Leonardo Da Vinco [Hardcover]

This is has to be one of the most thorough biographies about Leonardo ever written. The most widely read biography, Leonardo: The Artist and the Man"(1988) by the Florentine, Serge Bramly, first translated by Jean-Claude Lattes into French, then later translated into English by Sian Reynolds, and published in England in 1995, was highly considered to be the definitive work on the quintessential renaissance man. Having read Bramly's work in 1996, I considered it to be rough going, strangely dense throughout; due, I expect because of its two translations from the original Italian. Reading translations and not knowing the original language can be a dubious experience for the ignorant reader, as particular words and phrases at times appear out of place. That said, reading Nicholl's passionate and adeptly written life history of Leonardo, combining historical investigation with literary speculation, one would have to admit that this work far out shines its predecessor in terms of its accessibility, detail and style. This is a formidable study of the great man and his work.

Nicholl's certainly did his research on his subject, pouring over Leonardo's Codex Atlanticus, that displays much of da Vinci's multi-varied interests, ideas and doodles, which reveals the linear and non-linear flow of his mind. The master had so many thoughts and ideas endlessly flowing that it is no wonder that he failed to complete many of his projects and paintings. Nicholl, unlike so many speculators before him, refrained from psychoanalysing this great genius. His method was more to submerge his consciousness into Leonardo's native environment, walk the paths that he walked, and emotionally submerge his soul into the paintings, sculptures and sketches. Nicholl spent years physically, mentally and spiritually with Leonardo, sometimes peering at a particular work for hours on end, to possibly catch a true glimpse into the master's mind. Nicholl's approach was to combine scholarly methodology with literary imagination - and reading his work certainly proves that he has paved new insight into the character of this renaissance genius.

This is what makes this work special: Nicholl seems to have left no stone unturned in his analysis of da Vinci's life and work. As he places many of Leonardo's works in the chronological context in which they were created, speculating on da Vinci's stage of "maturity" and the social and political events manifesting at the time, we get a real sense of the man, and the developing stages of his work, ending in his self-imposed exile and dignified death with the French king, Francois I.

The text includes well-produced mono and colour images of da Vinci's work. Nicholl's Notes and Bibliography are relatively extensive and valuable for the student of da Vinci and the renaissance as a whole.

This biography is an entertaining and gripping study of one of the most fascinating artists in history.

There was a TV series that aired on CBS in the Seventies about the life of Leonardo. I remember it made me feel excited about the possibilities of learning, discovering, and creating. For years, I searched for the series on video tape and finally found it unexpectedly in a fabulous art supply store called Flax, in San Francisco. Watching it again gave me the same feeling that anything is possible. Reading Charles Nicholls's new biography of Leonardo gave me a similar feeling.

I have never understood the people who criticize Leonardo for starting so many things and not finishing them. If we knew only of the works he had finished, we would still consider him a genius. Perhaps abandoning a venture that he didn't consider worth finishing freed him up for an even better project. Maybe he kept his mind sharp by flitting from one thing to another. If he were alive today, I have no doubt that we would cure his attention deficit disorder with drugs.

Charles Nicholls is a careful biographer and qualifies all his conclusions about Leonardo. This is probably wise when dealing with a subject who lived five hundred years ago. Still, Nicholls is straightforward concerning Leonardo's relationships with his students and others.

In addition to the usual stories of Leonardo's fascination with nature as a boy and his failure to build a giant bronze equestrian statue, Nicholls has some new information. We find out what kind of jokes Leonardo told and that he was a vegetarian for the last half of his life. Nicholls includes Freud's speculations on Leonardo's relationships with his parents and the effect that may have played in the composition of his paintings.

But Nicholls sticks mostly to primary sources for his information, including Leonardo's many notebooks and letters. Although Leonardo was a private man who wrote all his notes in a peculiar backwards "mirror writing," possibly to keep people from easily deciphering them, he wrote about everything, from how to prepare pigments for a fresco to how to keep healthy and clean (freshen your hands with rose water to smell pleasant). So even though Leonardo lived long ago and there are still mysteries about him, with Nicholls's biography we can get a pretty good idea of what Leonardo was like as an artist, and as a man.

This book is one of the best biographies that I have read. The author tells a lot about Leonardo's art and the way he went about to produce it. Additionally, one gets a good idea of the man Leonardo was - brilliant, but (like all of us) plagued by self-doubt. I highly recommend this book. The only drawback of the book is that the author refers to many paintings and sculptures that are not illustrated.

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