Download or read book Leonardo da Vinci written by Walter Isaacson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 New York Times bestseller from Walter Isaacson brings Leonardo da Vinci to life in this exciting new biography that is “a study in creativity: how to define it, how to achieve it…Most important, it is a powerful story of an exhilarating mind and life” (The New Yorker). Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo da Vinci’s astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson “deftly reveals an intimate Leonardo” (San Francisco Chronicle) in a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo’s genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy. He produced the two most famous paintings in history, The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. With a passion that sometimes became obsessive, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry. He explored the math of optics, showed how light rays strike the cornea, and produced illusions of changing perspectives in The Last Supper. His ability to stand at the crossroads of the humanities and the sciences, made iconic by his drawing of Vitruvian Man, made him history’s most creative genius. In the “luminous” (Daily Beast) Leonardo da Vinci, Isaacson describes how Leonardo’s delight at combining diverse passions remains the ultimate recipe for creativity. So, too, does his ease at being a bit of a misfit: illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left-handed, easily distracted, and at times heretical. His life should remind us of the importance to be imaginative and, like talented rebels in any era, to think different. Here, da Vinci “comes to life in all his remarkable brilliance and oddity in Walter Isaacson’s ambitious new biography…a vigorous, insightful portrait” (The Washington Post).
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 and France written by Carlo Pedretti and published by CB Edizioni. This book was released on 2010 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Chateau de Clos-Luce in Amboise is known, not only for its beauty, but as the last home of Leonardo da Vinci. This volume, edited by Professor Carlo Pedretti, presents a series of research on the relationship between Leonardo da Vinci and France not only during his stay in Amboise (1516-1519) but also in his Artist Milanese period (1507-1513)
Download or read book Leonardo da Vinci Masterworks written by Rosalind Ormiston and published by Flame Tree Illustrated. This book was released on 2019-10-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For lovers of art history, this lavishly illustrated and well-written book is an absolute gem." – Italia! Magazine Leonardo da Vinci was the epitome of the Renaissance humanist ideal, a logical polymath of epic proportions who excelled and had interests not just in art but in invention, anatomy, architecture, engineering, literature, mathematics, music, science, astronomy and more. His oeuvre is astounding and he is rightly famed for his masterpieces of painting such as the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, and his astonishingly technical and graceful drawings. The phenomenon that was Leonardo would not of course have flourished to such an extent had it not been for the patronage and sponsorship of the Medici family, who commissioned a large proportion of the art and architecture of the era and fostered a fertile climate for creativity. This sumptuous new book offers a broader view of this master artist in the context of this environment, alongside the work of other key artists who benefited from the Medicis, from Brunelleschi through Donatello to Michelangelo and Raphael.
Download or read book Leonardo Da Vinci and the Art of Sculpture written by Gary M. Radke and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is renowned as a painter, designer, draftsman, architect, engineer, scientist, and theorist. His work as a sculptor is not commonly acknowledged, and many have argued that Leonardo believed that sculpture was an inferior art form ("of lesser genius than painting"). Challenging and overturning these assumptions, Leonardo da Vinci and the Art of Sculpture looks at the sculptural projects that the artist undertook, as well as the late Renaissance sculptures that were indebted to him." "Leonardo consistently drew inspiration from ancient sculpture, admired the work of such contemporary sculptural innovators as Donatello, and even trained under Andrea del Verrocchio, the preeminent bronze sculptor of late 15th-century Florence. Furthermore, Leonardo spent many years of his life working on two larger-than-life-sized horse sculptures - Sforza and Trivulzio - monuments to Francesco Sforza, the Duke of Milan, and to Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, his sucessor. Although neither was completed, the authors argue that these equestrian monuments show how Leonardo was intensely engaged with the design dilemmas of representing a horse rearing on its hind legs. Another highlight of the book is a group of new images of the John the Baptist Preaching to a Levite and a Pharisee, a recently restored large-scale work in the Florentine Baptistery that clearly demonstrates Leonardo's collaboration with Giovanni Francesco Rustici." --Book Jacket.
