Leonardo, Bramante, and the Academia: Art and Friendship in Fifteenth-Century Milan

This book is the first study to provide a comprehensive historical and theoretical account of the Academia Leonardi Vinci. Pederson brings together literary sources to offer a new interpretation of the academy not as one singular entity, but as a collection of academic modalities in Renaissance Milan. Eventually these various modalities converged around their namesake Leonardo da Vinci, as well as the architect Donato Bramante. This group drew together not only humanists, as in other early Italian academies, but also practitioners of a range of disciplines that ultimately gave way to a new kind of group. This collective of creative personages generated forms of expression that explored the liminal spaces between art, geometry, architecture, and the natural world, which in turn stimulated conversation and debate. This activity made it different from other early Italian academies, and in this way it offered something entirely new.