Customer Reviews

Leonardo da Vinci (Penguin Lives)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have read all the Penguin Lives (except for Virginia Woolf; next on my list) and this one is the best of the series. It is such because it meets the perceived goals of these books.

Most of the subjects are mystical; persons with whom we hold an inexplicable fascination. Well, Nuland does an excellent job in explaining this fascination, which he clearly holds. His love of Da Vinci's life and works is manifest. Even though I have never read any of his other books, Nuland leaves me with this impression that this was the project of a lifetime.

Pengiun Lives are necessarily brief. The best ones leave the reader anxious to find out more. Nuland has succeeded with me on this count as well. (So did Edmund White's biography of Proust)

It is a pleasure to recommend this book.

This is one of several volumes in the Penguin Lives Series, each of which written by a distinguished author in her or his own right. Each provides a concise but remarkably comprehensive biography of its subject in combination with a penetrating analysis of the significance of that subject's life and career. I think this is a brilliant concept for a series of such studies. My only complaint (albeit a quibble) is that even an abbreviated index is not provided. Those who wish to learn more about the given subject are directed to other sources.

When preparing to review various volumes in this series, I have struggled with determining what would be of greatest interest and assistance to those who read my reviews. Finally I decided that a few brief excerpts and then some concluding comments of my own would be appropriate.

On Leonardo's "place": "Leonardo was not to be found in that place [Casa di Leonardo]. In fact, he is not to be found in [italics] any place. He is not a creature of places or monuments or even of permanence. He flashed across his time and was gone, leaving a vast body of work almost none of which except the paintings could be fully appreciated until centuries after his death, and far away from the house in which he was almost certainly not born. Quoting the famous statement of Freud, 'He was like a man who awoke too early in the darkness, while others were all still asleep.'" (pages 3-4)

On Leonardo's "humanism": "Though he has often been called the ultimate Renaissance man, there is much to be said for the argument that Leonardo was only in part a man of the Renaissance. While he epitomized the zest for life and nature that was the guiding theme of humanism, he did at the same time eschew the dependence on ancient sources and the worshipful repetition of its principles that equally characterized its scholarship." (page 7)

On Leonardo's cosmology: "Leonardo was intrigued by motion, and the forces involved. The continuous flowings of energy in nature and in the life of man are a constant and even a central theme running through his manuscripts like the streamings of waters to which he often alluded. Moving water, in fact, is his symbol of these flowing energies; it is vital to his conception of the universe." (page 47)

On Leonardo's research: "...there is no evidence at any time during his seven decades of life that he ever stopped long enough in his constant pursuit of knowledge to allow himself the leisure to organize what he had discovered....putting it into neat little piles of knowledge must have seemed a waste of time and talent. What is more, his studies were really undertaken for Leonardo alone, and not for any wider purpose of educating his contemporaries; it was with himself that his studies conversed." (page 89)

As is also true of the other volumes in the "Penguin Lives" series, this one provides all of the essential historical and biographical information but its greatest strength lies in the extended commentary, in this instance by Sherwin B. Nuland. He also includes a highly informative "Bibliographical Note" for those who wish to learn more about Leonardo. I hope these brief excerpts encourage those who read this review to read Nuland's biography. It is indeed a brilliant achievement.

I was aware that in addition to being a master painter DaVinci was also a visionary scientist with ideas far ahead of his time, but I had no idea that he had made such remarkable leaps forward in the investigation of anatomy. This is a very interesting side of Leonardo that I'm glad to have learned more about. Even so, I don't know if it deserves to degree of focus this biography gives it.

This work gives a functional overview of the major events of DaVinci's life and dabbles a bit in the interpretation of a few of his more famous works of art. But it is first and foremost a biography of DaVinci the anatomist, to the detriment (it seems to me) of DaVinci the artist and DaVinci the mechanical engineer.

Beyond that, two things bugged me about this book. First, the author is a bit preoccupied with the idea of Leonardo's homosexuality and uses that as a tool to pschoanalyze many areas of his life. The speculations on his early childhood are almost exclusively retrospections guessed at by looking backward from an adult homosexual male.