Download or read book Leonardo Da Vinci written by Charles Nicholl and published by Viking Adult. This book was released on 2004 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new, intimate biography, award-winning author Nicholl creates a portrait of the artist for our time--a biography that brings Leonardo to life as a complex man living in a fascinating, dangerous, quickly changing world.
Download or read book Who Was Leonardo da Vinci written by Roberta Edwards and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2005-09-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leonardo da Vinci was a gifted painter, talented musician, and dedicated scientist and inventor, designing flying machines, submarines, and even helicopters. Yet he had a hard time finishing things, a problem anyone can relate to. Only thirteen paintings are known to be his; as for the illustrated encyclopedia he intended to create, all that he left were thousands of disorganized notebook pages. Here is an accessible portrait of a fascinating man who lived at a fascinating time—Italy during the Renaissance.
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 written by Charles Nicholl and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-04-07 with total page 955 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leonardo is the greatest, most multi-faceted and most mysterious of all Renaissance artists, but extraordinarily, considering his enormous reputation, this is the first full-length biography in English for several decades. Prize-winning author Charles Nicholl has immersed himself for five years in all the manuscripts, paintings and artefacts to produce an 'intimate portrait' of Leonardo. He uses these contemporary materials - his notebooks and sketchbooks, eye witnesses and early biographies, etc - as a way into the mental tone and physical texture of his life and has made myriad small discoveries about him and his work and his circle of associates. Among much else, the book identifies what Nicholl argues is an unknown portrait of the artist hanging in a church near Lodi in northern Italy. It also contains new material on his eccentric assistant Tomasso Masini, on his homosexual affairs in Florence, and on his curious relationship with a female model and/or prostitute from Cremona. A masterpiece of modern biography.
Download or read book The Wise Men written by Walter Isaacson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1997-06-04 with total page 852 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A captivating blend of personal biography and public drama, The Wise Men introduces the original best and brightest, leaders whose outsized personalities and actions brought order to postwar chaos: Averell Harriman, the freewheeling diplomat and Roosevelt's special envoy to Churchill and Stalin; Dean Acheson, the secretary of state who was more responsible for the Truman Doctrine than Truman and for the Marshall Plan than General Marshall; George Kennan, self-cast outsider and intellectual darling of the Washington elite; Robert Lovett, assistant secretary of war, undersecretary of state, and secretary of defense throughout the formative years of the Cold War; John McCloy, one of the nation's most influential private citizens; and Charles Bohlen, adroit diplomat and ambassador to the Soviet Union.
Download or read book Leonardo da Vinci written by Pietro C. Marani and published by Harry N. Abrams. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a portrait of the artist, covering his life, creative process, and his art, presented in more than 295 illustrations that span the length and breadth of his career.
