Even great masters don’t always use the highest quality paintbrushes. For simple work, such as priming, simple paintbrushes suffice, for more difficult situations and for special painting materials particular paintbrushes are needed. In very meticulous cases a paintbrush of the highest quality helps to ”create magic”. Is it conceivable that Leonardo da Vinci, our namesake, would have been able to invent the technique of “sfumato”- that limitlessly subtle gradation of light to dark, those shadows bathing in light - and simultaneously develop his unrivalled mastery, with a paintbrush of the simple kind? A dangerous question. Leonardo is capable of anything. When in 1475 the Italians, who had up until then always painted in egg tempera, gradually turned to the new Dutch technique of oil painting, they, and above all the young Leonardo, also tried out different combinations of oil paint and resinous balsam. Which bristles and fibres do we have to thank for the hovering smiles of Madonna and the angels, Leda and Anna Selbdritt? Leonardo is said to have painted without trace, using brushes of silk and simply breathing the colours into place. Sadly the artist’s notes and Vasari’s biography don’t tell us which brushes Leonardo really used. What we can say however is that he would surely have been happy to have even a sample available to him for his work, from the collection which you will find presented in the following pages from DAVINCI Künstlerpinselfabrik.