Leonardo Da Vinci (Book Review)

POSTED 1/22/2018

As much as I enjoyed Walter Isaacson's biography of Einstein, I was even more taken with his Leonardo DaVinci. Leonardo embodies the “Renaissance man” - a polymath who excelled in painting, sculpting, architecture, and engineering, and dissected cadavers to learn anatomy. A genial soul with many friends, while he was at the court in Milan he created set designs for festivals and theatrical performances, and entertained friends and the court with riddles and pranks. He was an acute observer of nature and was one of the early practitioners of what came to be the scientific method. Isaacson places Leonardo's genius in a marvelously drawn Renaissance Italy.

Key to Leonardo's creativity were his curiosity, his observing skills, his ability to draw analogies between different disciplines, and his use of science to inform his art. Isaacson writes: “But there was something grander involved. Leonardo had set for himself the most magnificent of all tasks for the mind of mankind: nothing less than knowing fully the measure of man and how he fits into the cosmos. In his notebook he proclaimed his intention to fathom what he called 'universale misura del huomo,' the universal measure of man. It was the quest that defined Leonardo's life, the one that tied together his art and his science.” He was a perfectionist who left many potentially great works unfinished. One early biographer wrote: “He never finished any of the works he began because, so sublime was his idea of art, he saw faults even in the things that to others seemed miracles.”

The chapter on the creation of the Mona Lisa, which Leonardo worked on for decades, staggered me. It's about the Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile and how Leonardo achieved this interactive effect (look directly at the mouth and the smile seems to disappear; glance away to another part of the painting and it re-appears). Painstaking anatomical studies of the human face gave Leonardo the insights to create the most famous smile and painting of all time.

The chapter “Learning from Leonardo” has this advice: “Be curious, relentlessly curious...Seek knowledge for its own sake...Retain a childlike sense of wonder...Observe...Start with the details...See things unseen...Go down rabbit holes [drill down for the pure joy of geeking out]...Respect facts...Procrastinate [gather all the possible facts and then allow the collection to simmer]...Think visually...Avoid silos [he knew art was a science and science an art]...Let your reach exceed your grasp...Indulge fantasy [he blurred the distinction between reality and fantasy]...Create for yourself, not just for patrons...Collaborate...Make lists...Take notes, on paper...Be open to mystery..."

- RJC, 1/22/2018