Leonardo da Vinci

I didn’t buy this book because I was fascinated by Leonardo. I bought it because several people whose opinions I value said it was a great book and because the other books I’ve read by Walter Isaacson were excellent. I’m glad I bought it and read it. Before I started reading, I thought I knew the basics. Leonardo was the painter of perhaps the two most famous paintings in history: The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. I had that right. But most of the rest of what I thought I knew turned out to be either wrong or incomplete. The man certainly was a creative genius, but a lot of the things that I’d read about him, like that bit about the “first helicopter,” turned out to be wrong. I didn’t know how much he did beyond painting and how deep he went on so many topics. Leonardo was certainly the prototype of the Renaissance Man, and looking back, we can see that he was born at the right time for someone with broad interests and many talents. Leonardo was born in 1452 and died in 1519. That gave him a long, productive life of 67 years. He was a bastard, which wasn’t a problem in Florence when he was born and may even have given him some advantages. He didn’t get a lot of formal schooling, which meant that he started to learn on his own and developed methods that worked for him. He started out in Florence, where he was apprenticed to an excellent master, and learned the craft of painting. But early in his life, he moved to Milan. That turned out to be a good thing, too. Florence was more artistic, but Milan had a much more diverse culture of people interested in the sciences. And it was in the sciences and engineering that Leonardo would do a lot of work I knew nothing about and now shake my head at, in wonder. Leonardo’s work in science included the development of thinking on perspective. I always thought perspective was a kind of geometric thing about painting. But it turns out that he developed three views of perspective. One was the standard vanishing point thing, but the others were the way color changes as distance increases, and the way that we lose detail on things the further they are away. He made contributions to anatomy by doing dissections of cadavers of both humans and animals. He certainly learned from his dissections, and he also captured what he observed in drawings and notes. He may have made even more contributions to engineering. He did a lot of military engineering, and a lot that revolves around water flows, including water systems for cities and diverting rivers. By the time I got to the end of the book, it seemed like Leonardo had done some work in almost any area of human knowledge. Not all of that work was great, or groundbreaking, but an awful lot of it was. So, the question is, how did he do it? That’s where I got my biggest takeaways from the book. Leonardo was very smart. Okay, we got that out of the way. Most of the people we call geniuses are very smart. But there are an awful lot of very smart people who aren’t geniuses. What really separates geniuses from the rest of the pack is what they do, not raw brainpower. The good news is that we have a pretty good idea of what Leonardo did. Isaacson developed his book primarily from the 7,000+ pages we have from Leonardo’s notebooks. That’s a lot, but it’s probably only about a quarter of the total he created. Here’s what Leonardo did to produce the quantity of quality insight and production that characterized his life. Leonardo captured his ideas. Early in his life, he developed a habit of walking around with a notebook that he used to jot down observations and make quick sketches. He even developed a shorthand that would help him recreate things he’d seen when he got back to his studio and wanted to draw them in detail. Leonardo was an acute observer who trained himself to be better. It helped that he was also a facile drawer. But the main driver of his close observations was curiosity. He developed his own process for observing things. It began with what Isaacson calls “marching orders.” Leonardo described what he needed to do to learn or properly observe something. Then he would go and observe. Leonardo learned by experimenting. Besides observing, Leonardo was an avid experimenter and he recorded both the experiments and what he learned from them. Leonardo got ideas and sharpened ideas through his reading. The printing press was invented the year Leonardo was born. By the time he was 40, books were increasingly common, and an autodidact like Leonardo could learn and get ideas from books. Leonardo had many friendships and collaborators over the years. This was not the lone genius retiring to his studio and producing bursts of insight. This is a man who went out into the world to observe, made careful observations, and then hone his understanding with reading, discussion, and experiment. Isaacson includes a final chapter in the book about things you can learn from Leonardo, and it’s a chapter worth reading. But there’s a statement of Isaacson’s near the beginning of the book that sums up the takeaway for me. “His genius was of the type we can understand, even take lessons from. It was based on skills we can aspire to improve in ourselves, such as curiosity and intense observation.” And, I would add, experiment and collaboration. Before you read the book straight through, read that final chapter about what you can learn from Leonardo. It will give you a frame for learning as you go. In A Nutshell This is a thorough and well-written biography of one of history’s most fascinating individuals. You’ll enjoy the read. You’ll learn a lot. With a little effort, you can improve the way you see the world and develop some discipline so that you can be more like Leonardo than you are today.

“Despite his immersion into science, or perhaps because of it, Leonardo had developed an ever-deepening appreciation for the profound spiritual mystery of our place in the cosmos. And as Kenneth Clark noted, “Mystery to Leonardo was a shadow, a smile and a finger pointing into darkness.” (6917) This tension between science and religion was developing, adapting and producing the Renaissance. This work seems closer to a biography of this new world. Leonardo is the perfect one to highlight, even lead the way out of the medieval world. Issacson connects Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci and the drama of this epoch. For example, this list at the beginning . . . Cesare Borgia (c. 1475–1507). Italian warrior, illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI, subject of Machiavelli’s The Prince, Leonardo employer. Donato Bramante (1444–1514). Architect, friend of Leonardo in Milan, worked on Milan Cathedral, Pavia Cathedral, and St. Peter’s in the Vatican. Caterina Lippi (c. 1436–1493). Orphaned peasant girl from near Vinci, mother of Leonardo; later married Antonio di Piero del Vaccha, known as Accattabriga. Francis I (1494–1547). King of France from 1515, last patron of Leonardo. Pope Leo X, Giovanni de’ Medici (1475–1521). Son of Lorenzo de’ Medici, elected pope in 1513. Louis XII (1462–1515). King of France from 1498, conquered Milan in 1499. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527). Florentine diplomat and writer, became envoy to Cesare Borgia and friend of Leonardo in 1502. Lorenzo “the Magnificent” de’ Medici (1449–1492). Banker, art patron, and de facto ruler of Florence from 1469 until his death. Francesco Melzi (c. 1493–c. 1568). From a noble Milan family, joined Leonardo’s household in 1507 and became a surrogate son and heir. Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564). Florentine sculptor and rival of Leonardo. Salai, born Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno (1480–1524). Entered Leonardo’s household at age ten and was dubbed Salai, meaning “Little Devil.” Ludovico Sforza (1452–1508). De facto ruler of Milan from 1481, Duke of Milan from 1494 until his ouster by the French in 1499, patron of Leonardo. Nevertheless, the psychological/philosophical analysis is abundant. For example . . . “This echoed what Plato had written in the Timaeus, where he argued that just as the body is nourished by blood, so the earth draws water to replenish itself. Leonardo also drew on theorists of the Middle Ages, in particular a compendium by the thirteenth-century Italian monk and geologist Restoro d’Arezzo. As a painter who marveled at nature’s patterns, Leonardo embraced the microcosm-macrocosm connection as more than merely an analogy. He viewed it as having a spiritual component, which he expressed in his drawing of Vitruvian Man.’’ This profound spiritual/philosophical connection to ancient and medieval thinkers explains much of Leonardo’s decisions . . . “As we have seen, this mystical connection between humans and the earth is reflected in many of his masterpieces, from Ginevra de’ Benci to Saint Anne to Madonna of the Yarnwinder and eventually the Mona Lisa. It also became an organizing principle for his scientific inquiries. When he was immersed in his anatomical research on the human digestive system, he instructed himself, “First give the comparison with the water of the rivers; then with that of the bile which goes to the stomach against the course of the food.” Not a modern connection. Kindle includes four page time line with many color reproductions of his paintings with notes showing other events at that time. Excellent! This work closer to a scholar’s essay than a biographical novel. Focuses on analysis of Leonardo’s work and activity, almost overshadowing the man, but, nevertheless, he does come across. Issacson regularly cites other biographies, some centuries old, and other modern. The sometime contrasting opinions add depth and color. Upon finishing, I felt I had a good understanding of Leonardo, the man - world class procrastinator, openly gay, insatiably curious, driven to perfection, with a marvelous synthesis of the artistic and scientific. Along with this, more insight into the Italian Renaissance - controlling power of the elite, waning influence of the church, increasing influence of Greek philosophy, etc.. Reader needs serious interest and determination to tackle the detailed, extensive presentation. However, the writing and tone is easy to follow and clearly done.

Good overview of Leonardo’s life, but somehow this biography didn’t captivate me. Will read some other books on Z Leonardo to see if other approaches are better.

Un regalo para una persona amante de Leonardo que no decepcionó lo más mínimo. Es un libro denso pero que no se hace pesado, con muchas ilustraciones variadas. Una gran biografía.

著者Walter Issacsonの力量が冴えた伝記。ダビンチの芸術家そして科学者としての才能をフルに発揮し両者の接点が傑作モナリザ。それも素晴らしいが伴侶（美少年）サライをモデルにしたJohn the Baptistの妖しげな官能美もダビンチの裏面を如実に示している。惜しむらくはルイ１4世皇帝妃によって葬られた、禁断のLeda and the swan、見たかった。ダビンチが開発した遠近法、透視図法などの説明や、静止している絵画に動き、更には息吹きを吹き込む技法を分かり易く説明しているのは著者Issacsonの力量です。15世紀末のイタリア目の前に投影させ、ダビンチを通じてルネッサンスの鼓動を感じさせるのは主題と著者の完全なる合体です。

La presentación es increíble, la calidad del papel y fotografías son igualmente de excelente calidad para el precio y el estilo-género del libro (al no ser especializado un libro de arte, si no una biografía, es un buen detalle la calidad del papel como si fuera uno de los primeros) El contenido es amplio y contado de una manera muy digerible que permite adentrarse en la mente de Leonardo al hacer las obras que el libro describe, definitivamente un libro indispensable si te apasiona o interesa la vida, obras o narrativas de Leonardo.

The book quality is amazing the pages are think. The biography is wonderfully presented.

Très bon livre