Walter Isaacson's Leonardo

Mona Lisa: "the culmination of a life spent perfecting the ability to stand at the intersection of art and nature. The poplar panel with multiple layers of light oil glazes, applied over the course of many years, exemplifies the multiple layers of Leonardo's genius. What began as a portrait of a silk merchant's young wife became a quest to portray the complexities of human emotion, made memorable through the mysteries of a hinted smile, and to connect our nature to that of our universe. The landscape of her soul and of nature's soul are intertwined." (Isaacson, Leonardo da Vinci, p. 475)

This Little Free Library continues to know what I should read and have it waiting for me. Current reading: a pristine copy of Leonardo  da Vinci by Walter Isaacson. It's a beautiful work full of color illustrations included directly in the text, so that it's really a joy to read. (I can't believe someone just anonymously gave it away to me!)

Leonardo was surely one of the most talented and imaginative humans of all time, and Isaacson clearly holds him in awe. There's much more to this famous painter than a few well-known surviving masterpieces such as Mona Lisa, several other portraits, and the overpowering -- though unfinished -- paintings of the Virgin with Saint Anne and others.

Isaacson's book describes Leonardo's art, his scientific work, and his vast quantity of notebooks full of notes, sketches, and diagrams. Isaacson also clearly examined the huge body of Leonardo scholarship, and conveys it in a very interesting way, including a discussion of how scholars authenticate newly found "Leonardo" works.

Leonardo's interests included human anatomy, animal anatomy, fluid dynamics, military machines, learning how birds fly, imagining man-made flying machines, creating maps and charts, studying geometry, and many more subjects beyond art. His accomplishments were amazing and often far ahead of his contemporaries' understanding. There's one problem with these accomplishments: he virtually never published his work. In quite a few cases, if scientists had known what he knew, the course of intellectual history would have been very different.

Leonardo's studies often began with the motive of drawing and painting better images. For example, he believed that understanding the nerves and muscles was a essential to creating the type of drawings and paintings he wanted to make. Among many studies, he examined the muscles of the face to learn how to create more realistic facial expressions -- like a smile. He often went far beyond what was needed for artistic purposes.

In Leonardo's anatomy studies, he worked at a hospital doing dissections, and worked with a professor of medicine. As he learned about the anatomic structures that could lead to better art, he became fascinated by the subject. He then went further and further, such as observing and sketching the mechanics and fluid flow of the heart, veins, arteries, and even capillaries, and even opening a living pig to see the heart's live function. His observations and detailed experiments of how the heart's aortic valve works were especially impressive: one particular discovery, recorded in his unpublished writings, was only rediscovered in the 1960s! (p. 419)

Isaacson's organization of the overpowering collection of materials at his disposition is an awesome feat in itself. He combines biography, art criticism, intellectual history, and more in what I would see as a seamless whole. His descriptions of the major art works are insightful. He explains the events and circumstances of Leonardo's life during the time he was painting. Individual chapters cover Leonardo's work in major areas of scientific and engineering studies, placing them in their historic and scientific context. As a result it's a wonderful and readable book. Although I have read about Leonardo and also about the history of his era, I learned a great deal.

Isaacson's chapter on "Vitruvian Man" is an example of the masterful way he presents his research into the artist. This chapter made me look at this famous work in a new way. Originally described in the work of the Roman author Vitruvius (who lived in the first century BCE), these classic proportions of the human body were the subject of discussions among a set of friends of Leonardo. Several of them also tried to illustrate the idea of a man inscribed in a circle and an offset square. However, only Leonardo made this diagram into a lasting and incredible work of art.