Page:A Treatise on Painting.djvu/77

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LEONARDO DA VINCI.
lxvii

in his lectures, having, it is said, attacked some of the pictures painted by Le Brun, the then Director of the Academy, had been very deservedly removed from his situation, and forced to quit the Academy, for endeavouring to lessen that authority, which for the instruction and improvement of students it was necessary the Director should possess, and attempting thus to render fruitless the precepts which his situation required him to deliver. As this Treatise of Leonardo had in the translation been adopted by Le Brun, who fully saw its value, and introduced it into the Academy for the advantage of the students, by which means the sale of Bosse’s work might be, and probably was, affected; Bosse, at the end of a Treatise on Geometry and Perspective, taught in the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, published by him in octavo in 1665, has inserted a paper with this title, which in the original is given in French, but we have preferred translating it: “What follows is for those who shall have the curiosity to be acquainted with a part of the procedings of Mons. Desargues, and myself, against some of our antagonists, and part of their skill; together with some remarks made on the contents of several chapters of a Treatise attributed to Leonardo de Vinci, translated from Italian into French by

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