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Leonardo
A true genius whose talents embraced painting, engineering, anatomy, and flight, Leonardo da Vinci was--and remains--an extraordinary human being, indeed one of the most intriguing figures in world history, as the recent success of The Da Vinci Code attests. Now, in this new biography, Martin
Kemp explores the essential nature of this forever fascinating artist-engineer, both as an individual and as a historical phenomenon.
How can we best understand Leonardo? How did his mind work--was he prolific but scattered in his thinking, or is there a method in what often seems to be his madness? Was he basically an artist who also pursued science and technology, or was "science"--his understanding of the physical
world--central to his artistic vision? In Leonardo , Martin Kemp offers a vivid portrait of the Renaissance giant that answers these questions and more. The book takes us on an absorbing journey through the life and work of Leonardo, looking first at the historical man, portraying an impressive and
cultivated figure, an artist who in truth completed few paintings, rarely satisfied a commission, and yet lived in style and ended his career with a massive salary. More important, the author examines the ideas underlying Leonardo's investigations of nature, illuminating his vision of the
artist-engineer as matching nature itself in his creativity. Kemp argues that Leonardo's apparent diversities reveal a desire to find an inner unity in the functioning of everything in the observable world. For Leonardo, writes Kemp, every act of looking and drawing was an act of analysis, and he
used these analyses to re-make and re-interpret his surroundings. In a final chapter, Kemp also comments on the Da Vinci Code and "the continuing public appetite for Leonardo and his doings."
Beautifully illustrated with a unique "thumbnail museum" that offers a tour of all Leonardo's paintings, plus 30 additional illustrations and life-size reproductions of pages from his famous notebooks, Leonardo is a powerful portrait of one of the towering geniuses of world history.
Kemp explores the essential nature of this forever fascinating artist-engineer, both as an individual and as a historical phenomenon.
How can we best understand Leonardo? How did his mind work--was he prolific but scattered in his thinking, or is there a method in what often seems to be his madness? Was he basically an artist who also pursued science and technology, or was "science"--his understanding of the physical
world--central to his artistic vision? In Leonardo , Martin Kemp offers a vivid portrait of the Renaissance giant that answers these questions and more. The book takes us on an absorbing journey through the life and work of Leonardo, looking first at the historical man, portraying an impressive and
cultivated figure, an artist who in truth completed few paintings, rarely satisfied a commission, and yet lived in style and ended his career with a massive salary. More important, the author examines the ideas underlying Leonardo's investigations of nature, illuminating his vision of the
artist-engineer as matching nature itself in his creativity. Kemp argues that Leonardo's apparent diversities reveal a desire to find an inner unity in the functioning of everything in the observable world. For Leonardo, writes Kemp, every act of looking and drawing was an act of analysis, and he
used these analyses to re-make and re-interpret his surroundings. In a final chapter, Kemp also comments on the Da Vinci Code and "the continuing public appetite for Leonardo and his doings."
Beautifully illustrated with a unique "thumbnail museum" that offers a tour of all Leonardo's paintings, plus 30 additional illustrations and life-size reproductions of pages from his famous notebooks, Leonardo is a powerful portrait of one of the towering geniuses of world history.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2004
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About the author
Martin Kemp
84 books66 followersMartin Kemp is professor of the History of Art at Oxford University, and the author of many books including The Science of Art, Visualizations and the recent Leonardo. He is also a frequent contributor to Nature, the international science journal, where he writes on science and art. Together with Antonio Criminisi, he wrote an article in NEW 1_2005: "Paolo Uccello's 'Battle of San Romano': Order from Chaos" is the most recent report on how they apply 3D graphic techniques to the process of art history investigation.
Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
March 2, 2015
A dully-written disappointment. It gives a decent enough overview of the various aspects of Leonardo's life, but the author is too busy making scholarly points to remember that this is supposed to be a biography. The level of analytical distance often felt like Leonardo the concept was being discussed more than Leonardo the man, Leonardo the artist, or Leonardo the engineer. Not to mention the writing was stilted and pedantic. Give this one a miss.
December 8, 2019
Leonardo by Martin Kemp was a great dive into various aspects of Da Vinci's work - with less erudition than Leonardo Da Vinci and far more relevance than Leonardo’s Paradox: Word and Image in the Making of Renaissance Culture. It is highly readable and has many fascinating insights. I get the impression that the sole interesting observation in Isaacson's miserable Leonardo da Vinci biography - the piece about Leonard's visionary analysis of the valves in the heart - was lifted straight out of Kemp's book.
It starts with a brief introduction into how he worked, who his patrons were, and his unique way of viewing the world then goes thematically into various aspects of his work: Body and Machine, The Living Earth, and Telling Tales. Each of these chapters is well-illustrated and provides insight into Leonardo's life and work.
The last chapter, "Lisa's Room: Leonardo's Afterlife" abruptly changes style to a first-person narrative and musing about La Joconde / Mona Lisa and the author's research into this work traveling in Italy and seeing its impact on culture up to the present day.
Unique among the 5 or 6 books I have read about Leonardo, this one includes a complete list of the extant works of Leonardo, a nice timeline of his life, and a complete bibliography.
