intimate knowledge of the physics of objects and light within space could one hope to create paintings that accurately reflected creation. He embodies the ideal of the Renaissance man, and his paintings, science, and writings are still pertinent half a millennium after his death.