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Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci var en gudabenådad konstnär, en vetenskapsman som levde hundratals år före sin tid och ett universalgeni som fick övriga renässansmänniskor att förblekna. Han tillhör det ringa fåtal individer som alltid har varit föremål för allmän beundran. Samtliga bedömare, från läraren Verrocchio och renässanshärskarna i Milano och Frankrike till nutidens kritiska granskare, har varit rörande överens om Leonardos briljans. Samtidigt är bilden av honom oerhört splittrad. För vissa är han konsthistoriens störste målare, mannen bakom Mona Lisa och Nattvarden. För andra är han den store uppfinnaren, snillet som designade helikoptrar, bilar och pansarvagnar fyra sekler innan de blev verklighet. För ytterligare andra är han den nyfikne naturvetenskapsmannen, vars anatomiska skisser och analyser av fåglars flykt känns lika färska och moderna idag som när de skrevs.
Vem var han egentligen? Vad vet vi om Leonardos uppväxt, utbildning, karriär och personliga utveckling? I denna biografi tar Dick Harrison ett helhetsgrepp om mästaren och hans mångfacetterade gärning.
I bokserien Biografi porträtteras personer som varit med och format vår myllrande historia. I böckerna möter vi historiska megakändisar vars berömdhet färdats genom årtusenden, eller profiler som varit betydelsefulla för sitt land och dess utveckling
Vem var han egentligen? Vad vet vi om Leonardos uppväxt, utbildning, karriär och personliga utveckling? I denna biografi tar Dick Harrison ett helhetsgrepp om mästaren och hans mångfacetterade gärning.
I bokserien Biografi porträtteras personer som varit med och format vår myllrande historia. I böckerna möter vi historiska megakändisar vars berömdhet färdats genom årtusenden, eller profiler som varit betydelsefulla för sitt land och dess utveckling
176 pages, Paperback
Published January 23, 2023
2 people are currently reading
20 people want to read
About the author
Dick Harrison
151 books110 followers
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Dick Harrison is a Swedish historian and currently a professor at Lund's University, Sweden.
Dick Harrison is a Swedish historian and currently a professor at Lund's University, Sweden.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 28, 2023
Sakligt och intressant om Leonardo Da Vinci.
Inte särskilt djupgående i någon aspekt av hans liv, men ger en god överblick för den ytligt intresserade 🌞
Inte särskilt djupgående i någon aspekt av hans liv, men ger en god överblick för den ytligt intresserade 🌞
March 10, 2026
This biography was very well written and easy to follow. I have always been very interested in exploring da Vinci’s life and what made him so memorable even to this day. Now I feel like I understand why, he was a polymath: not only interested in visual art but also in natural and medicinal science. The most fascinating aspect of his life that I learned was the fact that apparently he used to dissect corpses in order to understand the human anatomy. Da Vinci was not asocial by any means, but he did have an aversion to things that would otherwise make him ordinary. He never married and he did not father any offspring either, he was just endlessly hyperfixated on his many different intellectual pursuits, not all of them came to fruition.
I would not refer to Leonardo as a childhood prodigy by any means, to refer to him as a ‘genius’ is a massive overstatement. However he did have enthusiasm and genuine passion for everything that he did and he was admired for his different contributions to the society of his time. Since he was born out of wedlock, he was spared the future of becoming an accountant, as was otherwise expected of the eldest son in a family. Like me, he was the result of a casual hookup and his parents married other people and had children with them instead, causing Leonardo to have an abundance of half-siblings.
A lot of his personal life is still shrouded in mystery but what we can gather from this book is that Leonardo was in many ways just an ordinary human being. What made him special was his insatiable hunger for knowledge. Throughout his whole life, he dedicated himself to the pursuit of self-education. He was self-disciplined and curious about many things in life that caught his interest. He was admired even in his own lifetime and was even able to impress the Italian court by sharing his own his own hypotheticals with them, this included, but is not limited to, sketches of hydraulic pumps and warfare machines. Leonardo was highly imaginative and always had a lot of ideas to share, however not everything came to fruition and not every sketch of a machine would have worked the way he had intended it too. One example of this is a sketch of a battle tank. It was shaped to be triangular, however this would never have worked out in reality simply because the mechanisms to operate such a complicated machine did not exist in the 16th century. The tank would have also been too expensive to build and it would have to remain stationary to even be minimally usable. Leonardo was was also well-liked for his sociable personality, a lot of people found him easy to talk to and since humans are social mammals, being likable automatically makes us prescribe other positive attributes onto another person (This is a phenomenon known as “The Halo Effect”).
Overall, I quite liked reading through this biography and it is also nice to see how much of myself I saw in Leonardo’s lifestyle and personality.
I would not refer to Leonardo as a childhood prodigy by any means, to refer to him as a ‘genius’ is a massive overstatement. However he did have enthusiasm and genuine passion for everything that he did and he was admired for his different contributions to the society of his time. Since he was born out of wedlock, he was spared the future of becoming an accountant, as was otherwise expected of the eldest son in a family. Like me, he was the result of a casual hookup and his parents married other people and had children with them instead, causing Leonardo to have an abundance of half-siblings.
A lot of his personal life is still shrouded in mystery but what we can gather from this book is that Leonardo was in many ways just an ordinary human being. What made him special was his insatiable hunger for knowledge. Throughout his whole life, he dedicated himself to the pursuit of self-education. He was self-disciplined and curious about many things in life that caught his interest. He was admired even in his own lifetime and was even able to impress the Italian court by sharing his own his own hypotheticals with them, this included, but is not limited to, sketches of hydraulic pumps and warfare machines. Leonardo was highly imaginative and always had a lot of ideas to share, however not everything came to fruition and not every sketch of a machine would have worked the way he had intended it too. One example of this is a sketch of a battle tank. It was shaped to be triangular, however this would never have worked out in reality simply because the mechanisms to operate such a complicated machine did not exist in the 16th century. The tank would have also been too expensive to build and it would have to remain stationary to even be minimally usable. Leonardo was was also well-liked for his sociable personality, a lot of people found him easy to talk to and since humans are social mammals, being likable automatically makes us prescribe other positive attributes onto another person (This is a phenomenon known as “The Halo Effect”).
Overall, I quite liked reading through this biography and it is also nice to see how much of myself I saw in Leonardo’s lifestyle and personality.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews