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Biography of Leonardo da Vinci
Oxford University Press
January 2006
Featuring: Leonardo da Vinci
304 pages ISBN: 0192806440 Trade Size
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Non-Fiction Biography | Historical
A true genius whose talents embraced painting, engineering,
anatomy and human flight, Leonardo da Vinci was an
extraordinary human being, indeed one of the most intriguing
figures in world history. In this biography, Martin Kemp offers a vivid portrait of
the Renaissance giant that explores
the essential nature of this forever fascinating
artist-engineer, both as an individual and as a historical
phenomenon, feeding the "the continuing public appetite for
Leonardo and his doings" found in The Da Vinci Code. Kemp 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 the 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. 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.
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