Biographies and monographs

Daniel Arasse. Leonardo da Vinci, the rhythm of the world. New York, 1998 (1st ed., in French, Paris, 1997). 

David Alan Brown. Leonardo da Vinci: origins of a genius. New Haven, 1998.

Fritjof Capra. The science of Leonardo: inside the mind of the great genius of the Renaissance. New York, 2007. 

Kenneth Clark. Leonardo da Vinci: an account of his development  as an artist, with introduction by Martin Kemp. London, 1989 (1st ed., London, 1939). 

Sigmund Freud. Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood, translated by Alan Tyson. New York, 1964 (1st ed., in German, in: Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde, vol. 7., 1910). 

Nathan Johannes & Frank Zöllner. Leonardo da Vinci: the complete paintings and drawings. Cologne, 2003 (2nd ed., 2007; 3rd ed., 2011).

Kenneth D. Keele. Leonardo da Vinci's elements of science of man. London, 1983. 

Martin Kemp. Leonardo da Vinci: the marvellous works of nature and man. Cambridge, MA, 1981 (2nd ed., Oxford, 2006).

Martin Kemp. Leonardo. Oxford/London, 2004.

Pietro Marani. Leonardo da Vinci: the complete paintings. New York, 2000.

Charles Nicholl. Leonardo da Vinci: flights of the mind. New York, 2004.

Carlo Vecce. Leonardo. Rome, 1998 (2nd ed., 2006). 

Vasiliy Pavlovich Zubov. Leonardo da Vinci, translated by David Kraus. Cambridge, MA, 1968 (1st ed., in Russian, Leningrad, 1961).

Robert Zwijnenberg. The writings and drawings of Leonardo da Vinci: Chaos and Order in Early Modern Thought, translated by Caroline van Eck. Cambridge, UK, 1999. 

Documents on Leonardo's life

Leonardo da Vinci. I documenti e le testimonianze contemoranee,  ed. by Edoardo Villata. Milan, 1999.

Leonardo da Vinci: la vera immagine, documenti e testimonianze sulla vita e sull'opera, edited by Vanna Arrighi, Anna Bellinazzi & Edoardo Villata, exhibition catalogue (Florence, Archivio centrale di stato). Florence, 2005.

Janice Shell and Grazioso Sironi. "Salai and Leonardo's legacy", in: Burlington Magazine 133, no. 1055 (February 1991): pp. 95-108.

Early biographies 

Leonardo da Vinci: selected scholarship in English, ed. by Claire Farago, 5 vols. vol. 5: Biography and Early Criticism of Leonardo da Vinci. New York/London, 1999. 

Giorgio Vasari. "Leonardo da Vinci", in: Lives of the painters, sculptors and architects, translated by George Bull, 2 vols., New York, 1996. (1st ed., Florence, 1550; 2nd ed., Florence, 1568). 

Giorgio Vasari. "Leonardo da Vinci", in: Le Vite de' piu eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, nelle redazioni affrontate del 1550 e 1568, ed. by Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, 6 vols. in 8 tomes, Florence, 1966-87. 

On Leonardo's early biographies

Paul Barolsky. "Vasari and the historical imagination". Word and Image 15, no. 3 (1999): pp. 286-291.

Patricia Rubin. "What men saw. Vasari's life of Leonardo da Vinci and the image of the Renaissance Artist". Art History, 13 (1990): pp. 34-46.

A. Richard Turner. Inventing Leonardo. New York, 1993.

Carlo Vecce, "Leonardo nelle biografie antiche", in C. Vecce, Leonardo, Rome 1998, pp. 349-379.