The second thing that bothered me was the author's treatment of DaVinci's religious beliefs. I recognize that religion may not have been a central focus in DaVinci's life, but he does seem to have had a definite belief in God, whearas Nuland more or less apologizes for that fact whenever he is forced to bring it up and it seems that he would like to simply dismiss it as one of the areas in which DaVinci was a product of his times.

Sherwin Nuland writes about the world's greatest genius in the same way a surgeon would methodically approach an operation. Sherwin Nuland is Dr. Nuland, Clinical Professor of Surgery at Yale University, where he also teaches medical history. His writing is direct, scientific and unembellished and, when done, he has laid out the life and works of Leonardo before you.

Nuland addresses the personal life of this grand master in the first thirty pages. Nuland discusses the strong indications that Leonardo was homosexual and dialogues with many of Leonardo's previous biographers, including Sigman Freud. Leonardo was an illegitimate child, whose education was only until the age of 15, never married or had even one tryst with the opposite sex. Throughout his life he was subservient to the wishes of the patrons upon whom he relied upon for income. Interesting is the blemished reputation Leonardo had as an artist who started scores of works only to leave behind him a myriad of unfinished paintings, sculptures and drawings.

For Dr. Nuland Leonardo de Vinci's anatomical drawings were his crowing work. For thirteen hundred years before Leonardo the medical world had relied upon the medicine and anatomy of the second century Greek physician, Galen. The magnitude of the forward leap that Leonardo gave science was remarkable, and "remarkable" is an understatement. Leonardo de Vinci dared to think beyond the accepted medical orthodoxy of Galen. Nuland writes, "To question the magisterial Galen was to question the entire framework of medicine." Leonardo, dared to ask not `how' but `why'.

Leonardo was an extraordinary genius whose range of interests was vast. His perceptions and talents were matchless for his day. He reformed and revolutionized almost everything he enthusiastically immersed himself in: painting, architecture, interior design, engineering mathematics, astronomy, military ordinances, flight, optics, geology, botany the diversion of rivers and the drainage of swamps, city planning and lastly, the functioning of the parts of the body - anatomy. This book is not a gripping read and Nuland's cannot, in 166 pages, do justice to the biography of such a person. What it can do is introduce you to this great man and give you a sampling of his life and his legacy. This Nuland does well. The book reads fast and the subject is fascinating. Recommended. Four Stars.

The focus of this informative biography is da Vinci the anatomist, not Leonardo the painter or proto-technologist. Indeed, this biography truly comes alive only when Nuland, a surgeon and author, describes the advances Leonardo achieved in his study of the body. In my opinion, Nuland's touch isn't so sure in other areas of Leonardo's achievement and there are, in fact, patches that sound like a product of rushed and unedited dictation. Still, I'd rate this as a superior introduction to a scientist centuries ahead of his time. This fine book, by the way, definitely enriched my experience at the da Vinci exhibit that is now showing at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The biographies in the Penguin Lives series share a mission to take a well-known life whose extant facts are obscured and bring it "to life" through an inspired matching of subject and author. That, and Penguin aims for brevity and narrative flair. Sherwin Nuland's LEONARDO DA VINCI is the fourth volume in the series I've read, and while I did not find it ultimately as satisfying as Carol Shields' JANE AUSTIN or RWB Lewis's DANTE, it is pretty darn good.

Nuland, a professor of clinical surgery at Yale University and the author of the award-winning HOW WE DIE, took on a formidable challenge in Leonardo da Vinci. The man lived a long life, particularly for his time, and he was all over the map. He was an engineer, an artist, a scientist. He did nothing in linear fashion. He often started a project and lost interest in it; the finished products for which he is known are just the tip of the iceberg. Though he once spoke of writing 121 books, Leonardo never sat down to create one coherent manuscript; instead, his legacy was thousands of pages of notes in no particular order, that a few adventuresome archivists since his death have shaped into various portfolios here and there.

