Will I love Leonardo Da Vinci?

I loved this book first and foremost for the completeness of the research done including supplemental materials such as sketches, artwork, etc.

How he was able to gather so much information about the roamings, seemingly on a daily basis, of a man that lived 500 years ago is beyond me. I also thought the choice of Alfred Molina to narrate was brilliant as his Italian phrasing and enunciation made all the difference in the world.

In the end, I felt I knew da Vinci on a personal level, which surprised me.

No art history-related list of recommended books would be complete without this riveting and potent story of a great artist who was more than a painter.  

Depicting Leonardo’s thrilling mind and life based on his voluminous notebooks and new findings about him, connecting Leonardo’s ground-breaking science to his art, the author shows how Leonardo created two of the world’s most famous paintings – The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, how Leonardo’s ability to combine the humanities and sciences, exemplified in his drawing of Vitruvian Man, inspired him.

Isaacson brings Leonardo to life with clarity and precision.

Walter Isaacson’s biography is not just a mere recounting of the life of a Renaissance genius; it is an exploration into the mind of a man whose curiosity knew no bounds.

Isaacson details how that curiosity, combined with his ability to observe and question the world around him, led to groundbreaking insights and inventions.

This resonates deeply with my own pursuit of understanding human potential and performance.

We all know who Leonardo was, but only in the broadest brush. I learned so much from this book about one of the true geniuses to ever grace the planet.

The depth and breadth of Leonardo’s talents – painter, sculptor, engineer, inventor, anatomist – was staggering. And I was in awe of Isaacson’s ability to gather so much information about a man who lived centuries ago and turn it into a highly readable and engaging biography.

This intimate biography of Leonardo made me feel like I had a front-row seat in his life and legacy. He was best known for his two paintings: The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. His genius was unparalleled and it’s easier to list what he could not do! One of the stories that I adored learning about this Master was how Leonardo layered his brushstrokes to create an almost ethereal effect on canvas. Angels were usually depicted with a halo and yet Leonardo created faces and figures that needed no adornment. Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most… show more.

Walter Isaacson’s biography left me in a constant state of awe. How in the world could one human being accomplish all that Da Vinci did, across so many fields of endeavor, in a single human lifetime? Ultimately what I took away from this book is how limitless human potential really is, especially if we pursue big dreams.

There are no new scholarly discoveries about Leonardo in Walter Isaacson’s biography, but he writes in such an easy, lucid, and memorable way that this book is really the only place to start if you don’t know much about Leonardo.

Books on Leonardo can feel quite dense, and leave the reader with the sensation of floating in a galaxy of disconnected facts without knowing what journey they are on. Not so, Isaacson’s book, which is the airplane read of the Leonardo lexicon.