This handsome book offers a unified and fascinating portrait of Leonardo as draftsman, integrating his roles as artist, scientist, inventor, theorist, and teacher. 250 illustrations.

Book Description: This captivating book provides the reader with a unique insight into the life and work of one of history's most intriguing figures. All of Leonardo Da Vinci's work is presented in this compact volume - from his paintings and frescos, to detailed reproductions of his remarkable encrypted notebooks. As well as featuring each individual artwork, sections of each are shown in isolation to reveal incredible details - for example, the different levels of perspective between the background sections of the "Mona Lisa", and the disembodied hand in "The Last Supper". 640 pages of colour artworks and photographs of Da Vinci's original notebooks, accompanied by fascinating biographical and historical details are here.

In this new, intimate biography, award-winning author 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.

"It is a miracle that any one man should have observed, read, and written down so much in a single lifetime."--Kenneth Clark Painter, sculptor, musician, scientist, architect, engineer, inventor . . . perhaps no other figure so fully embodies the Western Ideal of "Renaissance man" as Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo was not content, however, to master an artistic technique or record the mechanics of a device; he was driven by an insatiable curiosity to understand why. His writings, interests, and musings are uniformly characterized by an incisive, probing, questioning mind. It was with this piercing intellectual scrutiny and detailed scientific thoroughness that Leonardo undertook the study of the human body. This exceptional volume reproduces more than 1,200 of Leonardo's anatomical drawings on 215 clearly printed black-and-white plates. The drawings have been arranged in chronological sequence to display Leonardo's development and growth as an anatomist. Leonardo's text, which accompanies the drawings--sometimes explanatory, sometimes autobiographical and anecdotal--has been translated into English by the distinguished medical professors Drs. O'Malley and Saunders. In their fascinating biographical introduction, the authors evaluate Leonardo's position in the historical development of anatomy and anatomical illustration. Each plate is accompanied by explanatory notes and an evaluation of the individual plate and an indication of its relationship to the work as a whole. While notable for their extraordinary beauty and precision, Leonardo's anatomical drawings were also far in advance of all contemporary work and scientifically the equal of anything that appeared well into the seventeenth century. Unlike most of his predecessors and contemporaries, Leonardo took nothing on trust and had faith only in his own observations and experiments. In anatomy, as in his other investigations, Leonardo's great distinction is the truly scientific nature of his methods. Herein then are over 1,200 of Leonardo's anatomical illustrations organized into eight major areas of study: Osteological System, Myological System, Comparative Anatomy, Nervous System, Respiratory System, Alimentary System, Genito-Urinary System, and Embryology. Artists, illustrators, physicians, students, teachers, scientists, and appreciators of Leonardo's extraordinary genius will find in these 1,200 drawings the perfect union of art and science. Carefully detailed and accurate in their data, beautiful and vibrant in their technique, they remain today--nearly five centuries later--the finest anatomical drawings ever made. Dover (1983) unabridged and unaltered republication of "Leonardo da Vinci on the Human Body: The Anatomical, Physiological, and Embryological Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, " originally published by Henry Schuman, New York, 1952.

A masterly account of the genius of Leonardo da Vinci and his vision of the world, generously illustrated throughout, presenting a fully integrated picture of Leonardo's art, science, and thought. Widely recognized as a classic, this fully updated new edition includes a new introduction setting Leonardo's life and work in its wider historical context. - ;This masterly account of Leonardo da Vinci and his vision of the world is now widely recognized as the classic treatment of Leonardo's art, science, and thought, giving an unparalleled insight into the broadening and deepening of Leonardo's intellect and vision throughout his artistic career. Kemp, one of the world's leading authorities on Leonardo, takes us on a journey through the whole span of the great man's career, giving a fully integrated picture of his artistic, scientific, and technological achievements. Leonardo's early training in Florence provided a crucial foundation in the 'science of art', particularly perspective and anatomy. His period in the service of the Sforzas of Milan enlarged his outlook to embrace a wide range of natural sciences and mathematics, as he searched for scientific rules governing both man and the universe. It was these rules which provided the basis for his imaginative reconstruction of nature in great works such as the Last Supper, the Mona Lisa, and St John, which reveal his increasingly complex vision of man in the context of nature. And towards the end of his life, Leonardo became fascinated with the mathematics underlying the 'design of nature', behind which lay the ultimate force of the 'prime mover', as manifested with supreme power in his Deluge drawings. Covering all areas of Leonardo's achievement, generously illustrated, and now including a new introductory chapter setting Leonardo's work in its historical context, this fully updated new edition provides an unparalleled insight into the marvellous works of this central figure in western art. - ;Masterful... his analysis of Leonardo holds great value... because it refuses to separate out the artist's diverse skills and achievements. - Art Quarterly

