Book Review: Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson

Today we present some insights about the book “Leonardo Da Vinci” by famous writer Walter Isaacson. This is, in some respect, a mild book review. 

As for the author, Walter Isaacson is acclaimed for a plethora of literary works, which are biographies of famous tech visionaries, i.e. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk etc. 

He has now also recounted the tale of the multifaceted Leonardo Da Vinci, whose achievements originated from his ability to be in awe of the world. 

Although Leonardo created the two most well-known paintings, The Last Supper and Mona Lisa, he considered himself primarily to be an engineer and scientist. 

Motivated by insatiable curiosity and endowed with keen observational skills, he removed the skin from cadavers to decipher the skeleton’s mysteries and the muscles that made people smile. 

He was an expert in shading and perspective after studying optics; this dimensionality was the pinnacle of Renaissance art innovation. 

Despite never having attended school, Leonardo considered himself to be “a disciple of experience.” 

He was searching for connections and parallels between the world and the human body, and everything fed into everything else. 

With their to-do lists, arithmetic problems, drawings of his boyfriend, birds, theater props, flying machines, riddles, painting advice, weaponry, grottesque heads, and fables, his notebooks provide insight into his “matchlessly weird” mind. 

He would look for patterns in air currents, water eddies, and hair curls. 

Being an only child released him from having to become a notary like his father. 

Leonardo was a vegetarian, gay, illegitimate, and a misfit in 15th-century Florence, a city that embraced outcasts and rebels. 

Under the Mediis, it was a hub for both art and business, making it the ideal environment for Leonardo’s creative endeavors. During his apprenticeship at a workshop, he learned how to sculpt moving bodies, drapery folds, and geometric harmonies. 

He invented sfumato, which is derived from the term for smoke, along with a technique for rendering objects according to their visual appearance. 

Leoardo also worked on sets and flashy props to transform the scenery in theater pageants. This encounter gave rise to his aerial screw, which is recognized as a prototype helicopter. 

His Fantasies And Outbound Imaginations: (Da Vinci’s, not Walter’s)

He was not perturbed by religious dogma; rather, he was driven by scientific humanism. His well-known Vitruvian Man demonstrates his quest for “the universal measure of man,” viewing human bodies as tiny cosmic microcosms. 

However, the text reveals that he was a whimsical mortal who preferred conception to completion rather than a lightning-touched genius. 

He created incomplete masterpieces, impractal dreams, never-flying flying machines, military plans, attempts to square the circle, and river diversion projects. 

Who were his clients?

In addition to Niccolo Machiavelli, he was friends with the vicious Ludovico Sforza and Cesare Borgia, among others. 

Lessons His Personality Sculpts And Impacts His Life Paints:

He disagreed with emerging star Michelangelo’s lucid anatomy depictions, which he claimed were wooden rather than human, in the middle of his life. 

No matter how much she begged, he would not paint a wealthy marchesa. However, he joyfully started painting a silk merchant’s wife, worked on it till he passed away, and never gave it to the merchant. That artwork was the mysterious “Mona Lisa.” 

Well dear reader, fear, for the power significance and relevance of imagination can ever be undermined. Albert Einstein remarked, “imagination can take you anywhere”.

A vast number of entrepreneurs and innovators nowadays are still using their creativity to create ground-breaking products and innovative answers to urgent global issues.

Elon Musk is one of the brightest instances.

Lastly, reader, weird, eccentric but masterclass and an immortal genius in his own right.