Leonardo da Vinci on painting: from the use of types to the criticism of types

Leonardo da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi of 1481/82 is dominated by two different figure types. In particular in the foreground, there are almost exclusively elderly men with a beard on the one side and angel-like young men on the other. It has long been recognized and discussed that Leonardo’s use of certain figure types in his paintings is deeply rooted in a Florentine tradition. In the first part of my paper I reconsider this discussion in view of the Florentine culture, in a second part I discuss Leonardo’s merits as theorist and his criticism of Florentine art.