Best Books About Leonardo Da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci's masterpieces include the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and The Vitruvian Man. In addition to being a painter and sculptor, he was also an engineer. A polymath, his notebooks revealed that he was an exceptional scientist and inventor.
Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and Raffaello Santi are regarded as the greatest High Renaissance artists.
This genius made contributions that extended beyond his art, drawings, and inventions. Aside from his timeless artwork, Leonardo da Vinci designed machines such as a prototype helicopter and airplane. With his inventions, he combined his strong belief in seeing as a path to knowledge, diligent observations, and a persevering attitude to record findings in ways that make people understand how things work.
Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
Walter Isaacson weaves a narrative that connects Leonardo's art and science using thousands of pages from his astonishing notebooks as well as new discoveries about his life and work. He demonstrates how Leonardo's genius was founded on qualities we can cultivate in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and a playful imagination that flirted with fantasy.
Notebooks by Irma A. Richter
Most of what we know about Leonardo da Vinci comes from his notebooks. Approximately 6,000 sheets of notes and drawings remain, representing perhaps one-fifth of what he actually produced. In them, he recorded everything that interested him about the world around him, as well as his research into how things work.
With an artist's eye and a scientist's curiosity, he investigated water movement and rock formation, flight and optics, anatomy, architecture, sculpture, and painting. He wrote fables and letters, fostering his belief in the sublime unity of nature and man.
Oil and Marble: A Novel of Leonardo and Michelangelo by Stephanie Storey
In her brilliant debut, Storey brings early 16th-century Florence to life, delving with extraordinary empathy into the minds and souls of two Renaissance masters to create a breathtaking art history thriller. Between 1501 and 1505, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti both lived and worked in Florence. Leonardo was a charming, handsome fifty-year-old in the prime of his career. Michelangelo was a temperamental sculptor in his mid-twenties who was determined to make a name for himself.
Leonardo: Revised Edition by Martin Kemp
This fascinating look at Leonardo da Vinci's life and work reveals what made him so unique and explains the phenomenon of the world's most celebrated artistic genius, who, 500 years later, continues to captivate and inspire us.
Martin Kemp provides exceptional insights into what made this Renaissance man so unique, as well as the "true" meaning behind masterpieces like the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper. Tracing Leonardo's career in all its facets, we learn about his unfulfilled dreams, relationships with powerful patrons, and the truth about his beliefs about God, humans, and nature.
The famous notebooks are the key to unlocking the secret of Leonardo's success and genius, as they reveal the inner workings of his mind and demonstrate the true innovative and investigative nature of his creative vision. Over 20,000 pages of drawings and notes document his incredible discoveries and inventions, ranging from the workings of the human eye to designs for flying machines and giant crossbows.
Bringing the story up to date, Martin Kemp considers what he means to us today, investigates the "Leonardo industry," and speculates on what he would do if he were still alive. This updated edition of Martin Kemp's best-seller is the first book on Leonardo to include two newly discovered works—the most important such discoveries in over a hundred years.
The How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci Workbook: Your Personal Companion to How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael J. Gelb
The How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci Workbook was designed to structure and motivate the reader's development of the seven da Vincian principles introduced in How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci. It is the natural extension of Gelb's da Vinci line. As any modern da Vinci student knows, Leonardo's notebook was both the incubator and repository of his unique genius, and it serves as the foundation for any modern-day student's attempt to emulate that genius on his own.
Gelb encourages readers to keep their own personal notebooks to hone their da Vincian skills from the first exercise in the original How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci; now he provides that notebook for them, with the added bonus of tips on exercises they'll recognize, as well as new suggestions and assignments that will build on the work they've already done.
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