Given that and the mission of brevity, it is too much, I suppose, to expect the book to touch all the bases. Nuland chooses a few major battles, among them what enabled the genius (revisiting Freud's thesis of homosexuality), and the genius revealed through Leonardo's anatomical studies. Particularly in respect to the latter, Nuland is highly qualified to instruct in just how accurate the drawings are and how far-sighted were the conclusions for their time.

I wish Nuland had offered up some other information: What was the environment of a dissecting laboratory in those days? Has anyone ever investigated the possibility that Leonardo may have been ADHD or entertained some other disorder that affected his organizational skills but which also enabled the compensatory visual and intellectual skills? How exactly did he die? If he was appreciated for his art work in his own time, and known for being well liked, how was his death received? Where is he buried? Stuff like that.

This is the second of Sherwin Nuland's books that I've read. The first, his biography of Semmelweis, was much better written. (I gave the Semmelweis book five stars.) Dr. Nuland's sentence construction in the Da Vinci book is often rather strange. I don't mean to pettifog, but I found his awkward sentence structure a distraction. That being said, I liked this short introduction to the life of Da Vinci. I knew almost nothing about Leonardo's life before reading this book. Now I'm equipped to read a weightier biography.

Leonardo was the prototypical "Renaissance Man," a fact that renders him remarkably difficult for any one biographer to encapsulate fully. Add to that the page limitations imposed upon writers of the Penguin Lives (the typical Life is roughly 165 pages long), and you have an impossible task, no matter how competent the author.

Sherwin Nuland is that rarest of all creatures, an articulate doctor (surgeon), who has written several popular books about his craft, including the very popular How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter. So he was the ideal choice to write about Leonardo's anatomical studies, which he does well.

What he omits is any discussion of Leonardo's other accomplishments in art, mechanics, aeronautics,... But what modern writer could have written knowledgeably about those wide-ranging fields? Perhaps Isaac Asimov, but he died in 1992.

To Dr. Nuland's credit, he doesn't try, producing instead a fine book on those topics he does understand. Still, he doesn't capture the man.

For those who are interested, there is an excellent film, The Life of Leonardo Da Vinci, produced for Italian television in 1971, that provides a superb overview of Leonardo's life. A labor of love by the Italians, it is the definitive film on the subject.

A disappointment. I'm a fan of Penguin Lives series, which, tend to give a somewhat alternative -- and fascinating -- view of their subject. Not so with Nuland's Leonardo. I struggled with Nuland's use of Freud as a reference point for Leonardo, and with his belaboring Leonardo's presumed homosexuality as a reference point for understanding his life. By the time I made it past this, I admit I didn't give Nuland's manuscript my fair attention. And I'm content leaving it that way.

There can be little doubt that Leonardo da Vinci was a man of great intellect and skill. His impact upon society, however, has not been great. His inventions were never brought to fruition and his work in anatomy, while treasured today as being complex and far sighted, did little for the practice of medicine at the time of its publication. Yet, despite all this, it is a brave man who totally disregards Leonardo.

The author of this work on da Vinci, Sherwin B. Nuland, is a surgeon; an interesting choice for a biographer. Nuland brings a particular skill set to the work but not a complete skill set. The first portion of the book that deals in general with Leonardo's life is not strong. The reader is whisked through the years without ever feeling that he has gained any insights whatsoever. But, when Nuland turns to anatomy in the final chapters, the books takes a whole new turn. Clearly, the writer's knowledge shines and the reader sees in much greater depth the genius that was Leonardo.

At a time when there were no X rays, anesthesia or any real knowledge of the body's circulatory system, Leonardo's work was brilliant. Rather than describe the workings of the human body, Leonardo used drawings as his medium. Working with cadavers and having to work at great haste, Leonardo was a man ahead of his time. Nuland allows the reader to truly imagine the skill of the man.

Overall, Nuland's book is a work in two parts. The first, which is general biography, has only slight merit. His subsequent analysis of Leonardo's work in anatomy reads wonderfully. It is a great pity that the whole book could not have been of the same standard as the second part.