famous of Leonardo da Vinci's works. Two of the three most important
were never completed, obstacles having arisen during his life-time,
which obliged him to leave them unfinished; namely the Sforza
Monument and the Wall-painting of the Battle of Anghiari, while the
third--the picture of the Last Supper at Milan--has suffered
irremediable injury from decay and the repeated restorations to
which it was recklessly subjected during the XVIIth and XVIIIth
centuries. Nevertheless, no other picture of the Renaissance has
become so wellknown and popular through copies of every description.

Vasari says, and rightly, in his Life of Leonardo, "that he laboured
much more by his word than in fact or by deed", and the biographer
evidently had in his mind the numerous works in Manuscript which
have been preserved to this day. To us, now, it seems almost
inexplicable that these valuable and interesting original texts
should have remained so long unpublished, and indeed forgotten. It
is certain that during the XVIth and XVIIth centuries their
exceptional value was highly appreciated. This is proved not merely
by the prices which they commanded, but also by the exceptional
interest which has been attached to the change of ownership of
merely a few pages of Manuscript.

That, notwithstanding this eagerness to possess the Manuscripts,
their contents remained a mystery, can only be accounted for by the
many and great difficulties attending the task of deciphering them.
The handwriting is so peculiar that it requires considerable
practice to read even a few detached phrases, much more to solve
with any certainty the numerous difficulties of alternative
readings, and to master the sense as a connected whole. Vasari
observes with reference to Leonardos writing: "he wrote backwards,