Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Chris Funk

Author:   Walter Isaacson

Genre:  Non Fiction, Biography, History, Art, Science

600 pages, published October 17, 2017

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In Leonardo da Vinci, noted biographer Walter Isaacson (who also wrote biographies of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin) delves into the incredible life, art, and scientific discoveries of history’s most creative genius, Leonardo da Vinci.  This biography on thousands of pages from Leonardo’s notebooks and new discoveries about the master’s life and work.  Isaacson makes the case that Leonardo’s genius was based on skills Leonardo had in abundance that we can improve in ourselves such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and a playful imagination.  One of history’s most famous artists, Leonardo’s The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa are the two most famous paintings in history.  However, as a noted polymath, Leonardo’s genius also extended to numerous scientific and technological discoveries.   With an obsessive passion, his studies included anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry.  Leonardo’s combining of diverse passions fueled his incredible creativity, as did his outsider, avant guard nature.  His life reminds us of the importance of curiosity and questioning the world.

Quotes 

“Vision without execution is hallucination. .. Skill without imagination is barren. Leonardo [da Vinci] knew how to marry observation and imagination, which made him history’s consummate innovator.”

 

“There have been, of course, many other insatiable polymaths, and even the Renaissance produced other Renaissance Men. But none painted the Mona Lisa, much less did so at the same time as producing unsurpassed anatomy drawings based on multiple dissections, coming up with schemes to divert rivers, explaining the reflection of light from the earth to the moon, opening the still-beating heart of a butchered pig to show how ventricles work, designing musical instruments, choreographing pageants, using fossils to dispute the biblical account of the deluge, and then drawing the deluge. Leonardo was a genius, but more: he was the epitome of the universal mind, one who sought to understand all of creation, including how we fit into it.”

 

“men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of the desire for wisdom, which is the sustenance and truly dependable wealth of the mind.”

 

“Leonardo became known in Milan not only for his talents but also for his good looks, muscular build, and gentle personal style. “He was a man of outstanding beauty and infinite grace,” Vasari said of him. “He was striking and handsome, and his great presence brought comfort to the most troubled soul.”

 

“If we want to be more like Leonardo, we have to be fearless about changing our minds based on new information.”

 

“His lack of reverence for authority and his willingness to challenge received wisdom would lead him to craft an empirical approach for understanding nature that foreshadowed the scientific method developed more than a century later by Bacon and Galileo. His method was rooted in experiment, curiosity, and the ability to marvel at phenomena that the rest of us rarely pause to ponder after we’ve outgrown our wonder years.”

 

“Leonardo had almost no schooling and could barely read Latin or do long division. His genius was of the type we can understand, even take lessons from. It was based on skills we can aspire to improve in ourselves, such as curiosity and intense observation. He had an imagination so excitable that it flirted with the edges of fantasy, which is also something we can try to preserve in ourselves and indulge in our children.”

 

“But I did learn from Leonardo how a desire to marvel about the world that we encounter each day can make each moment of our lives richer.”

 

“The tongue of a woodpecker can extend more than three times the length of its bill. When not in use, it retracts into the skull and its cartilage-like structure continues past the jaw to wrap around the bird’s head and then curve down to its nostril. In addition to digging out grubs from a tree, the long tongue protects the woodpecker’s brain. When the bird smashes its beak repeatedly into tree bark, the force exerted on its head is ten times what would kill a human. But its bizarre tongue and supporting structure act as a cushion, shielding the brain from shock.1 There is no reason you actually need to know any of this. It is information that has no real utility for your life, just as it had none for Leonardo. But I thought maybe, after reading this book, that you, like Leonardo, who one day put “Describe the tongue of the woodpecker” on one of his eclectic and oddly inspiring to-do lists, would want to know. Just out of curiosity. Pure curiosity.”

 

“Kenneth Clark referred to Leonardo’s “inhumanly sharp eye.” It’s a nice phrase, but misleading. Leonardo was human. The acuteness of his observational skill was not some superpower he possessed. Instead, it was a product of his own effort. That’s important, because it means that we can, if we wish, not just marvel at him but try to learn from him by pushing ourselves to look at things more curiously and intensely. In his notebook, he described his method—almost like a trick—for closely observing a scene or object: look carefully and separately at each detail. He compared it to looking at the page of a book, which is meaningless when taken in as a whole and instead needs to be looked at word by word. Deep observation must be done in steps: “If you wish to have a sound knowledge of the forms of objects, begin with the details of them, and do not go on to the second step until you have the first well fixed in memory.” 

My Take

Leonardo da Vinci’s genius, artistry, creativity and insatiable curiosity are thoroughly explored and illuminated in Walter Isaacson’s engrossing book.  Not only did I learn quite a lot about the fascinating Leonardo, but I also learned a lot about the Renaissance, Florence, painting, science and technology as well as Leonardo’s difficult relationship with Michelangelo.  I will be in Florence this summer and look forward to seeing in person many of the things that I read about in Isaacson’s Leonardo da Vinci.