In the early 18th century, between the Peloponnese, the Ionian Islands, and, probably, Venice, the painter and military man Panagiotis Doxaras (1662-1729) translated into Greek the treatises on painting by Leonardo da Vinci and the Florentine humanist Leon Battista Alberti, texts that are among the most important sources of the history of European art. Additionally, it includes instructions for the art of fresco painting by the Jesuit painter Andrea Pozzo.

Doxaras Hellenized thousands of painter names included in the first artistic dictionary published in Italian in 1719 and translated a speech by Paolo Segneri, a prominent Jesuit preacher of the time. He compiled these translations, along with some shorter texts, in an illustrated manuscript titled "Art of Painting," which, for unknown reasons, was not published at that time and has survived in two copies: one in the Marciana Library of Venice and another, more complete in many respects, in the National Library of Greece.

In the present volume, the texts that make up the manuscript of the National Library are published for the first time using diplomatic methods. Doxaras' initiative, who is usually identified as the first modern Greek painter or as the "post-Byzantine" who became "western," not only represents a potential intervention in the artistic developments of Greek-speaking populations but also presents broader interest.

Regarding the language used, the translations include words corresponding to terms and concepts without analogy in the world for which they were intended. There is also a diffusion of religious and political ideas from the western to the eastern-Orthodox world. Notably, Doxaras' translation of da Vinci's treatise is one of the first undertaken at a pan-European level and remains the only one available in the Greek language.