Leonardo da Vinci

Description

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was a most extraordinary man at an extraordinary age. From the perfection of the Mona Lisa – a painting which was famous from the day it left his studio – to the intricate, wonderful imagination of his sketchbooks, no other artist has shown such an array of brilliant talents.

In this beautifully illustrated and vivid appraisal of the man and his work, Maurice Rowdon traces Leonardo’s life from his obscure beginnings as an illegitimate child in the little Tuscan village of Vinci. He shows how universal a genius Leonardo was, how he excelled in everything which caught his interest – painting, architecture, botany, biology, weapons of war. We also see the human side behind the genius, the lonely, quarrelsome, tormented personality which drove the artist to search, without success, for the perfect patron, right down to his last years in the service of the king of France.

Leonardo emerges as more than the outstanding artist of the Renaissance; he was a truly
‘modern man’, whose glimpses into the future, his prevision of the world of flying machines and cameras, can only inspire awe within us, and whose final achievement we can only gaze at in admiration.