Living with Leonardo: Fifty Years of Sanity and Insanity in the Art World and Beyond
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Approaching the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, the world- renowned da Vinci expert recounts his fifty- year journey with the work of the world’s most famous artist
A personal memoir interwoven with original research, Living with Leonardo takes us deep inside Leonardo da Vinci scholar Martin Kemp’s lifelong passion for the genius who has helped define our culture.
Each chapter considers a specific work as Kemp offers insight into his encounters with academics, collectors, curators, devious dealers, auctioneers, and authors— as well as how he has grappled with legions of “Leonardo loonies,” treaded vested interests in academia and museums, and fended off fusillades of non- Leonardos. Kemp explains his thinking on the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, retells his part in the identification of the stolen Buccleuch Madonna, and explains his involvement on the two major Leonardo discoveries of the last 100 years: La Bella Principessa and Salvator Mundi. His engaging narrative elucidates the issues surrounding attribution,the scientific analyses that support experts’ interpretations, and the continuing importance of connoisseurship.
Illustrated with the works being discussed, Living with Leonardo explores the artist’s genius from every angle, including technical analysis and the pop culture works he inspired, such as The Da Vinci Code, and his enduring influence 500 years after his death.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kemp, emeritus professor of the history of art at Oxford University, serves up a stimulating collection of observations regarding da Vinci and his major works that is both deeply personal and speaks to the enduring interest in the artist's legacy. The bulk of the book homes in on specific paintings that are the linchpins of da Vinci's career. A pair of chapters on The Last Supper deal with controversial restorations of the crumbling masterpiece and address the difficulties that modern professionals face approaching such tasks with "a period eye." Kemp notes how da Vinci "poured his visual knowledge and human understanding" into the Mona Lisa and discusses how da Vinci strove to surpass the achievements of Renaissance poetry by visualizing ideal beauty. Kemp, who has studied da Vinci's work for over half a century, writes with authority and makes esoteric minutiae accessible to the layman, especially in chapters concerned with modern scientific tools including X-rays, infrared reflectography, and microscopy used to establish the attribution and authenticity of paintings. He also demystifies the process by which exhibitions are mounted and writes with bemused tolerance of the "secretology" fad of finding hidden meanings in art inspired by Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. His book is an instructive appreciation of the Renaissance master suited for readers with a general interest in the artist's works as well as those well-versed in the scholarship on this subject. 80 illus.
