Product Description

TASCHEN's 25th anniversary - Special edition! Special bestseller price Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) possessed one of the greatest minds of all time; his importance and influence are inestimable. This XXL-format comprehensive survey is the most complete book ever made on the subject of this Italian painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, scientist and all-around genius. With huge, full-bleed details of Leonardo's masterworks, this highly original publication allows the reader to inspect the subtlest facets of his brushstrokes. * Part I explores Leonardo's life and work in ten chapters. All of his paintings are interpreted in depth, with The Annunciation and The Last Supper featured on large double-spreads. * Part II comprises a catalogue raisonn? of Leonardo's paintings, which covers all of his surviving and lost painted works and includes texts describing their states of preservation. * Part III contains an extensive catalogue of his drawings (numbering in the thousands, they cannot all be reproduced in one book); 663 are presented, arranged by category (architecture, technical, anatomical, figures, proportion, cartography, etc). This sumptuous TASCHEN offering is the most thorough and beautifully produced Leonardo book ever published, and this special edition offers it for a third of the usual price.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54531 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 695 pages

Review
"Opening this lavishly illustrated book is one of sumptuous celebration of the visual aspects of Leonardo's oeuvre."

About the Author
Zollner is Professor of Art History at the University if Leipzig, Germany, and and expert on the painting of the Italian Renaissance.

Johannes Nathan studied art history at New York University (B.A.) and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London (M.A.), where he earned his Ph.D. in 1995 with a dissertation on the working methods of Leonardo da Vinci. He has taught New York University and at the University of Berne, Switzerland, where he is now directing the "artcampus" project. He is the author of a range of publications on the art of the Italian Renaissance, as well as on artists' working methods.

Customer Reviews

Dark and brownish reproductions
Some painting and drawing works are reproduced too dark with murky spots, where most details are indistinguishable. Additionally, the colors are distorted by a brownish (sepia) hue. So, on many dark works only basic elements are visible, e.g.: The Virgin of the Rocks on p. 28 and 31, Portrait of a Young Man on p. 48, The Last Supper on p. 53 as well as Burlington House Cartoon (too dark cartoon) on p. 60. Other works may also be affected. The Last Supper is divided between two pages connecting thru Christ's face, and a whole center of the fresco is sunk in a groove between the pages. The printing is good, and on good paper.

Simple but sophistocated
If you don't know much about art but know what you like, this might be the sort of book for you. Leonardo's life is described in this basic biography, focusing on his famous works of art (finished and unfinished) and on his supporting works as well (sketches, architectural and mechanical ideas). The book is printed on glossy high grade magazine paper with color illustrations on almost every page. It brings the artist and his works to the reader in a presentation that caters to those who enjoy have an appriciation, though not an expertise, for art.

Leonardo's Opus is a Taschen Masterpiece
Taschen seems to be forging ahead in the publishing world with their off-beat, sometimes extreme, always interesting and esoteric attractively priced books. Leonardo is one of them. A large book, this is no bedside table read. The print quality is very good, and the larger than life pictures of Leonardo's paintings and drawings give you a real sense of the intricacy that went into his work, and lets you get a lot closer than you could today to his work if you wanted to see it live. The Mona Lisa is behind bullet proof glass, most of his notebooks in temperature controlled libraries far from prying hands and eyes.. so if you really want to get close, to see the brush-strokes and minute scrawls in his ink drawings, then this book is it.
For who is it? Anyone interested in beauty, in art and painting, as well as anyone interested in genius and the multifaceted Renaissance man. You'll need a sturdy coffee table or a large library to house it, but you won't be sorry you bought it.
I only gave it 4 stars because I really dislike the 25th anniversary badge that is going on all Taschen books of late.. Good for you that you've reached that milestone Taschen, but don't expect me to want to advertise it in my bookshelf. The book comes in a slip-case, and just as well because the Amazon.com packaging was really atrocious and the box arrived quite banged around. Their cost-cutting in packaging means that my slip case is totally destroyed on the top, but thankfully the book has managed to survive (mostly) unscathed. Amazon will be getting a stern letter from me about this..