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4.19 AVERAGE
4.19 AVERAGE
Leonardo Da Vinci left behind thousands of pages of notes and sketches. Walter Isaacson acknowledges early on that, despite their frequent brilliance, these notebooks lack many “intimate personal revelations.” Da Vinci was much more likely to write down his to-do or grocery list than he was to note what paintings he was working on at any given time or how he felt at the death of his father. Da Vinci’s biographers have had to fill in a lot of gaps and rely on sources like Vasari, who was only 8 years old when Da Vinci died. For this reason, Isaacson has chosen an episodic approach, with chapters centered around Da Vinci’s major works or interests (Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, Anatomy, Engineering, ect).
Da Vinci’s best quality was his insatiable curiosity. This biography is a treasure trove of interesting facts and anecdotes. My favorite is that he once met a man who claimed to be 100 years old—imagine how mind blowing that would have been in the 16th century—and once the man passed away of natural causes Da Vinci proceeded to dissect the man’s body to learn how bodies age. Da Vinci dissected 30+ bodies—one of his notebooks list a reminder to “acquire a skull”—and his anatomical drawings are still respected for their accuracy.
He designed plans for parachutes and diving suits. Wondered aloud like a child why the sky is blue. Tried to draw a woodpecker’s tongue. Concluded that fish fossils found on mountain tops and caves were not swept there by Noah’s Flood but were there because sea levels had fallen in these places long ago.
He wanted to know everything about everything.
Da Vinci’s best quality was his insatiable curiosity. This biography is a treasure trove of interesting facts and anecdotes. My favorite is that he once met a man who claimed to be 100 years old—imagine how mind blowing that would have been in the 16th century—and once the man passed away of natural causes Da Vinci proceeded to dissect the man’s body to learn how bodies age. Da Vinci dissected 30+ bodies—one of his notebooks list a reminder to “acquire a skull”—and his anatomical drawings are still respected for their accuracy.
He designed plans for parachutes and diving suits. Wondered aloud like a child why the sky is blue. Tried to draw a woodpecker’s tongue. Concluded that fish fossils found on mountain tops and caves were not swept there by Noah’s Flood but were there because sea levels had fallen in these places long ago.
He wanted to know everything about everything.
Even as a kid I've always looked up to Leonardo and the way he approaches everything with the curiosity of a child. He does not discriminate between fields, and is very knowledgeable in both arts and sciences. Through his story and his notebooks, I renewed my sense of wonder and appreciation not just for the arts but also for the sciences (especially anatomy) after years of studying them. I definitely see myself rereading this book again at some point.
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It's not a spoiler that he dies but I still got sad when I got to it :( "The soup is getting cold" now joins "My battery is low and it's getting dark" as last words that will make me teary ㅠㅠ
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It's not a spoiler that he dies but I still got sad when I got to it :( "The soup is getting cold" now joins "My battery is low and it's getting dark" as last words that will make me teary ㅠㅠ
[2017] Got this as a gift a couple of years ago and I’ve been wanting to get to it ever since, and now I’m so glad I did. Not one to read all at once, but a little bit each day over the last month or so was perfect for me. I was pretty sure Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa but that was about all I knew going in. Now I know he was a creative and intellectual genius. It was so well written, I stayed interested the entire way through. Isaacson does a great job balancing Leo's personal life story with the incredible scope of his work, from his paintings to his military engineering to his breakthroughs in anatomy and study of nature and so much more. This could easily have been a boring text book, bogged down with minutiae, but Isaacson kept it clear, straightforward, and with just the right level of detail - infinitely readable. May pick up his book on Edison next.
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
slow-paced
“Leonardo became one of the major western thinkers, more than a century before Galileo, to pursue in a persistent hands-on fashion the dialogue between experiment and theory that would lead to the modern Scientific Revolution.”
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
Book 17 of 2023: Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
Fascinating and highly informative biography! High recommendation! Isaacson managed to take on one of the most well-known people of the Renaissance and breathe new life into him, turning him from a legend into a man. A genius - but also easily distracted and unwilling to finish most projects he started. He was also childlike in his endless curiosity and determination to know how things work.
“Vision without execution is hallucination. But I also came to believe that his ability to blur the line between reality and fantasy, just like his sfumato techniques for blurring the lines of a painting, was a key to his creativity. Skill without imagination is barren. Leonardo knew how to marry observation and imagination, which made him history’s consummate innovator.”
Curiosity was definitely one of Leonardo’s most defining characteristics. In one of his notebooks he wrote this question, “Describe the tongue of the woodpecker…”
“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.”
Fascinating and highly informative biography! High recommendation! Isaacson managed to take on one of the most well-known people of the Renaissance and breathe new life into him, turning him from a legend into a man. A genius - but also easily distracted and unwilling to finish most projects he started. He was also childlike in his endless curiosity and determination to know how things work.
“Vision without execution is hallucination. But I also came to believe that his ability to blur the line between reality and fantasy, just like his sfumato techniques for blurring the lines of a painting, was a key to his creativity. Skill without imagination is barren. Leonardo knew how to marry observation and imagination, which made him history’s consummate innovator.”
Curiosity was definitely one of Leonardo’s most defining characteristics. In one of his notebooks he wrote this question, “Describe the tongue of the woodpecker…”
“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.”