Leonardo da Vinci found in drawing the readiest and most stimulating way of self-expression. The use of pen and crayon came to him as naturally as the monologue to an eager and egoistic talker. The outline designs in his "Treatise on Painting" aid and amplify the text with a force that is almost unknown in modern illustrated books. Open the pages at random. Here is a sketch showing "the greatest twist which a man can make in turning to look at himself behind." The accompanying text is hardly needed. The drawing supplies all that Leonardo wished to convey. Unlike Velasquez, whose authentic drawings are almost negligible, pen, pencil, silver-point, or chalk were rarely absent from Leonardo's hand, and although, in face of the Monna Lisa and The Virgin of the Rocks and the St. Anne, it is an exaggeration to say that he would have been quite as highly esteemed had none of his work except the drawings been preserved, it is in the drawings that we realise the extent of "that continent called Leonardo." The inward-smiling women of the pictures, that have given Leonardo as painter a place apart in the painting hierarchy, appear again and again in the drawings. And in the domain of sculpture, where Leonardo also triumphed, although nothing modelled by his hand now remains, we read in Vasari of certain "heads of women smiling." "His spirit was never at rest," says Antonio Billi, his earliest biographer, "his mind was ever devising new things." The restlessness of that profound and soaring mind is nowhere so evident as in the drawings and in the sketches that illustrate the manuscripts. Nature, in lavishing so many gifts upon him, perhaps withheld concentration, although it might be argued that, like the bee, he did not leave a flower until all the honey or nourishment he needed was withdrawn. He begins a drawing on a sheet of paper, his imagination darts and leaps, and the paper is soon covered with various designs. Upon the margins of his manuscripts he jotted down pictorial ideas. Between the clauses of the "Codex Atlanticus" we find an early sketch for his lost picture of Leda. The world at large to-day reverences him as a painter, but to Leonardo painting was but a section of the full circle of life. Everything that offered food to the vision or to the brain of man appealed to him. In the letter that he wrote to the Duke of Milan in 1482, offering his services, he sets forth, in detail, his qualifications in engineering and military science, in constructing buildings, in conducting water from one place to another, beginning with the clause, "I can construct bridges which are very light and strong and very portable." Not until the end of this long letter does he mention the fine arts, contenting himself with the brief statement, "I can further execute sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, also in painting I can do as much as any one else, whoever he be." Astronomy, optics, physiology, geology, botany, he brought his mind to bear upon all. Indeed, he who undertakes to write upon Leonardo is dazed by the range of his activities. He was military engineer to Caesar Borgia; he occupied himself with the construction of hydraulic works in Lombardy; he proposed to raise the Baptistery of San Giovanni at Florence; he schemed to connect the Loire by an immense canal with the Saone; he experimented with flying-machines; and his early biographers testify to his skill as a musician. Painting and modelling he regarded but as a moiety of his genius. He spared no labour over a creation that absorbed him. Matteo Bandello, a member of the convent of Santa Maria della Grazie, gives the following account of his method when engaged upon The Last Supper. "He was wont, as I myself have often seen, to mount the scaffolding early in the morning and work until the approach of night, and in the interest of painting he forgot both meat and drink. To be continue in this ebook...

A collection of models built according to Leonardo's drawings and specifications.

Details the life of the great Italian renaissance man.