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Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519 : the design of the world

This volume represents a unique opportunity to admire and understand, from a comprehensive perspective, Leonardos extraordinary complexity as an artist, painter and sketcher, and, in part, his work as a scientist and technologist. This alluring volume is meant to illustrate, through twelve sections, some central themes in Leonardos entire artistic and scientific career, underlining some constants in his vision as an artist and a scientist, as well as his interdisciplinary vocation and continuous intermingling of interests. The catalog gathers oeuvres signed by Leonardo paintings, drawings and manuscripts introduced by works from his predecessors painters, sculptors, technicians, theorists which can contextualize Leonardos contribution to the history of art, science and technology while offering, at the same time, a vision of Leonardo the artist and scientist of his age, without giving in to myth-making and banality. Two final sections show the influence of Leonardo the painter and art theorist on the modern era and the creation of his legend, centered on Mona Lisa. The volume also includes masterpiece paintings by Leonardo, some of his original codes, and over one hundred signed drawings, as well as a considerable number of artworks, drawings, manuscripts, sculptures, and codes from major museums and libraries around the world and from private collections, with works by Antonello da Messina, Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, Paolo Uccello, Ghirlandaio, Verrocchio, Antonio and Piero del Pollaiolo, Jean van Eyck, Bramante, just to name a few.

Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519

Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519

One of the most fully achieved human beings who has ever lived, Leonardo remains the quintessential Renaissance genius. Creator of the world's most famous painting, scientist, philosopher, builder, he is credited with defining the accomplishments of the great flowering in human consciousness. And yet, so wide-ranging and prolific were his interests that he brought hardly any major undertaking to a final end. If he seems so modern, it is perhaps because of his non-speciality, his magpie mind and curiosity, and his thousands of notes and sketches. In these pages he would anticipate some of the great discoveries and inventions that would follow him, from key points in anatomy - such as the principles behind blood circulation - through to plans for armoured military vehicles, planes, helicopters and submarines. As well as all that, he also managed to advance numerous artistic techniques, and implicated a complex psychology into his paintings of the "Last Supper" and the enigmatic "La Gioconda", or "Mona Lisa". Famous horseman, rival to Michelangelo, military engineer to the Borgias, he died in 1519, in a chateau given him by the King of France, Francis I. Not bad for the illegitimate son of Florentine notary.