Customer Reviews

A&E Biography - Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Master [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Leonardo da Vinci was probably the most brilliant thinker to ever live. We all know he painted the Mona Lisa and the definitive portrait of The Last Supper, but he was also a scientist, an engineer, and so much more - a true Renaissance man. In fact, he was the original Renaissance man of the 15th century. He changed the art world forever by introducing a three dimensional aspect to his paintings and by giving life to human portraits so vivid and realistic that one almost forgets that they are not real people. I've never been much of an art fan, but da Vinci inspires in me an inspirational, almost devotional fascination with the truly great art he created. Just think how good a painter he could have been if he had been able to concentrate on his work - da Vinci was utterly fascinated with everything around him, and his mind could rarely stay focused on one thing for very long. I did not know this, but he actually left many of his most famous works of art unfinished - yet even these unfinished portraits stunned the art world and established him as the most influential painter of the age and probably of all time - although this fact was not fully appreciated in da Vinci's own time.

This video follows da Vinci from childhood in Italy to his death in France, succeeding fairly well in capturing the scope of ingenious thoughts and ideas. I knew little about the life of da Vinci, so I sat back and absorbed just about everything that came at me. I was a little saddened to learn that he was not truly appreciated during his own time; Florence, Italy, as things turned out, just wasn't big enough for da Vinci and Michelangelo both (and might I mention the fact that Michelangelo was quite a sourpuss about the whole thing). While his paintings amazed those who saw them and even caused his mentor to give up painting altogether, da Vinci was never truly acknowledged as a master among his contemporary rivals. On several occasions, he had to search out a sponsor for his work, and he was not included among the group of Italian masters sent to Rome in answer to a call for the country's most brilliant artists. More often that not, he assumed the duties of an engineer, and the ideas he played around with in his head almost defy belief. His notebooks record the working of this great mind at work in incredible detail (and da Vinci's distinctive backwards handwriting). Da Vinci's notebooks are simply teeming with new ideas, hyper-studious observations of man and machine, and incredible sketches and illustrations of such futuristic things as submarines, helicopters, automatic machine guns, fortification measures, and all sorts of incredible things that would not become reality until the twentieth century. We don't get to see nearly enough of these notebooks in the video, but of course one can never really see enough of them.

Naturally, the modern-day thinkers try to get inside da Vinci's head, and thus we are forced to endure speculation that da Vinci was gay. So he had young assistants who probably modeled for him - come on, any fellow who went around asking little girls to model nude for him would have been locked up in a second. Such speculation is a hurtful reminder of a most painful time in da Vinci's own life - at age 24, he was accused of sodomy, probably by a jealous rival. There was no proof of the charge, but the shameful stigma stayed with da Vinci all his life. He also got in trouble in the latter stages of his life, but this charge belies the cries of homosexuality, in my opinion. Da Vinci was fascinated with the workings of the human body, and at one point he was procuring human corpses for dissection. He wanted to know how the body worked, inside and out, but the Church put an end to his supposedly necromantic activities.

Forty five minutes cannot even begin to cover the life and genius of this extraordinary man, but I found this video very informative indeed and rank it among the most fascinating A&E Biography videos I have seen.

This brief overview of his life hits upon his most famous works, yet leaves out many areas of interest. Such as his circular castle with walls designed to reflect cannon fire, more needed on his stage designs, optics, hydraulics etc. and less on his sex life. If he was brought before a judge and no evidence surfaced regarding this charge why do publishers raise the issue continually throughout the biography? The accusations about his apprentices and even the king of France was poor and tasteless reporting! If one can tune out the nonsense and focus on his achievements - the video is a 4 star effort, if you can't it's a 3 star.

I am a middle-school teacher. I showed this video to my students with a worksheet to focus their attention. The worksheet had three sections: 1)List 10 facts about Leonardo di Vinci 2)List 5 facts about living in Leonardo's time 3)List the three things you know now that you did not before seeing this film. My students learned that Leonardo di Vinci was a homosexual and that he wrote backwards. Although they wrote many interesting facts about Leonardo, one week later these two items were about all that they could recall.

A bland account that doesn't go very deeply into the subject and fixates more on the possibility of Da Vinci being homosexual than on the accomplishments and other interesting points of the mans life.

Certainly not worth the money spent to buy it or the time to view it.

Readers of the recent book "Fortune Is A River" (also available here on Amazon) will have learned something of Leonardo's activities in Florence. This video is not of the quality of the A&E Biography of Michelangelo and was a bit disappointing at first because of that, but on subsequent viewings has grown on me. Leonardo is best known for the Mona Lisa and most know that he was also an inventor. He also was a child of the aristocracy and never completed most of his projects. The canal project described in the aforementioned book was a massive failure, but few have ever heard of it (I sure hadn't). If this video were made this year it would be bound to include something about that failed project and maybe give a fuller picture of his activities. Perhaps because his interests were so widespread his story is more difficult to tell in 45 minutes than is Michelangelo's.

Fascinating overview of one of the planet's most intgriguing, creative men. Well done, technically.

I loved this -- I not only Learned a lot about Leonardo but was entertained by it. I didn't feel the personal stuff was overdone, I like to know about the human side of genius.