Customer Reviews

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (Volume 2)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This 2-Volume collection published by Dover wonderfully exhibits Leonardo's works with his sketches, designs and ideas. If you ever wondered what Leonardo thought, then these are the books to get. The book is set up with the text in two columns; the left in the original Italian, and the right side in the translated English. In those words are written of Leonardo's philisophical ideas, lives of where he lived and his surroundings, his theories on color, perspective, proportion, architecture, foliage, physiology and so many other things that the Great One was curious about. Througout the book and amidst the text are Leonardos sketches, thumbnail sketches, workings of famous pieces such as the Last Supper, some anatomical drawings - and in those pages you can see Leonardo's handwriting which he tended to write backwards. The value and reference is endless, especially for the artist. This edition is reprinted from the 1833 version originally entitled "Literary Works of Leonardo Da Vinci." This is a 2-volume set, which is sold seperately, but for the price, it is so worth the money. Highly reccomended!

this cd simply has a 2Mb pdf on it with 800+ pages of text.

It is a useful compendium of his works, but has NO images.

This is the worst thing I have ever purchased from Amazon! Usually I am a very satisfied customer, but not today! If you are expecting drawings, sketches with this product, forget it! To me the title is very misleading to the point of almost being criminal.

I was expecting reproductions on CD of Lenardo's notebooks, including all of the drawings in those notebooks! Now that on PDF would be worth having. There should be very big warning labels on this page that there are no IMAGES on this CD! The title should be changed to "Incomplete" Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci!

This is nothing more than a CD with 2 pdf files, and one of them is an offer to become a reseller of this kind of material! The nerve! If I could rate this a negative 5 I would. I am so disappointed with this product!

I was hoping to see the drawings and sketches from Leonardo. Instead I found a cd with a bunch of translated text on it. There are better options out there.

I have read both this one and volume two and I believe this is the book I have been searching for on Leonardo. It is a direct translation and if you don't believe it you can translate for yourself because the Italian is to the left of the English. The book has over 700 illustrations but only about 50 have been photo copied from the actual books, the rest are re-drawn. Overall I would buy both books and start reading.

Leonardo's notebooks are a staggering monument to the human intellect and Jean Paul Richter has done a remarkable job of editing and compiling Leonardo's various writings on so many subjects into a readable and unified whole. In all, Mr. Richter has done a marvelous job. His efforts have helped to bring the genius of Leonardo to an even wider readership.

Inexpensive, but the image quality is terrible, in some cases completely illegible and dark, like poor xeroxes...thus, it's nearly impossible to read or make out details of technical drawibngs.

I do not see anywhere that this a pdf file with no pictures. There are pictures all over the cd. This is a rip-off.

I can not do this book justice by attempting to describe it in words. Far be it from me. All I can say is that if you are a Da Vincian at heart, this book should already be in your collection. If it's not, then by all means get it.

Leonardo's curiosity and inventiveness are on display throughout this work. I cannot judge the quality of the translation , or how good the Richter edition of the Notebooks is. I can say that this is a tremendous amount of interesting observation and thought regarding the subjects from anatomy to perspective in painting, questions of architecture and aeronautics, that concern the Renaissance Man of Renaissance Men. All of this is in a way too much for another mind certainly one like my own who simply does not know anything about many of the areas Leonardo was interested in to real take in. But I think every person who takes an interest in the human mind and the way it works, in creativity and genius would do well to have and read these works.