Leonardo and the Last Supper by Ross King

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    My thanks to everyone who provided me with material assistance and/or moral support as I researched and wrote. It was a pleasure and a learning experience, as always, to work with my editor in New York, George Gibson, whose patient, tactful, and astute queries made the book much better than it would otherwise have been. My other profound debt is to Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at Oxford University, who was extremely generous with both his time and his resources. He read the manuscript, answered various questions, and gave me access to the treasures of his Leonardo collection in the History Faculty Research Hall at Oxford University.
    Several other people also read the book in manuscript form and offered comments and advice. My friend Dr. Mark Asquith proved, as ever, an alert and probing reader. Another friend, Tom Smart, likewise read the manuscript and gave counsel and encouragement, as did my faithful literary agent, Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson. Dava Sobel, Keith Devlin, and my brother, Dr. Bryan King, kindly responded to my questions about areas of Leonardo’s expertise that go well beyond my own. Dr. Matthew Landrus generously permitted me to use his perpective drawing of The Last Supper . Nathaniel Knaebel at Bloomsbury efficiently handled the transformation of manuscript into book, and I thank Paula Cooper for her excellent and attentive copyediting. Lea Beresford tracked down the images used in the book and provided other valuable logistical support. My thanks, too, to Bill Swainson and everyone at Bloomsbury in London.
    My indebtedness to Leonardo scholars is, I hope, adequately reflected in my notes and bibliography. I have been the beneficiary of the researches, writings, and insights of (to name only a few of the most prominent) Kenneth Clark, Martin Kemp, Charles Nicholl, and Carlo Pedretti. As well,one of the pleasures of researching my book was reading Leonardo’s own words—and glimpsing the frenetic stirrings of his marvelously inventive, magpie mind—in the edition of the notebooks first compiled and translated in 1883 by Jean-Paul Richter. For these and other volumes I am grateful to have had access both to the London Library and to Oxford University’s Sackler Library.
    Finally, thank you as always to my wife, Melanie, for her love, support, and patience during my Leonardo years. This book is dedicated to her father, Bunny Harris, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. He has long been a reliable source of conversation and good-natured moral support—to say nothing of unstinting food and drink—to both of us.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Ammirato, Scipione. Opuscoli , vol. 2. Florence, 1637.
Armenini, Giovanni Battista. On the True Precepts of the Art of Painting . Trans. Edward J. Olszewski. New York: Burt Franklin & Co., 1977.
Bacon, Roger. The “Opus Majus” of Roger Bacon , vol. 1. Ed. John Henry Bridges. Oxford: Williams and Norgate, 1900.
Baldassarri, Stefano Ugo, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Images of Quattrocentro Florence: Selected Writings in Literature, History and Art . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
Bambach, Carmen C. “Leonardo, Left-handed Draftsman and Writer.” In Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman , ed. Carmen C. Bambach, 31–57. New York and New Haven: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2003.
Bandello, Matteo. Tutte le opere , 2 vols. Ed. Francesco Flora. Milan: A. Mondadori, 1934.
Barcilon, Pinin Brambilla, and Pietro C. Marani. Leonardo : “ The Last Supper. ” Trans. Harlow Tighe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Baumgartner, Frederic J. Louis II . New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy . Oxford: Oxford