Leonardo nella guida del Titi: Il caso della lunetta di Sant’Onofrio

Thanks to Filippo Titi, the lunette with the Madonna with child and donor at the convent of Sant’Onofrio in Rome was a great success in eighteenth-century: no one, after the abbot, questioned the attribution to Leonardo, not even Giovanni Bottari, who oversaw the latest edition of the guide by Titi, Filippo Baldinucci, Seroux D’Agincourt or Luigi Lanzi. Recognized today as a work by Cesare da Sesto, it cannot be excluded that the attribution relaunched by Titi in his guide, confirmed in subsequent editions up to 1763, had imposed itself in the rooms of the Academy of San Luca immediately after the first Parisian edition of the Treatise on Painting of 1651 and, in particular, after Giovan Pietro Bellori read his memorable lecture of the Idea in 1664. Then, the curiosity that had to light towards him led to crediting the attribution of the lunette of Sant’Onofrio to the master of Vinci.