Customer Reviews

Leonardo Da Vinci

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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.

Nicholl manages to give a good view of the personality of Leonardo da Vinci, by describing what is known about da Vinci's childhood and then proceeding to describe his career as a *painter* in chronological order. Although in describing character Nicholl occasionally falls in depth into Freudian mumbojumbo, he has to be complemented that he does recognize that it is only fantastical speculation. The style of Nicholl is enjoyable and easy to read.
If you want to a good description of da Vinci the painter and his career, then this is the book for you. Nicholl goes in detail to the creation of many paintings of da Vinci, both those well known to general public and those less well known.
However, if you want a biography of da Vinci the multitalented man, then this book is definitely not for you. More space is given for description of a single art project that never came to be than is given to all the inventions and scientific contributions of da Vinci. As an example, Nicholl mentions that in the field of anatomy da Vinci's original contribution was greatest, and then proceeds to give six pages and two illustrations on the topic. And, unfortunately, most of these six pages is on the usefulness of the study of anatomy to a painter. More room is given to speculations about the possible identity of a female model in a painting lost hundreds of years ago than is given to the actual contribution of da Vinci to the field of anatomy. There is no description of the state of anatomical knowledge at the time and no description of how Leonardo added to this knowledge.
If you did not know anything about da Vinci before reading this book, you would finish with the impression that he was a mere painter and sculptor who did little if anything else - except dreamt of flying because of some Freudian type of childhood problem. Admittedly, paintings are perhaps the most lasting contribution of da Vinci, but they are not the reason why his figure appears in comics and novels, e.g. in Pratchett's Discworld books in disguise of Leonard da Quirm.
If the painting part was cut by 50 % and replaced by more detailed description of his other activities, this could be a very good book. At present, if gets more and more annoying as when you approach the end you slowly realise Nicholl is never going discuss anything else than works of art and artist viewpoint.

It has been a long time since my survey of art history and architecture classes, and so, in preparation for a trip to Italy, it seemed like a good idea to read about the great Leonardo. This book served as a window in my planning as well as a way to gain greater understanding of the five-hundred years worth of tradition and scholarly debate surrounding da Vinci.

First of all it is important to say that Charles Nicholl has done a fantastic job of ferreting out obscure documents and records that give us facts and clues to untangle the misinformation about Leonardo da Vinci. One has a sense of being in the hands of a master of the art of separating wheat and chaff, as Nicholl sifts until we, the readers, are given only that which is worthwhile. The rest lightly falls away.

As a result, the reader gets to know much about da Vinci's family, his hometown and early years; much about his training and his methods of working; much about his likes and dislikes--in short, we get to know da Vinci the man as well as da Vinci the artist. Nicholl discusses the developmental impact of da Vinci's illegitimacy and its possible influence upon his subsequent choices in subject and themes as an artist. While not shying away from these or other details of da Vinci's personal life, he does so in a way that these serve as windows into the man and his work.

The book is well-illustrated, especially so for what is not a coffee table book-it has two generous selections of color plates and a profusion of black and white photography as well, that helps the reader see the interrelationships between da Vinci's well known and lesser known works. While there is an excellent quantity of information about da Vinci's speculative explorations of anatomy and his work on machines ranging from warfare to flying, the book centers upon his brilliance in the art of painting and drawing.

There is a first-rate overview of each of the best known works, and much to help the reader appreciate the background of the Mona Lisa and Last Supper, as well as the Annunciation, the Adoration, the Madonna of the Rocks, and the different versions of the Virgin with St. Anne, et al. The antecedents, models, and borrowings from one work to another provide a harmony of understanding. Many of the less well known works are also brought to the fore so that the reader has a larger sense of da Vinci's oeuvre.

The account of the concealed fresco of the Palazzo Vecchio is gripping, with the research still-evolving; it is the kind of chronicle that sends the reader looking for supplementary information. Nicholl relates the friction between the two Florentine geniuses, da Vinci and Michelangelo, showing a clash of temperament that fleshes out the character of both men.

One comes away from the book with a profound sense that da Vinci, while adding beauty and wonder to the lives of many, and while exhibiting a boundless curiosity about all things, was nonetheless a man whose life was also fraught with a self-imposed distancing from others, and a measure of melancholy.

Throughout, the interrelationship between da Vinci and his contemporary Renaissance artists, as well as political leaders, is so well presented that the reader is given a large tapestry of the life and times of da Vinci.

If you find this review helpful you might want to read some of my other reviews, including those on subjects ranging from biography to architecture, as well as religion and fiction.

I'm a bit confused with the covers - the British edition has a different publisher so the cover is different, but I believe the content must be the same :-)
It's a great read, absolutely! And the author did a great job in bringing the whole Renaissance era to life! It's a wonderful recount of the context in which Leonardo led his troubled life. I instantly loved the the stress on the man's remoteness, his personal longing for independence, his struggle to stay afloat while not giving up his true passions. I think Nicholl is truly honest and innovative at the same time, when he presents Leonardo as a genuinely modern man, a man who needs to have his private world of thoughts, a personal space for experimentation, a framework to experience the vastness of the natural, physical universe.

Although lengthy enough to use as a satisfactory doorstop, it was worth the reading. Not only a biography of Da Vinci's life, the author traces the evolution (sometimes convolutions)of his thought processes, as well as the social background of his more famous artistic works. Nicholl's inclusion of information on the subsequent history and restorations of paintings helped to anchor it in the present. While Fruedian interpretations are always murky at best (as oft pointed out: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar) their inclusion was also entertaining. Highly recommended - an excellent launching into the 1400's.

Over the course of his life (1452-1519) and for five centuries after his death, Leonardo da Vinci has continued to hold a prominent position and influential role on myriad scientists, painters, architects, musicians and thinkers. In Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of the Mind: A Biography, Charles Nicholl delves into the information of da Vinci's colleagues as well as translations of da Vinci's notebooks in order to innovatively discuss the mysterious man behind the curtain who defines the Renaissance for many modern day historians with his revolutionary ideas and techniques. From his birth as the illegitimate son of the Tuscan Caterina to his death in the arms of King Francois, Nicholl modernizes the life of Leonardo da Vinci and insightfully answers many controversial questions, including his alleged homosexuality. Although the information is quite qualitative, the biography offers a new and exceptional perspective on da Vinci's character, personal life, and works.

This book is an enlightening read about a truly remarkable man. Da Vinci lived like no other man of his time and like few since. This book explores his life in great detail and although it gets a little dry at times, generally it is a fascinating and inspiring read. Worth sticking with to get a great deal out of it.

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...in a book about Da Vinci. I mean, the guy lived half a millenium ago, for crying out loud -- you think it's easy piecing together information about his life? I think Nicholl did an amazing job assembling a slice of an image here, a quotation there, a passing reference written by somebody else over here, a hunch of a guess over there....

...Really, this book feels as close as we'll ever get to "the truth" about what Da Vinci did and thought, year to year. No, we'll probably never understand just how and why his mind worked the way it did, what made him who he ultimately was, but Nicholl wonderfully illuminates the world he lived in, and the paths he crossed along the way. If you're like me, you know a bit about the man, but not much. Well, this takes "not much" and expands it out significantly so that, by the end of the book, you feel that you have some glimmer of who this fellow was, that you'd recognize (and appreciate) him if you passed him on a street in Milan in the early 1500s.

The only thing holding me back from giving this 5 stars is the images. There were plenty, yes, but I think the color-plate paintings needed more space than they received, a full page rather than being squeezed 2-4 to a page. There must be some way to give better visuals to a book without turning it into a coffee table variety. Maybe enclose a CD?