Description
Book SynopsisThe #1 New York Times Bestseller
‘Walter Isaacson is not an art historian, he’s simply a lover of Leonardo, who manages to communicate the sheer joy of this remarkable man’Books of the Year - The Times He was history’s most creative genius. What secrets can he teach us?
Based on thousands of pages from
Leonardo da Vinci's astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work,
Walter Isaacson weaves a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo’s genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy.
He produced the two most famous paintings in history,
The Last Supper and
the Mona Lisa. But in his own mind, he was just as much a man of science and technology. With a passion
Trade Review‘In Isaacson, Leonardo gets the biographer he deserves – an author capable of comprehending his often frenetic, frequently weird quest to understand. This is
not just a joyful book; it’s also a joy to behold…Isaacson deserves immense praise for this
very human portrait of a genius’ * The Times *
'A lavish, loving biography of the great Renaissance polymath…this sumptuous,
elegantly written and diligently produced offering that perfectly catches the contradictions of the man…[a] splendid work that provides
an illuminating guide to the output of one of the last millenium’s greatest minds’ * Observer *
‘Walter Isaacson keeps the mortal man to the fore. For all his supernatural gifts as an artist and natural scientist. Leonardo was resolutely human (illegitimate, vegan, in need of patrons) rather than the near deity of legend. Isaacson is an assured guide to Leonardo’s fallibility – so many projects started, so few completed – as well as his extraordinary curiosity and his even more remarkable painterly skills that were sharpened by intense observation' * Sunday Times *
'To read this
magnificent biography of Leonardo da Vinci is to take a tour through the life and works of one of the most extraordinary human beings of all time in the company of the most engaging, informed, and insightful guide imaginable. Walter Isaacson is at once
a true scholar and a spellbinding writer. And what a wealth of lessons there are to be learned in these pages' -- David McCullough
'A powerful story of an exhilarating mind and life...a study in creativity: how to define it, how to achieve it' * New Yorker *