Besides Leonardo: The Artist and the Man, which is my preferred book about Leonardo, I would recommend this one as a launching point for experts and newcomers alike to the life and art of one of the Renaissance's most critical contributors and one of humanity's most creative and enigmatic characters.
It starts with a brief introduction into how he worked, who his patrons were, and his unique way of viewing the world then goes thematically into various aspects of his work: Body and Machine, The Living Earth, and Telling Tales. Each of these chapters is well-illustrated and provides insight into Leonardo's life and work.
The last chapter, "Lisa's Room: Leonardo's Afterlife" abruptly changes style to a first-person narrative and musing about La Joconde / Mona Lisa and the author's research into this work traveling in Italy and seeing its impact on culture up to the present day.
Unique among the 5 or 6 books I have read about Leonardo, this one includes a complete list of the extant works of Leonardo, a nice timeline of his life, and a complete bibliography.
Besides Leonardo: The Artist and the Man, which is my preferred book about Leonardo, I would recommend this one as a launching point for experts and newcomers alike to the life and art of one of the Renaissance's most critical contributors and one of humanity's most creative and enigmatic characters.
July 8, 2020
I didn't finish this book, only made it to 20% and gave up. This book was so dry that I didn't want to waste any more time trying to finish it. It read like a textbook.
September 18, 2020
“The is that Leonardo was converted to remake nature...” p. 148
“The space occupied by forms was, after all, a ‘continuous quantity’. The resulting graphite tangle of chalk and ink, in which even he might begin to lose orientation, could then be given done selective plastic definition by the addition of sepia wash... the most promising of the myriad alternatives could be pressed through to the other side...” p. 173
"St. James, full of youthful nervous sensibility, starts back, withdrawing his shoulder and neck at the same time as inclining his head forward to register that the shocking words have been said." p. 184
"'The good painter has to paint two principle things, that is to say man and the intention of his mind...the latter has to be represented through gestures and movements of the limbs-which can be learned from the dumb, who exhibit gestures better than any other kind of man...'" p. 186
"The result is a peculiar form of naturalism-a kind of 'hypernaturalism in which things look incredibly 'real' on their own terms without looking quite as they do in nature" p. 191
"As the light changes, even by a fraction otherwise imperceptible to our naked eyes, and as our viewing position changes a little, the image 'breathes'....Leonardo does it by filtering the white brilliance of the panel's priming through enticing layers of warm glaze, so thin as to tax even modern scientific analysis. He does it by pitching soft ed against a soft green of equal tonal value, opaque pale blue against translucent browns, definite line against elusive roundness, and by teasing us with things that invite us to see them as defined when they are veiled in ambiguity." p. 249
“The space occupied by forms was, after all, a ‘continuous quantity’. The resulting graphite tangle of chalk and ink, in which even he might begin to lose orientation, could then be given done selective plastic definition by the addition of sepia wash... the most promising of the myriad alternatives could be pressed through to the other side...” p. 173
"St. James, full of youthful nervous sensibility, starts back, withdrawing his shoulder and neck at the same time as inclining his head forward to register that the shocking words have been said." p. 184
"'The good painter has to paint two principle things, that is to say man and the intention of his mind...the latter has to be represented through gestures and movements of the limbs-which can be learned from the dumb, who exhibit gestures better than any other kind of man...'" p. 186
"The result is a peculiar form of naturalism-a kind of 'hypernaturalism in which things look incredibly 'real' on their own terms without looking quite as they do in nature" p. 191
"As the light changes, even by a fraction otherwise imperceptible to our naked eyes, and as our viewing position changes a little, the image 'breathes'....Leonardo does it by filtering the white brilliance of the panel's priming through enticing layers of warm glaze, so thin as to tax even modern scientific analysis. He does it by pitching soft ed against a soft green of equal tonal value, opaque pale blue against translucent browns, definite line against elusive roundness, and by teasing us with things that invite us to see them as defined when they are veiled in ambiguity." p. 249
February 7, 2008
continuing through the Renaissance, I studied Leonardo next, after Brunellschi.
November 23, 2010
Finished this awhile ago. Great book.
October 25, 2020
Very dry. I would've appreciated if Kemp had tried to spice it up a bit more.
February 20, 2020
Hoş bir kitaptı ama daha kapsayıcı olabilirmiş, daha çok sanatçının profesyonel kariyerine değinilmiş, kişisel hayatı, kişilik özellikleri eksik bırakılmış. Gerçekten memnun kalmadığım tek kısım ise çevirisi oldu, bazı yerleri anlamak için defalarca kez okumam gerekti.
January 10, 2018
So dry, my eyes dissolved into sand and dust and feathered out of my nodding skull.
January 5, 2025
A great insight into a great man, his dreams, great works, genius (and avoiding patrons who wanted to know where the pictures were that they paid for 😀).
Recommended reading.
Recommended reading.
November 7, 2012
Read this a while ago to feed my love of da Vinci.
February 11, 2015
a lot of history on Leonardo and his contemporaries. Many things I learned about him, he was such a genius we use many of his inventions today
March 27, 2016
For readers who want the full picture of Leonardo's genius, this is the ultimate reference.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews