Leonardo da Vinci

Walter Isaacson is presented as a biographer of important public figures, and the text highlights his book about Leonardo da Vinci as a 600-page work based on the artist’s notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work. The page emphasizes that Leonardo united art and science, produced celebrated paintings, investigated anatomy, and designed machines that anticipated future developments.

Reading notes

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• Walter Isaacson is described as a historian and journalist known for biographies of important public figures.
• The book about Leonardo da Vinci is presented as a 600-page work based on thousands of pages from Leonardo’s notebooks and on new discoveries about his life and work.
• The text says that Leonardo linked his art to his science and cites the idea of studying the science of art and the art of science.
• Among his best-known works are The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa.
• The page states that Leonardo studied anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry.
• Leonardo began early as an apprentice in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence, where he came into contact with painting, sculpture, and mechanical arts.
• This early contact with several fields would have shaped his broad interests and his ability to observe the world and turn those observations into art and drawings.
• The Last Supper is described as a mural painted between 1495 and 1498 that shows the moment when Jesus announces that one of the disciples will betray him.
• The text highlights the use of perspective, light, and human emotion in The Last Supper, as well as the arrangement of the apostles in groups of three.
• The painting was made with an experimental technique on a dry wall, which made it more vulnerable to damage and led to several restorations.
• The Mona Lisa is presented as a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant, painted between 1503 and 1506.
• The text attributes to the Mona Lisa the enigmatic smile and the use of sfumato, which creates smooth transitions between colors and tones.
• Leonardo wrote and drew intensely, filling thousands of pages with ideas, observations, and inventions.
• He dissected human bodies to study muscles, bones, and organs, and his drawings of the heart, blood circulation, muscle movement, and the brain are described as highly accurate.
• The text mentions the Vitruvian Man as a study of the proportions of the human body and as a work that unites art and science.
• In 1994, Bill Gates bought the Codex Leicester for US$30.8 million at auction.
• Leonardo’s notebooks include designs for machines such as a primitive helicopter, a parachute, and a tank, although these inventions were not feasible with 15th-century technology.
• The page concludes that Leonardo embodies the Renaissance ideal of the polymath.