Download or read book The Last Leonardo written by Ben Lewis and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An epic quest exposes hidden truths about Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, the recently discovered masterpiece that sold for $450 million—and might not be the real thing. In 2017, Leonardo da Vinci’s small oil painting the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction. In the words of its discoverer, the image of Christ as savior of the world is “the rarest thing on the planet.” Its $450 million sale price also makes it the world’s most expensive painting. For two centuries, art dealers had searched in vain for the Holy Grail of art history: a portrait of Christ as the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci. Many similar paintings of greatly varying quality had been executed by Leonardo’s assistants in the early sixteenth century. But where was the original by the master himself? In November 2017, Christie’s auction house announced they had it. But did they? The Last Leonardo tells a thrilling tale of a spellbinding icon invested with the power to make or break the reputations of scholars, billionaires, kings, and sheikhs. Ben Lewis takes us to Leonardo’s studio in Renaissance Italy; to the court of Charles I and the English Civil War; to Amsterdam, Moscow, and New Orleans; to the galleries, salerooms, and restorer’s workshop as the painting slowly, painstakingly emerged from obscurity. The vicissitudes of the highly secretive art market are charted across six centuries. It is a twisting tale of geniuses and oligarchs, double-crossings and disappearances, in which we’re never quite certain what to believe. Above all, it is an adventure story about the search for lost treasure, and a quest for the truth. Praise for The Last Leonardo “The story of the world’s most expensive painting is narrated with great gusto and formidably researched detail in Ben Lewis’s book. . . . Lewis’s probings of the Salvator’s backstory raise questions about its historical status and visibility, and these lead in turn to the fundamental question of whether the painting is really an autograph work by Leonardo.”—Charles Nicholl, The Guardian “As the art historian and critic Ben Lewis shows in his forensically detailed and gripping investigation into the history, discovery and sales of the painting, establishing the truth is like nailing down jelly.”— Michael Prodger, The Sunday Times
Download or read book The Shadow Drawing written by Francesca Fiorani and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[The Shadow Drawing] reorients our perspective, distills a life and brings it into focus—the very work of revision and refining that its subject loved best." —Parul Sehgal, The New York Times | Editors' Choice An entirely new account of Leonardo the artist and Leonardo the scientist, and why they were one and the same man Leonardo da Vinci has long been celebrated for his consummate genius. He was the painter who gave us the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, and the inventor who anticipated the advent of airplanes, hot air balloons, and other technological marvels. But what was the connection between Leonardo the painter and Leonardo the scientist? Historians of Renaissance art have long supposed that Leonardo became increasingly interested in science as he grew older and turned his insatiable curiosity in new directions. They have argued that there are, in effect, two Leonardos—an artist and an inventor. In this pathbreaking new interpretation, the art historian Francesca Fiorani offers a different view. Taking a fresh look at Leonardo’s celebrated but challenging notebooks, as well as other sources, Fiorani argues that Leonardo became familiar with advanced thinking about human vision when he was still an apprentice in a Florence studio—and used his understanding of optical science to develop and perfect his painting techniques. For Leonardo, the task of the painter was to capture the interior life of a human subject, to paint the soul. And even at the outset of his career, he believed that mastering the scientific study of light, shadow, and the atmosphere was essential to doing so. Eventually, he set down these ideas in a book—A Treatise on Painting—that he considered his greatest achievement, though it would be disfigured, ignored, and lost in subsequent centuries. Ranging from the teeming streets of Florence to the most delicate brushstrokes on the surface of the Mona Lisa, The Shadow Drawing vividly reconstructs Leonardo’s life while teaching us to look anew at his greatest paintings. The result is both stirring biography and a bold reconsideration of how the Renaissance understood science and art—and of what was lost when that understanding was forgotten.
Download or read book Leonardo Da Vinci written by Martin Clayton and published by Royal Collection Trust. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "First published in hardback 2012 by Royal Collection Trust".-Title page verso.
Download or read book Leonardo Da Vinci s Treatise of Painting written by Richard Shaw Pooler and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the story of the world's greatest treatise on painting - Leonardo Da Vinci's "Treatise of Painting". It combines an extensive body of literature about the Treatise with original research to offer a unique perspective on: • Its origins, and history of how it survived the dispersal of manuscripts; • Its contents, their significance and how Leonardo developed his Renaissance Theory of Art; • The development of both the abridged and complete printed editions; • How the printed editions have influenced treatises and art history throughout Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and America from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries.
Download or read book The da Vinci Legacy written by Jean-Pierre Isbouts and published by Apollo Publishers. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death comes an immersive journey through five centuries of history to define the Leonardo mystique and uncover how the elusive Renaissance artist became a global pop icon. Virtually everyone would agree that Leonardo da Vinci was the most important artist of the High Renaissance. It was Leonardo who singlehandedly created the defining features of Western art: a realism based on subtle shading; depth using atmospheric effects; and dramatic contrasts between light and dark. But how did Leonardo, a painter of very few works who died in obscurity in France, become the internationally renowned icon he is today, with the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper the most visited artworks in the world, attracting nearly a billion visitors each year, and Salvator Mundi selling as the most expensive artwork of all time, for nearly half a billion dollars? This extraordinary volume, lavishly illustrated with 130 color images, is the first book to unravel these mysteries by diving deep into the art, literature, science, and politics of Europe from the Renaissance through today. It gives illuminating context to both Leonardo and his accomplishments; explores why Leonardo’s fame vastly overshadowed that of his contemporaries and disciples; and ultimately reveals why despite finishing very few works, his celebrity has survived, even thrived, through five centuries of history.
Download or read book Leonardo on Art and the Artist written by Leonardo da Vinci and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-08-08 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Systematic grouped passages of Leonardo's writings concerning painting, focusing on problems of interpretation. More than an anthology, it offers a reconstruction of the underlying meaning of Leonardo's words. Introductions, notes, bibliography, reference materials. Over 125 black-and-white illustrations.
Download or read book Leonardo written by Laurence B. Kanter and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents exciting, original conclusions about Leonardo da Vinci's early life as an artist and amplifies his role in Andrea del Verrocchio's studio This groundbreaking reexamination of the beginnings of Leonardo da Vinci's (1452-1519) life as an artist suggests new candidates for his earliest surviving work and revises our understanding of his role in the studio of his teacher, Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488). Anchoring this analysis are important yet often overlooked considerations about Verrocchio's studio--specifically, the collaborative nature of most works that emerged from it and the probability that Leonardo must initially have learned to paint in tempera, as his teacher did. The book searches for the young artist's hand among the tempera works from Verrocchio's studio and proposes new criteria for judging Verrocchio's own painting style. Several paintings are identified here as likely the work of Leonardo, and others long considered works by Verrocchio or his assistant Lorenzo di Credi (1457/59-1536) may now be seen as collaborations with Leonardo sometime before his departure from Florence in 1482/83. In addition to Laurence Kanter's detailed arguments, the book features three essays presenting recent scientific analysis and imaging that support the new attributions of paintings, or parts of paintings, to Leonardo.
Download or read book Mona Lisa written by Serge Bramly and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The woman in Leonardo da Vinci's work gazes out from the canvas with a quiet serenity. But what lies behind the famous smile? Shrouded in mystery, the Mona Lisa has attracted more speculation and questioning than any other work of art ever created. This work provides an aide memoire of the world's most famous painting. The full-page colour plates portray the Mona Lisa in close-up photographs, while Serge Bramly, the author, explores its shadowy history and the fascination the painting has engendered.
Download or read book Leonardo and the Mona Lisa Story written by Donald Sassoon and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revealed in more than four hundred paintings, photographs and illustrations this is an intimate look at the history of the world's most famous painting and the genius who created it.
Download or read book THE WORLDS PAINTERS written by HOYT and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Painters of Reality written by Andrea Bayer and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 2004 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Largely as a result of Leonardo's innovative work for the Sforza court in Milan, a rich vein of naturalism developed in North Italian art during the late fifteenth century. Questioning the strongly classicizing, idealized style dominant in areas south of the Apennines, artists in the region of Lombardy turned to an investigation of the natural world based on direct observation and adherence to strict visual truth. This heritage of realism continued to be of key importance for more than two hundred years, finding its greatest expression in the art of Caravaggio and eventually influencing the course of Baroque painting throughout Europe. Religious scenes, portraits, and landscapes were all transformed by this new naturalism, which also spurred an interest in still lifes and genre scenes as subjects for paintings. Painters of Reality, titled after an influential exhibition held in Milan more than fifty years ago, is the first study in English of this major aspect of Italian art. Reexamining the subject in light of copious subsequent scholarship, the authors of this volume contribute major essays that define and discuss naturalism as it appeared in both Lombard paintings and drawings. There is also a fresh consideration of the Northern Italian predecessors whose influence is apparent, either directly or indirectly, in the paintings of Caravaggio. More detailed discussions of the subject center on the precise elements that constituted Leonardo's "hypernaturalism"; the important schools of painting that arose in Brescia, Bergamo, Cremona, and Milan; and Caravaggio's most notable successors in northern Italy, who kept Lombard realism alive into the eighteenth century. Map, artists' biographies, bibliography, and index are also included" -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.
Download or read book Last Supper written by Libby Howard and published by Libby Howard. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who knew bingo could be deadly? When abrasive trophy-wife Stacy Mellomaker winds up dead on the floor of a bingo fundraiser few of the townsfolk are shedding tears. The doctors believe she died from an accidental overdose of painkillers, but Stacy’s ghost, as well as her sister, insist it was foul play. Kay is hired to investigate, but it’s hard to determine whodunnit when the whole town is chock-full of people who all have motive for murder.
Download or read book Leonardo Da Vinci written by Luke Syson and published by National Gallery London. This book was released on 2011 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new examination of Leonardo's career that illuminates his time as court painter to the Duke of Milan, an experience that fundamentally changed his outlook and his legacy
Download or read book The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Complete written by Leonardo da Vinci and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 1118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A singular fatality has ruled the destiny of nearly all the most famous of Leonardo da Vinci's works. Two of the three most important were never completed, obstacles having arisen during his life-time, which obliged him to leave them unfinished; namely the Sforza Monument and the Wall-painting of the Battle of Anghiari, while the third—the picture of the Last Supper at Milan—has suffered irremediable injury from decay and the repeated restorations to which it was recklessly subjected during the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries. Nevertheless, no other picture of the Renaissance has become so wellknown and popular through copies of every description. Vasari says, and rightly, in his Life of Leonardo, "that he laboured much more by his word than in fact or by deed", and the biographer evidently had in his mind the numerous works in Manuscript which have been preserved to this day. To us, now, it seems almost inexplicable that these valuable and interesting original texts should have remained so long unpublished, and indeed forgotten. It is certain that during the XVIth and XVIIth centuries their exceptional value was highly appreciated. This is proved not merely by the prices which they commanded, but also by the exceptional interest which has been attached to the change of ownership of merely a few pages of Manuscript. That, notwithstanding this eagerness to possess the Manuscripts, their contents remained a mystery, can only be accounted for by the many and great difficulties attending the task of deciphering them. The handwriting is so peculiar that it requires considerable practice to read even a few detached phrases, much more to solve with any certainty the numerous difficulties of alternative readings, and to master the sense as a connected whole. Vasari observes with reference to Leonardos writing: "he wrote backwards, in rude characters, and with the left hand, so that any one who is not practised in reading them, cannot understand them". The aid of a mirror in reading reversed handwriting appears to me available only for a first experimental reading. Speaking from my own experience, the persistent use of it is too fatiguing and inconvenient to be practically advisable, considering the enormous mass of Manuscripts to be deciphered. And as, after all, Leonardo's handwriting runs backwards just as all Oriental character runs backwards—that is to say from right to left—the difficulty of reading direct from the writing is not insuperable. This obvious peculiarity in the writing is not, however, by any means the only obstacle in the way of mastering the text. Leonardo made use of an orthography peculiar to himself; he had a fashion of amalgamating several short words into one long one, or, again, he would quite arbitrarily divide a long word into two separate halves; added to this there is no punctuation whatever to regulate the division and construction of the sentences, nor are there any accents—and the reader may imagine that such difficulties were almost sufficient to make the task seem a desperate one to a beginner. It is therefore not surprising that the good intentions of some of Leonardo s most reverent admirers should have failed.
Download or read book Leonardo da Vinci written by Susie Hodge and published by Flame Tree Illustrated. This book was released on 2019-06-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the life and works of the great artist, World’s Greatest Art: Da Vinci considers the achievements of Italy’s most well-known and influential artist. The book follows his artistic development, from early drawings and paintings while apprentice to artist Andrea del Verrocchio, to his later works, including the renowned Mona Lisa as well as his scientific observations and inventions that still impact the world today.
Download or read book Leonardo Da Vinci written by Martin Clayton and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2010 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leonardo da Vinci was not only one of the leading artists of the Renaissance, he was also one of the greatest anatomists ever to have lived. He combined, to a unique degree, manual skill in dissection, analytical skill in understanding the structures he uncovered, and artistic skill in recording his results. His extraordinary campaign of dissection, conducted during the winter of 1510-11 and concentrating on the muscles and bones of the human skeleton, was recorded on the pages of a manuscript now in the Print Room of the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. These are arguably the finest anatomical drawings ever made and are extensively annotated in Leonardo's distinctive "mirror-writing", with explanations of the drawings, notes on related anatomical matters, memoranda and so on. This publication reproduces the entire manuscript, and for the first time translates all of Leonardo's copious notes on the page so that the unfolding of his thoughts may readily be followed.
Download or read book Leonardo Da Vinci written by Laura Layton Strom and published by Children's Press(CT). This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A short look at the life of a genius.
