Leonardo da Vinci and the Pacioli Code by Jerzy K. Kulski was published in 2019 to mark the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death at 67-years of age on May 2 in Amboise in France. This illustrated ( 160 images) and referenced book honours and celebrates Leonardo’s life and accomplishments in art, science and his philosophy on dialectics, linear perspective, geometric variations, divine proportion, vision, perception and anamorphosis. It highlights and commemorates his friendship with the Franciscan friar and mathematician, Fra Luca Pacioli. The author focuses particularly on the subjects, objects, pictorial codes and hidden messages contained within the mysterious portrait entitled Fra Luca Pacioli and Student that is held at the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples and officially attributed to the Venetian painter Jacopo de’ Barbari. However, this official attribution is questionable because the painting shows all the typical signatures, mysteries, cryptograms, geometric proportions, symbols and praxis of Leonardo da Vinci. It is a fantastical Renaissance masterpiece drawn and painted with science, wit, guile and artistry by an innovator communicating with puzzling rebuses and psychological imagery. Kulski describes and analyses the science, mathematics, geometry, symbolism, history and pictorial codification of the portraiture of the Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli, the condottiero and jouster Galeazzo Sanseverino, Leonardo’s signature rhombicuboctahedron hanging in space from a red thread, an enigmatic black fly, together with a cryptogram, IACO. B AR. VIGEN NIS. P.1495, that encodes the political intrigues in the Duchy of Milan during the time of Leonardo da Vinci. The exposition explores Leonardo’s 5-year working relationship with Fra Luca Pacioli on Euclidian geometry, regular solids and the divine proportion, together with the support and intrigues of their powerful and rich sponsors, Galeazzo Sanseverino and his father-in-law Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, who inspired the portraiture. This book is dedicated to the Italian Renaissance art researcher Carla Glori who deciphered the mysterious code associated with the menacing black fly on the yellowed, encrypted cartouche and proved beyond reasonable doubt that the painting originated from the studio of Leonardo da Vinci when he still was entangled in various disputes with his other major art works, The Virgin of the Rocks, The Last Supper, Mona Lisa and the giant equestrian statue known as Colossus. The 21 chapters also contain 160 images and a bibliography of 250 cited books, journal references and Internet web pages.
