I have several biographies of Leonardo da Vinci in my to-be-read pile (including Martin Kemp’s Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Walter’s Isaacson’s Leonardo Da Vinci) and wanted to review some of the artist/scientist’s work before embarking on the biographies. Martin Kemp is an expert on the life and works of da Vinci, so this book is a great introduction. I’ve seen some of da Vinci’s works in the National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci in Milan and at the Louvre in Paris, but Kemp’s book contained multiple images from other sources I haven’t seen before.
Kemp, a professor of Art History at Oxford University, also writes on the juxtaposition of science and art, so he is eminently qualified to write this book. That said, there were images on which I learned more than I wished to know and others I was left wanting more. I ended up reading most of the book on my computer so I could increase the size of the images (which are quite small on the Kindle) and study them in greater depth. I also read them in spurts of four to five images so they didn’t run together. As a physician, I particularly enjoyed the illustrations of da Vinci’s anatomical studies, particularly these of the female genitalia and fetus; as an artist, I enjoyed looking at his fabulous paintings.
Overall, a great book for a quick introduction to the works of da Vinci, a Renaissance man pivotal in the arts and sciences.
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Leonardo da Vinci: The 100 Milestones (Union Square & Co., Illustrated edition, April 2, 2019) is available through:
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