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Leonardo Da Vinci: Flights of the Mind
Charles Nicholl
A biography for the modern sensibility
Viking
November 2004
Featuring: Leonardo da Vinci
640 pages
ISBN: 0670033456
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
For five centuries, Leonardo da Vinci has stood alone as
the quintessential Renaissance man--the incomparable artist,
writer, thinker, and inventor who most powerfully
transformed his world. In this dazzling new intimate
biography, award-winning author Charles Nicholl creates a
portrait of the artist for our time--a biography that brings
Leonardo to life as a complex man living in a fascinating,
dangerous, quickly changing world. Drawing freely on his own original translations of
Leonardo's notebooks as well as newly discovered
contemporary accounts, Nicholl captures the very texture of
Leonardo's mind and the pungent visceral impressions he
transmuted into art. Detail by brilliant detail, Nicholl
reconstructs the life and times of the artist, from his
troubled childhood as the illegitimate son of an established
Tuscan family to his years of apprenticeship in the
burgeoning art world of Medici Florence to his unrivaled
achievements in a breathtaking array of disciplines and
media. Here, too, are compelling new answers to the enduring
mysteries of Leonardo's sexual orientation, the true
identity of the Mona Lisa, and the early experiences that
inspired his lifelong obsession with human flight. A writer of irresistible charm and quicksilver imagination,
Nicholl takes us from the backstreet artists' studios of
Florence to the glittering palazzi of the Medici, Sforza,
and Borgia families as he pursues the most extravagantly
talented and maddeningly elusive artist of all time. The
result is a biography of rare grace and penetration.
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