Martin Kemp FBA is Emeritus Professor in the History of Art at Trinity College, Oxford University. One of the world's leading authorities on Leonardo da Vinci, he has published extensively on his life and work, including the prize-winning Leonardo da Vinci: The marvellous works of nature and man, Leonardo, Christ to Coke: How Image Becomes Icon, and Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting (with Giuseppe Pallanti). He currently speaks, writes, and broadcasts full-time.

Robert B. Simon is an art historian and art dealer in New York, specializing in Renaissance and Baroque paintings. He received his doctorate at Columbia University , and has published and lectured widely on both art-historical matters and on broader concerns relating to the authenticity, valuation, conservation, and commercial trade of works of art. Significant paintings, drawings, and sculpture from his gallery are to be found in major American museums, as well as in private collections worldwide.

Margaret Dalivalle read History of Art at Oriel College, University of Oxford, after which she took up a post-doctoral research fellowship at Yale University. Subsequently, as Francis Haskell Memorial Fund scholar, she conducted research into the history of collecting old master drawings in The Netherlands. She teaches Renaissance and early modern European art history at the Middlebury Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Oxford.

• Introduction


• Part I


• 1: The Discovery of a Masterpiece


• Part II


• 2: The Calm Centre: Leonardo and the Ineffable


• 3: 'Christ in the Manner of God the Father'


• 4: Drawings and Dates


• 5: Visual Magic


• 6: Patronage and Some Copies


• Part III


• 7: 'A peece of Christ done by Leonardo': Plotting the Paper Trail


• 8: Inventing Leonardo


• 9: Experiencing Leonardo


• 10: Appraising Leonardo


• 11: 'A Pitiable Sight'


• 12: Hollar


• 13: Capitanus Stone


• 14: 'Nothing is hidden under the sun'


• 15: The Picture Vanishes


• Epilogue