Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of the Mind: A Biography (Hardcover)

by Charles Nicholl (Author) "Half a millennium ago the surroundings were not so very different..." (more)
Key Phrases: Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Nicholl aims for the man behind the myth in this penetrating, highly detailed biography, which recognizes da Vinci's "mysterious greatness as an artist, scientist and philosopher" but avoids hagiography (and nearly steers clear of the word "genius"). The illegitimate child of a Tuscan peasant girl and a local notary, da Vinci (1452–1519) was apprenticed as a teen to Florence sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. Nicholl (Somebody Else: Arthur Rimbaud in Africa) conjectures convincingly about Leonardo's early career, though he tends to dwell overlong on technical aspects of Renaissance art production. Leonardo established a Florentine studio in 1477, but it was not until he moved to Milan five years later that he began to produce his iconic works: the painting Virgin of the Rocks, the famous Vitruvian Man drawing. Nicholl chronicles the production of The Last Supper and makes a firm statement about the Mona Lisa's identity. Numerous questions about Leonardo's life remain, unavoidably, unanswered, but Nicholl fills in the gaps with insight into the artist's cultural milieu, offering tidbits about Leonardo's sexuality, the sordid goings-on at the Borgia court and the multifarious fruits of the artist's astonishingly fertile curiosity and imagination. Nicholl's attention to da Vinci's polymathic pursuits, as well as his own translations from the artist's numerous notebooks, are some of this dense but readable volume's most compelling aspects. Illus.
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From Bookmarks Magazine
Forget Dan Brown’s fictional Da Vinci Code (**** May/June 2003); here’s the real deal. Award-winning author Nicholl draws on Leonardo’s notebooks to delve deep inside the mind of the beloved Renaissance icon. Celebrating Leonardo’s life and projects with contagious excitement and putting his achievements in the context of the Italian Renaissance as a whole, Nicholl considers Leonardo’s inspirations and influences. If we learn little new about Leonardo’s most famous works or his competition with Michelangelo, we gain valuable insight into the “cool, interior, ungraspable” creative process that raised Leonardo head and shoulders above his peers in most fields. Even with the spate of recent books on this master, Leonardo da Vinci stands out. It “isn’t merely a lovely book; it’s Leonardesque” (New York Times Book Review).

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 640 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (November 18, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670033456
• ISBN-13: 978-0670033454
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #417,209 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gripping Study, May 17, 2005

By	C. Middleton (Australia) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

63 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE Renaissance Man, January 5, 2005

By	takingadayoff "takingadayoff" (Las Vegas, Nevada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Flights of the Mind indeed, January 4, 2005

By	G. Heydenrych - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.