What Made Leonardo da Vinci Such a Genius?
A book review of ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ by Walter Isaacson
This book was a bit outside what I typically read. But for some reason, I got curious about it and decided to give it a go. I’m glad I did, it was a delightful journey into the life of Da Vinci. Not only did I learn a ton, but also was incredibly enjoyable.
I first started this as an audiobook, but I soon decided to switch to paperback. There are a lot of images in the book, and while they are available on Audible in the form of PDF, they are a bit of a hassle to pull out, and it ruins the flow of reading a little bit. I’m glad I switched. Not only because it made it easier to carefully analyze the images, but also because the book itself is beautiful. The cover is fantastic, but also the images are pretty high-quality, and the pages themselves are quite robust. Physically, it’s one of my favourite books I own.
The book was also surprisingly easy to read. While it is a bit long, the chapters are easy to read or one or two reading sessions, and it never felt boring to me. The font is also quite large, which somehow makes the book more digestible and not as intimidating.
The biography itself is a masterpiece. I really enjoyed Isaacson’s writing. The author is clearly a huge fan of Leonardo, and his passion is contagious. It’s far from just being a timeline of his life with dry facts. Rather, you are invited to participate in the story of his life. From his initial apprenticeship in Florence with Verrochio in 1468 to be the primary artist and engineer of the king of France, in 1516, shortly before his death. There is a surprising amount of information that we have about Leonardo, mostly because of how much he wrote, with over 7,000 pages of his notebooks being available.
I knew mostly Leonardo from his paintings, and that’s what I associate him with the most. However, I was a bit surprised that his life went well beyond painting, and at some point, it wasn’t even a focus of him at all. I knew he was famous for some inventions, but I didn’t know any in detail. Not only was he a brilliant painter, but also a scientist and engineer.
What defined him wasn’t any particular topic, but rather his relentless curiosity. He wanted to know everything there was to know. And he wasn’t confined to the boundaries of different fields. He saw nature and man as expressing the same patterns- the microcosm of man and the macrocosm of the earth, which would be the whole spirit of the Renaissance. He was also surprisingly scientific, conducting countless experiments to confirm his hypothesis. While this seems rather obvious, this was a generation before Bacon or Galileo, when empiricism was thought of as having little value, and knowledge was mostly conceptualized as a rational and deductive endeavour.
I really enjoyed the depth that was given to some of his works, especially in painting when Leonardo was younger. Isaacson isn’t a historian of art nor an artist himself, but he is clearly an aficionado for painting, and he is able to explore many details that would otherwise escape laymen like me. Even in other works beyond painting, he doesn’t only tell you what Leonardo produced but rather explores what he produced. Why was this created, how did this compare to other traditional methods, and what difficulties did he encounter?
Most importantly, what truly made this biography shine was how personal it is. It features hundreds of quotes directly from Leonardo’s notebooks, and also countless images from it. You see not only famous paintings, such as Mona Lisa, but also countless sketches and portraits that you likely have never seen before. You get to see not only anatomical investigations that were revolutionary compared to the knowledge at the time but also his grocery shopping list. This made the book exponentially more valuable. I felt like I was transported in time, and was seeing Leonardo’s life unfold in real-time from his own perspective. I also found it very valuable that it wasn’t trying to present Leonardo in an overly positive light. He had many flaws, and he failed many times. This destroys the myth of pure genius, but also humanizes him and makes him more relatable.
The book brilliantly explores Leonardo’s genius, but also much more. You see his personality, his relationships, and his struggles. I also got a richer understanding of this time period. Leonardo, of course, wasn’t isolated, and there were many other important figures at the time, including for example Columbus and Machiavelli, the latter of which he actually knew quite well.
I think there are very few people that wouldn’t enjoy this book. At best I think the length of it might be intimidating, but trust me that is incredibly easy to read. You get will an increased knowledge and appreciation not only for Leonardo’s paintings but also his entire body of work, the spirit of the Renaissance and the scientific revolution. Most importantly, it brilliantly captures the innate curiosity of human beings, to express ourselves through art, and our ability to dig deeper into reality.
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