Becoming Leonardo
An Exploded View of the Life of Leonardo da Vinci
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- $27.99
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- $27.99
Publisher Description
A Wall Street Journal Book of the Year
A Spectator Book of the Year
“A truly intimate portrait of one of the greatest creators in human history,” this biography of Leonardo Da Vinci “has the pace, elegance, and authorial omnipresence of a novel,” bringing both artist and Renaissance Italy to life (Noah Charney, author of The Art of Forgery)
Why did Leonardo Da Vinci leave so many of his major works uncompleted? Why did this resolute pacifist build war machines for the notorious Borgias? Why did he carry the Mona Lisa with him everywhere he went for decades, yet never quite finish it? Why did he write backwards, and was he really at war with Michelangelo? And was he gay?
In a book unlike anything ever written about the Renaissance genius, Mike Lankford explodes every cliché about Da Vinci and then reconstructs him based on a rich trove of available evidence—bringing to life for the modern reader the man who has been studied by scholars for centuries—yet has remained as mysterious as ever.
Seeking to envision Da Vinci without the obscuring residue of historical varnish, the sights, sounds, smells, and feel of Renaissance Italy—usually missing in other biographies—are all here, transporting readers back to a world of war and plague and court intrigue, of viciously competitive famous artists, of murderous tyrants with exquisite tastes in art . . .
Lankford brilliantly captures Da Vinci’s life as the compelling and dangerous adventure it seems to have actually been—fleeing from one sanctuary to the next, somehow surviving in war zones beside his friend Machiavelli, struggling to make art his way or no way at all . . . and often paying dearly for those decisions.
It is a thrilling and absorbing journey into the life of a ferociously dedicated loner, whose artwork in one way or another represents his noble rebellion, providing inspiration that is timeless.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This nontraditional biography or "exploded view" of one of the most famous figures of the Italian Renaissance, artist Leonardo Da Vinci, is a fun and enlightening exercise in imagination. Lankford (Life in Double Time: Confessions of an American Drummer) assembles evidence and then speculates about the many gaps in the artist's documented life. He often infers details that many historians and biographers would be reluctant to ponder. This chronological journey follows Da Vinci's illegitimate birth, his apprenticeship with the artist Verrocchio, his arrest for sodomy, and the highlights of his peripatetic later years, when the artist truly flourished. Lankford dutifully describes Da Vinci's development as a painter and sculptor, but his larger goal is to show the artist "simply as a man sitting across the table covered in ordinary sunlight, absent the halo." Lankford relies heavily on prefaces like "probably," "perhaps," and "I think" throughout his writing, but his curiosity and passion and for trying to understand Da Vinci's functioning world sparks plenty of life into the book. Where traditional biographies might downplay Da Vinci's love of music or possible homosexuality, Lankford's book takes time to consider these angles. The circumstances that produce such a figure are infinitely fascinating in their own right and Lankford's unconventional approach provides for a deeper appreciation of a genius.
