Product Description

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) possessed arguably the greatest mind the world has ever known. Artist, draftsman, inventor, and philosopher, his contributions to modern society are profound and wide-reaching. Throughout his life, Leonardo kept dozens of notebooks, elegant studies on topics ranging from architecture to botany to philosophy—indeed nearly anything of which the human imagination could conceive.

Leonardo’s Notebooks collects a variety of the most fascinating of these studies and compiles them into one monumental volume that demystifies his insights and clearly illustrates his ideas, experiments, and observations with hundreds of his original sketches, line drawings, and paintings. Topics include Anatomy and the Movement of the Human Figure; Botany and Landscape; Engineering and Military Engineering; Physical Sciences; Aerodynamics and Flight; Geography—and more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #96975 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

About the Author
Leonardo da Vinci is recognized as the quintessential Renaissance Man. A great painter, he was equally prodigious in the fields of architecture, engineering, anatomy, and physical science.

H. Anna Suh has a master’s degree in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University. She was on the curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and has worked on projects for several scholarly publications. She is the editor of Leonardo's Notebooks.She lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

A Sensitively Tailored Version of the da Vinci Notebooks
Though there are other publications that include the entire series of notebooks maintained as a diary of thoughts and concepts, puzzles, dreams and creative ideas by the great Leonardo da Vinci, this publication under the astute editorship of H. Anna Suh condenses the notebooks, focusing on most of the truly profound writings of the artist. The quality of production in transposing old paper to new is excellent with respectful use of sepia tone and black and white reproductions that make the book eminently readable.

da Vinci's Notebooks contain some of the more far-reaching thinking of his day, ideas about flight, acoustics, astronomy, and architecture that weren't completely realized for centuries after his death. These are the notes of a genuine genius, a man who not only understood his art but also understood anatomy on a scientific level far beyond the scientists of his time.

But all of this is merely fact and information we have all known for a long time. The reason for recommending this particular volume is the quality of illustration control, the footnotes, the capable translations of da Vinci's notes, and the generous manner in which the material is laid out on the page. This is not only, then, an important book exploring da Vinci's history and mind, it is also an homage to the master's drawing, philosophy, and genteel brain that dared to explore areas of thought long before others attempted. Of all the versions of the da Vinci Notebooks, this is the most artistically sound and readable. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, November 05

DA CODE TO ALL THINGS DA VINCI
The Da Vinci Code? In one word: genius. And we don't mean Dan Brown's tome. We mean the man himself, the Renaissance master who very name conjures up the definition of "brilliance." This collection --- the first to be published in more than 35 years --- is culled from Leonardo's myriad of notebooks that he filled with ruminations on painting, botany, aerodynamics, geography, physical science, anatomy and architecture. This massive collection illuminates the mind of one of history's greatest minds and talents through the most extraordinary sketches, drawings, jottings and paintings. Most fascinating: da Vinci's own handwritten notes, here carefully translated and insightfully edited by art historian H. Anna Suh. Somewhere in that Great Palette, even good ol' Miss Mona is sweetly smiling.

A Glimpse into the Creator's Mind
Here you can browse through the minutiae of a genius' observations about the world around him--from flight, the human body, the nature of water, proportion, optics, movement and weight. What will impress you on every fascinating page is the universality of Leonardo's thirst for knowledge, making him truly the epitome of the "Renaissance man," and perhaps the last human who can truly be called a polymath: "the natural desire of good men is knowledge."