Leonardo Da Vinci
Ratings92
Average rating4.1
Really bummed, but killing this at 25%. The Renaissance - and the Renaissance masters - are an integral part of my self-identity; the (Italian!) pursuit of beauty and truth, the mix of science and art, the glory of the human form, blah blah blah. But this was just a chore. It was also, ahem, BAD VALUES.
On why it's a chore
Welp, this is my own fault, but I listened to the audiobook, and thus missed the visuals. And having Alfred Molina (who is quite a good actor!) narrate how wondrous and beauteous the shining curls of Leonardo's painting of Random Catholic 15th century Italian thing is, ho boy. (Though good on Molina - who I think is half-Italian? - for his smooth Italian pronunciations, brrrrravo.)
But it's also a chore because it TELLS, rather than SHOWS, us why Leonardo was so special. Everything is “magnificent” or “wondrous”, but - well, WHY? Is it because Leonardo had such a wide-ranging, rapacious curiosity for everything and every topic? Is it because his paintings are beautiful? Is it because he had such zany engineering sketches? Is it because he was so prolific? I guess so? Maybe?!
There are some interesting biographical bits that I didn't know about - for example, Leonardo was (semi-openly) gay; he was an illegitimate son; he was notorious for being flighty and starting a million things but never completing them. But the biography is thin on the ground, and it's mostly a series of breathless descriptions of Leonardo's paintings and notebooks. Isaacson doesn't build up the scene of what 15th century Florence - ONE OF MY FAVE SPOTS IN SPACE AND TIME - was like. As a comparison, both Brunelleschi's Dome (which kinda suffered from the same plodding reverential tone as this) and Galileo's Daughter (which was MUCH BETTER) present a rich and fascinating portrait of the city at the time. This book soooort of does; I liked hearing about Milan under the Sforzas (where Leonardo spent many years), and we did learn a bunch about the theater productions they put on there (though Isaacson is strangely defensive (?) about this stuff - being like, “SOME PEOPLE consider Leonardo's contributions to costume design and stage craft boring/not important, BUT...” dude, it's OK!).
On its bad values
But the MAIN thing that really started to irk me the really wrong way was that, beyond just TELLING us repeatedly how “genius” Leonardo was (without being able to describe what “genius” exactly means - again, is it wide-ranging interests? tireless production? beauty?), the book also huuuuugely suffers from what Carol Dweck would call the “fixed mindset”. That is, since Isaacson seems incapable of understanding HOW or WHY Leonardo is a “genius”, he attributes Leonardo's “genius”-ness to some ethereal, God-given, magical quality. It's the narrative of the effortless, “conduit of God” genius - think Amadeus - the kind that is starkly binary. Some people have it, most people don't.
And while I do agree with a GENERAL ranking of people's abilities (e.g. this A.O. Scott of Pixar's The Incredibles is an excellent essay on that), I STRONGLY disagree with those abilities being portrayed as entirely internal (no help), entirely binary (haves/have-nots), and entirely unearned (no need to study if you're “smart”). Leonardo's output was amazing BECAUSE of his curiosity, but his curiosity was also nurtured by his circumstances: as an illegitimate son, he was free NOT to pursue his father's profession (notary!); he was wealthy enough to not have a trade; he lived in a world that rewarded a good art/science hustle. He was confident - even too much so! - and sold himself well and allowed himself the luxury of pursuing flights of fantasy. He wasn't too worried about conforming, but also didn't need too. And he's been lionized, perhaps even disproportionately.
Like, as a contribution to human ideas, I think Brunelleschi's work with perspective - the insight of using mathematical principles from geometry to portray 3-dimensional space in paintings was, well, “GENIUS”. But Leonardo is much more well known. Again, why! He worked in a bottega with and under other artists; art historians spend a lot of time x-ray analyzing the paintings to separate Leonardo's left-handed brush strokes from the rest of the bottega's artists but - again - WHY SO BINARY? Why are the contributions of Leonardo's colleagues, with whom he worked so closely, completely discarded in favor of the guy with the cool notebooks?
I don't want to hate on Leonardo. I love Leonardo. I love all the Renaissance masters. I LOVE THE VALUES OF THE RENAISSANCE. But this book - BAH. This book sullies those values, transforms them into a Great Man history of humanity's pursuits of truth/beauty/knowledge, and that just kinda pisses me off. I guess I should have seen it coming, given Isaacson's reverential biographies of other Great Men like Steve Jobs. Sigh. My 2018 resolution to “be more Italian” hits a speed bump.
