Customer Reviews

Leonardo

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

 

 

This is an excellent historical biography on Leonardo da Vinci. The book is solid facts one after another, mostly taken from surviving documents such as financial transactions and Leonardo's notebooks. The downside is that if you are reading this book for the sake of reading a good book, it can be a tad boring. The writing style is not fluid, perhaps a little choppy at times, since it is so fact-oriented. If you want to know the cold hard facts about Leonardo, this is the book for you (like for a research project). If you are looking for a good read that is a little more subjective you might not like it as much.

+++++

This book by Oxford University Professor of Historical Art Martin Kemp gives the reader the opportunity to "grasp the essential nature of Leonardo da Vinci, both as himself and as a historical phenomenon." Kemp, who has investigated Leonardo for over thirty years, does this through historical documents and through studying mainly Leonardo's drawings and paintings.

A highlight of this book is the inclusion of letters not only written by Leonardo but those written about him or his works. For example, consider this letter from another artist written during the last years of Leonardo's life:

"[The King], being enamoured to such an extraordinary degree of Leonardo's great talents, took such pleasure in hearing him talk that he would only on a few days deprive himself of his company...I cannot resist repeating the words I heard the King say about him...he said that a man had never been born who knew as much as Leonardo, not only in the spheres of painting, sculpture, and architecture, but in that he was a very great philosopher."

This book contains almost twenty-five reproductions of Leonardo's drawings peppered throughout. My personal favorites are Leonardo's engineering drawings and anatomical drawings. There are also twenty mainly color plates (in two sets of ten plates). These consist mainly of reproductions of Leonardo's paintings. My personal favorites are the "Mona Lisa" and the "Last Supper." There is also a "Gallery" of his paintings at the end of the book. This gallery consists of nearly twenty-five reproductions.

The very last section of the book has "Leonardo's Life in Outline." It traces his life from when he was born in 1452 until he died in 1519. This is especially good because it gives the reader, in brief form, an overall view of Leonardo's life.

This book's greatest service is that it separates fact from fiction. Kemp explains: "For the writer of fiction, the license [regarding Leonardo's life] is almost unlimited. Dan Brown's phenomenally successful `The Da Vinci Code' [is an example which presents fictional facts]. In the service of fiction, such unfounded `facts' are fine; as history they perpetrate nonsense. The problem with Brown's "Code" is not the invention of `truth;' but that it has been taken seriously by those who cannot recognize fiction as fiction."

Finally, the only minor problem I had is that the table of contents lists what drawings are found in this book but it does not specify what page these drawings are found on. I found this frustrating if I had to refer to a specific drawing.

In conclusion, this book explores Leonardo da Vinci's life and works. Be sure to read it to discover why, 500 years after his death, Leonardo still grips and inspires us!!

(first published 2004; preface; list of plates and figures; introduction; 6 chapters; main narrative 245 pages; gallery; Leonardo's life in outline; further reading; index)

+++++

Based on other reviews and the author's status as an Oxford professor of art history who has spent years studying Leonardo, I was looking forward to this book. What I found instead was an easy read that is neither fish nor foul. The author waxes sentimental over his stay in "Mona Lisa's room" and takes jibes at Dan Brown fans. His chapters on Leonardo's science describe Leonardo's ideas in detail, with great reverence for Leonardo's intellect, but it would be more interesting to hear Leonardo's ideas assessed according to modern perspective: do today's geologists agree about the previous existence of lakes? Were his math solutions or water treatises worth anything as science? Kemp's book is neither a full, warm biographical portrait, nor an academic assessment of Leonardo's contributions to art and science, but it is short and double-spaced. Beware frequent typos and homonym errors such as "raised to the ground."

Highly recommended for any reader who simply wants to be exposed to the essence of this genius who lived five hundred years ago.

Martin Kemp has written a short book with much information and many keen insights. Only an extremely knowledgeable and highly capable writer could have produced a book on this topic in such a pleasing and compact format. For those who wish to delve deeper, a good list of additional books to read is provided.

Martin Kemp has been able to encompass the output and vision of Leonardo with admirable synthesis, a clear style and no arrogance. With Kenneth Clark he stands as the best interpreter of this great genius.

I was looking forward to this book based on Professor Kemp's reputation and some of the glowing reviews this book has received.

Unfortunately I tend to agree with what another reviewer described as Kemp's "not fluid" writing style. I would add that I found the book a "dry" read, almost technically put together, in an academic sense. It reminds me of a college textbook.

I do not for one minute doubt Kemp's credentials and knowledge of the subject.
Where he failed is to recreate, as every good biographer should, the nuances of the subject's personality and effect of his surroundings on him and vice versa.
Kemp goes into much technical detail about what he perceives as Leonardo's approach and philosophy, exhaustively details his various surviving works, but provides far too little in terms of what a biography should be; it fails to recreate in the reader's mind Leonardo's world, interactions, passion and the aura of the great Leonardo da Vinci. It gets to the point where I get the feeling Leonardo was a prolific machine, not a passionate artist.

5 stars for Kemp's effort minus three for failing to do Leonardo justice.

Leonardo da Vinci is certainly the name that personifies the term Renaissance Man. He lived in a time when it was possible for one man to know all that there was to know. In medicine, mechanics, and art he not only knew everything, but contributed to the general base of knowledge in each area. His written output was huge. Something over 20,000 pages of drawings and notes show his genius.

Perhaps the most famous of his work are the Mona Lisa, the painting of the Last Supper and his sketches of inventions far in the future like flying machines. His drawings of the human body as a machine, showing the bone structure, the nerve system, cardio-vascular system remain not only beautiful drawings but accurate representations of reality.

In this book, Martin Kemp, the world's leading authority on Leonardo cuts through the dense viel of legend, challenges the myths, and offers an unparalleled portrait of this extraordinary man.