Download or read book Leonardo on the Human Body written by Leonardo (da Vinci) and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 1983-01-01 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It is a miracle that any one man should have observed, read, and written down so much in a single lifetime."--Kenneth Clark Painter, sculptor, musician, scientist, architect, engineer, inventor . . . perhaps no other figure so fully embodies the Western Ideal of "Renaissance man" as Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo was not content, however, to master an artistic technique or record the mechanics of a device; he was driven by an insatiable curiosity to understand why. His writings, interests, and musings are uniformly characterized by an incisive, probing, questioning mind. It was with this piercing intellectual scrutiny and detailed scientific thoroughness that Leonardo undertook the study of the human body. This exceptional volume reproduces more than 1,200 of Leonardo's anatomical drawings on 215 clearly printed black-and-white plates. The drawings have been arranged in chronological sequence to display Leonardo's development and growth as an anatomist. Leonardo's text, which accompanies the drawings--sometimes explanatory, sometimes autobiographical and anecdotal--has been translated into English by the distinguished medical professors Drs. O'Malley and Saunders. In their fascinating biographical introduction, the authors evaluate Leonardo's position in the historical development of anatomy and anatomical illustration. Each plate is accompanied by explanatory notes and an evaluation of the individual plate and an indication of its relationship to the work as a whole. While notable for their extraordinary beauty and precision, Leonardo's anatomical drawings were also far in advance of all contemporary work and scientifically the equal of anything that appeared well into the seventeenth century. Unlike most of his predecessors and contemporaries, Leonardo took nothing on trust and had faith only in his own observations and experiments. In anatomy, as in his other investigations, Leonardo's great distinction is the truly scientific nature of his methods. Herein then are over 1,200 of Leonardo's anatomical illustrations organized into eight major areas of study: Osteological System, Myological System, Comparative Anatomy, Nervous System, Respiratory System, Alimentary System, Genito-Urinary System, and Embryology. Artists, illustrators, physicians, students, teachers, scientists, and appreciators of Leonardo's extraordinary genius will find in these 1,200 drawings the perfect union of art and science. Carefully detailed and accurate in their data, beautiful and vibrant in their technique, they remain today--nearly five centuries later--the finest anatomical drawings ever made. Dover (1983) unabridged and unaltered republication of "Leonardo da Vinci on the Human Body: The Anatomical, Physiological, and Embryological Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, " originally published by Henry Schuman, New York, 1952.
Download or read book Read the Thoughts of Leonardo Da Vinci Thoughts on Art and Life Leonardo da Vinci Pathfinder of Science The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci written by Leonardo Da Vinci and published by Prabhat Prakashan. This book was released on 2022-08-16 with total page 806 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Combo Collection (Set of 3 Books) includes All-time Bestseller Books. This anthology contains : Thoughts on Art and Life Leonardo da Vinci, Pathfinder of Science The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
Download or read book Leonardo written by Serge Bramly and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1991 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A full biography of Leonardo da Vinci, his life and times.
Download or read book Leonardo Da Vinci written by Martin Clayton and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The year 2019 sees the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci.... In the Spring of 2019, selections of the finest of Leonardo's drawings will be shown simultaneously at twelve museums and galleries across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace will show 200 drawings during the Summer--the largest exhibition of Leonardo's work in almost 70 years--and many of those drawings will be displayed at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh the following Winter"--Foreword.
Download or read book Leonardo Da Vinci written by Alan Donnithorne and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leonardo da Vinci's drawings are among the most accomplished and technically varied ever made. Detailed study of those in the Royal Collection - the finest group in existence - reveals much about his materials and techniques and his innovative approach to drawing. This ground-breaking book explores a substantial number of Leonardo's most celebrated drawings in unprecedented detail. Using specialist microscopic photography it will open up a new understanding and appreciation of Leonardo's techniques and present new information on his materials, uncovering features invisible to the naked eye. In addition, infrared images bring to light the artist's first touches (including Leonardo's own thumbprint) and under-drawings, many of which have not been seen for 500 years --
Download or read book DK Life Stories Leonardo da Vinci written by Stephen Krensky and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the inspiring story of Leonardo da Vinci, the artist, inventor, and engineer of the Italian Renaissance... Leonardo was a creative genius who wanted to understand how things worked. This book traces his life, from his birth in a hilltop village near Florence, Italy, through to his work as a painter, sculptor, and engineer. Leonardo made hundreds of drawings and paintings, including the Mona Lisa - probably the most famous painting in the world. Learn how Leonardo made detailed sketches of the human body and designs of parachutes, helicopters, and armored tanks - many years before the technology existed to build them. This new kids' biography series from DK goes beyond the basic facts to tell the true life stories of history's most interesting and inspiring people. Full-color photographs and hand-drawn illustrations complement age-appropriate narrative text to create an engaging book children will enjoy reading. Definition boxes, information sidebars, inspiring quotes, and other nonfiction text features add depth, and a handy reference section at the back makes DK Life Stories the one biography series everyone will want to collect.
