Leonardo da Vinci (2017) by Walter Isaacson

There is a theme to Walter Isaacson’s award-winning biographies: from Einstein and Jobs to Franklin and Leonardo, he focuses on men “who make connections across disciplines – arts and sciences, humanities and technology – as a key to innovation, imagination, and genius.” This 2017 biography of Leonardo da Vinci is every bit as good as his previous efforts and is a joy to read, especially Isaacson’s delightful examination of art history. The author explains Leonardo’s unique style of sfumato (the fine shading that produces soft, imperceptible transitions between colors and tones) and chiaroscuro (the use of strong contrasts between light and dark) in ways comprehensible to a lay audience and provides over 140 full color examples of Leonardo’s art and note taking.

Leonardo was born the illegitimate son of a prominent notary in a small town outside of Florence in 1452. Isaacson writes that it was “a golden age for bastards,” a period that allowed a young man of exceptional ability to rise on his own merits. As a teenager he was apprenticed to a Florentine master painter named Andrea del Verrochio and thrived under his tutelage. Isaacson dazzles with his penetrating knowledge of Renaissance art, guiding the reader through Leonardo’s artistry of the 1470s as the student quickly outpaced his master. He opened a workshop of his own in 1477 but struggled commercially. The perfectionist Leonardo had a habit of not completing commissions, including what Isaacson calls “would-be masterpieces”: the Adoration of the Magi and Saint Jerome in the Wilderness. “He was a genius undisciplined by diligence,” Isaacson writes, “he knew that there was always more he might learn, new techniques he might master, and further inspirations that might strike him.” By the time he left Florence for Milan in 1482 he had established his genius, Isaacson says, but had precious little to show for it publicly.

Leonardo would spend the next 17 years in Milan, a city three times the size of Florence but relatively lacking in master artists. He would sustain himself for many years by serving as an impresario of plays and pageants at the court of the de facto Duke of Milan, the all-powerful Ludovico Sforza. In the meantime, “[Leonardo’s] curiosity was pure, personal, and delightfully obsessive.” He filled his time – and his copious notebooks – with studies of everything from birds in flight and Euclid geometry to mechanical engineering and human anatomy. His stature as an artist and engineer at court grew and he began to receive lucrative commissions from Sforza, including his 1498 masterpiece The Last Supper, which Isaacson calls “the most spellbinding narrative painting in history.” Leonardo returned to Florence shortly there after in 1500.

Leonardo would make Florence his base for most of 1500 to 1506. “In many ways,” the author writes, “it would be the most productive period of his life.” He would paint the Mona Lisa and the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne among other famous works during this short period. He was in his fifties and something of a self-confident, eccentric dandy – a handsome, left-handed, homosexual vegetarian clothed in pink and rose colored silks, a bona fide local celebrity strutting about his native town and in sharp contrast to his young Florentine rival, the rather disheveled and introspective Michelangelo. Leonardo retained a retinue of devoted young followers, some of who, especially his longtime assistant, Salai, may have been his lovers. By no means wealthy, he was yet unmoved by the importuning of wealthy patrons clamoring for portraitures. Yet, for eight months in 1502 he did serve (along with Niccolo Machiavelli) as military engineer to the notorious Cesare Borgia, “the most brutal murderer of his day,” according to Isaacson. It provided an outlet for Leonardo to indulge his passion for military engineering, the author says, to be seen as something more than just a painter.

In 1506 Leonardo returned to Milan, simply because, Isaacson says, he liked it better there. “[Milan] had no Michelangelo, no cadre of half-brothers suing him, no ghost of his father hovering.” His curiosity remained universal and insatiable. During one sojourn back to Florence in 1508, “[Leonardo] dissected the corpse of a man who claimed to be a hundred, planned a test of one of his flying machines, began a treatise on geology and water, devised a glass tank to examine the way flowing water deposits sediment, and swam underwater to compare the propulsion of a fish tail to a bird’s wing…” For all of his genius and seemingly boundless energy, much of Leonardo’s efforts were scattershot and inchoate. He was a notorious procrastinator who often never completed his work, even when working under strictly written commissions specifically designed to ensure that he delivered what he promised. Indeed, the list of Leonardo’s uncompleted works – the aforementioned Saint Jerome in the Wilderness and the Adoration of the Magi, along with the horse monument for Sforza and the Battle of Anghiari, to name just a few – is almost as impressive as the portfolio of masterpieces he somehow managed to complete. Moreover, he never published his astounding array of groundbreaking findings across multiple subjects, from anatomy to hydrodynamics. He was, Isaacson writes, “more interested in pursuing knowledge than in publishing it … he did not seem to realize or care that the importance of research comes from its dissemination.”

In 1513, Leonardo left Milan for Rome where the new pope, Leo X, the son of the great Florentine leader Lorenzo “the Magnificent” de’Medici, promised the patronage and support that his father had only half-heartedly bestowed. Leonardo’s stay in Rome, however, was relatively brief (three years), frustrating and unproductive. “Much of Leonardo’s career,” the author says, “was consumed by his quest for patrons who would be unconditionally paternalistic, supportive, and indulgent in ways that his own father had only occasionally been.” He found his final and most devoted patron in the new king of France, Francis I, who he joined in France in 1516. The intellectually curious Francis I would prove to be the perfect patron for Leonardo. “He would admire Leonardo unconditionally, never pester him about finishing paintings, indulge his love of engineering and architecture, encourage him to stage pageants and fantasias, give him a comfortable home, and pay him a regular stipend.” It was, in short, a very comfortable semi-retirement. Leonardo died peacefully in France on May 2, 1519.

In conclusion, Isaacson notes that Leonardo was unique among geniuses. What made him unique was first his creativity, his rare ability to apply imagination to intellect. Second was his insatiable curiosity. “Leonardo was a genius, but more,” the author concludes, “he was the epitome of the universal mind, one who sought to understand all of creation, including how we fit into it.” In the final section of the book, “Learning from Leonardo,” Isaacson suggests twenty lessons that can be gleaned from his life and work, including such insights as: be curious, relentlessly curious; seek knowledge for its own sake; observe; respect facts; avoid silos; let the perfect be the enemy of the good; indulge fantasy; be open to mystery. It is a fitting capstone to an amazing study of a truly historic figure.