Leonardo’s Self-Portrait

The book, dedicated to the world-renowned Self-Portrait by Leonardo da Vinci-an icon of art history of all times-aims to frame the work historically, starting from the years of its creation and following the traces documenting its knowledge in the late 16th and early 19th centuries, before its arrival at the Biblioteca Reale of Turin, and its subsequent consecration and popularization.

The context in which the drawing was created is ideally reconstructed on the basis of the most recent studies, confirming its execution between 1517 and 1518, in the last years of Leonardo's life in Amboise, at the court of King Francis I of France. Alongside the precious drawing, these pages present evidence of Leonardo's activity in the last years of his life, from the manuscript recounting the visit of the Cardinal of Aragon in 1517, to other original drawings by the Master, among which six sheets of the Codex Atlanticus, examples of the themes that were dear to him and the projects he had underway while he was drawing his Self-Portrait.

The book is completed by two other sections. The first is dedicated to twenty works from the Galleria Sabauda, which are brought together for the first time and evoke the different ways of looking at Leonardo's innovations by some artists active between the 15th and 16th centuries from the north to the south of Italy. The second section presents fifteen sculptures by Giuliano Vangi, who in his "contemporary faces" blends the legacy of tradition and the intensity of expressions and feelings, recalling Leonardo's "motions of the soul."