A long but informative book. Da Vinci is the most fascinating human to have walked the planet. The depth and scope of his explorations and artistry is overwhelming
Leonardo da Vinci é um gênio no sentido mais literal possível da palavra. A escrita de Walter Isaacson é leve e torna até os momentos monótonos da vida de Leonardo emocionantes. É satisfatório descobrir como Da Vinci lidava tranquilamente com questões sexuais, como era interessado em biologia, e que fez descobertas na medicina que nunca foram publicadas. Ele observava pássaros e tentava compreender como eles voavam. Isso tudo pelo prazer de conhecer. Para seu próprio mérito, até mesmo quando estudou óptica, era com o único objetivo de tornar suas obras artísticas mais belas — muitas vezes, essa obsessão pelo perfeccionismo o impedia inclusive de terminá-las. E é de extrema satisfação perceber Leonardo em seus manuscritos descrevendo que a história bíblica do dilúvio é extremamente improvável, e que o fato de encontrar conchas em montanhas, dispostas em estratos diferentes e organizadas, indica que provavelmente as montanhas já estiveram no nível do mar e por um processo lento e gradual, as conchas foram depositadas, contrariamente ao mito que relata uma tragédia divina vingativa e súbita, no qual, as conchas estariam espalhas de forma desigual, em um único estrato.
Como bem resumiu o próprio biógrafo:
“O maior gênio da história era filho ilegítimo, gay, vegetariano, canhoto, muito disperso e, às vezes, herético.”
I got bored with this book because their was too much focus on the detail of his pieces of art and not enough on the man himself.
Polymath, scientist, artist, engineer and more indeed.
Isaacson does inject himself to the book a little too much, keep bringing up Steve Jobs unnecessarily at times (well yes he wrote the biography of him too) but does a great job to capture the essence of Leonardo imho.
Everyone should know about Leonardo and his skills, talent, view of life in the context of his times.
Inspired by Leonardo.
I feel like a had a pretty broad, but shallow understanding of Leonardo da Vinci's work before reading this (I used to play an old CD-ROM game on our Power Mac all the time when I was a kid that was all about his inventions and ideas). It was nice to have it filled out a little more.
I especially liked how this book highlighted his curiosity as a scientific mind and how it went into how he was received but others people at the time and how he interacted with them.
Tuto knihu vám nedoporučuji číst! Jednak si uvědomíte, že váš stávající vzor (pokud už jím není Leonardo da Vinci) vlastně tak moc geniální není. A za druhé (a to je mnohem důležitější) budete chtít navštívit Itálii a Francii (popř. další státy), abyste si mohli prohlédnout Leonardova díla na vlastní oči. Tentokrát však obohaceni o mnohem více vědomostí, jak a na co se ve skutečnosti dívat. Teprve díky této knize si uvědomíte skutečnou genialitu tohoto člověka a častokrát je vám líto, že Leonardo své zápisky nepublikoval, protože by to mohlo změnit koloběh dějin. Walter Isacson nezklamal a opět mi přinesl úžasný životopis, který vís nepřestane překvapovat, protože se díky zápiskům Leonarda toho tolik dochovalo a dal se tak bez “problémů” poskládat celý jeho život. To se u naší generace tolik říct nedá, když je všechno digitální. Měl bych se nejspíš vrátit zpět ke svým papírovým deníkům. A teď mě omluvte, musím si jít koupit vstupenku do Louvru.
Personally not much of an aesthete but the book gave me a newfound appreciation for art and Leonardo da Vinci's commitment to perfection. A brilliant and spellbinding biography which offers a window into the genius of Leonardo, capturing his voracious appetite for knowledge and relentless curiosity, making it a very inspiring read overall.
I can't imagine anything I would want added to this book. A thoroughly researched and well-written book about an amazing person and life.
A lot of interesting information about Leonardo in this book. However, there are definitely places where information is repeated, and sometimes it feels the author is adding words for simply the sake of adding words. It's far more long-winded than it needs to be
I got tired of all the minutiae of LD and his life. I guess if you really want to know everything there is to know about him, this is the book!
By far one of the best books I've ever read. I don't think I've ever got half way through a book within a week of reading it. It's amazing how insightful the book is considering it all happened hundreds of years ago.
I didn't get to hear the author at the Texas Book Festival last November but it is the book I chose to buy and take home from the festival. It was a good pick. Who isn't intrigued by such a person? I love how the author focused on da Vinci's creativity as displayed in his journals and works of art, rather than spending a lot of print space speculating about his personal life. I also loved how the author took a very close look at the journals and art and reflected upon these.
What did I take away from the book?
Da Vinci spent a lot of time thinking and studying and investigating what interested him. When his interest changed, he dropped a line of thought.
His journals were the place he was able to explore ideas unreservedly.
He wasn't good at completing long projects. I find this very interesting.
He had free time to explore and create since he had few financial worries and no family.
