Leonardo Da Vinci: Flights of the Mind

From Publishers Weekly
Nicholl aims for the man behind the myth in this penetrating, highly detailed biography, which recognizes da Vinci's "mysterious greatness as an artist, scientist and philosopher" but avoids hagiography (and nearly steers clear of the word "genius"). The illegitimate child of a Tuscan peasant girl and a local notary, da Vinci (1452–1519) was apprenticed as a teen to Florence sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. Nicholl (Somebody Else: Arthur Rimbaud in Africa) conjectures convincingly about Leonardo's early career, though he tends to dwell overlong on technical aspects of Renaissance art production. Leonardo established a Florentine studio in 1477, but it was not until he moved to Milan five years later that he began to produce his iconic works: the painting Virgin of the Rocks, the famous Vitruvian Man drawing. Nicholl chronicles the production of The Last Supper and makes a firm statement about the Mona Lisa's identity. Numerous questions about Leonardo's life remain, unavoidably, unanswered, but Nicholl fills in the gaps with insight into the artist's cultural milieu, offering tidbits about Leonardo's sexuality, the sordid goings-on at the Borgia court and the multifarious fruits of the artist's astonishingly fertile curiosity and imagination. Nicholl's attention to da Vinci's polymathic pursuits, as well as his own translations from the artist's numerous notebooks, are some of this dense but readable volume's most compelling aspects. Illus. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Forget Dan Brown’s fictional Da Vinci Code (**** May/June 2003); here’s the real deal. Award-winning author Nicholl draws on Leonardo’s notebooks to delve deep inside the mind of the beloved Renaissance icon. Celebrating Leonardo’s life and projects with contagious excitement and putting his achievements in the context of the Italian Renaissance as a whole, Nicholl considers Leonardo’s inspirations and influences. If we learn little new about Leonardo’s most famous works or his competition with Michelangelo, we gain valuable insight into the “cool, interior, ungraspable” creative process that raised Leonardo head and shoulders above his peers in most fields. Even with the spate of recent books on this master, Leonardo da Vinci stands out. It “isn’t merely a lovely book; it’s Leonardesque” (New York Times Book Review).Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist
Award-winning biographer Nicholl takes a marvelously fresh and human approach to the fascinating life of Leonardo. Evincing delight in the vicissitudes of scholarly sleuthing and a love of literature, Nicholl, who has a gift for spotting overlooked gems, offers a unique focus on the language in Leonardo's famous notebooks. He is also unusually eloquent in his recognition of the importance of Leonardo's country boyhood and the resulting visual lexicon and "ecologically compassionate view of nature" (he eventually became a vegetarian) that underlie all of his work, from his finely detailed drawings and paintings to his fascination with flight. Nicholl carefully explicates Leonardo's musicality, habit of inquisitiveness, love of technology, and artistic practices and renowned works. He also happily extracts evidence of Leonardo's affection for various boyfriends, particularly a man whose nickname, Salai, translates as "Little Devil," and argues convincingly that Leonardo enjoyed a liaison with one of his beautiful female models. In sum, Nicholl portrays a far more complex and appealing man than the chilly word genius usually suggests. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
For five centuries, Leonardo da Vinci has stood alone as the quintessential Renaissance man—the incomparable artist, writer, thinker, and inventor who most powerfully transformed his world. In this dazzling new intimate biography, award-winning author Charles Nicholl creates a portrait of the artist for our time—a biography that brings Leonardo to life as a complex man living in a fascinating, dangerous, quickly changing world. Drawing freely on his own original translations of Leonardo’s notebooks as well as newly discovered contemporary accounts, Nicholl captures the very texture of Leonardo’s mind and the pungent visceral impressions he transmuted into art. Detail by brilliant detail, Nicholl reconstructs the life and times of the artist, from his troubled childhood as the illegitimate son of an established Tuscan family to his years of apprenticeship in the burgeoning art world of Medici Florence to his unrivaled achievements in a breathtaking array of disciplines and media. Here, too, are compelling new answers to the enduring mysteries of Leonardo’s sexual orientation, the true identity of the Mona Lisa, and the early experiences that inspired his lifelong obsession with human flight. A writer of irresistible charm and quicksilver imagination, Nicholl takes us from the backstreet artists’ studios of Florence to the glittering palazzi of the Medici, Sforza, and Borgia families as he pursues the most extravagantly talented and maddeningly elusive artist of all time. The result is a biography of rare grace and penetration.

About the Author
Charles Nicholl has won numerous awards, including the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Prize for Biography. The author of Somebody Else: Arthur Rimbaud in Africa and The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe, among other books. Nicholl’s articles have appeared in Granta, Rolling Stone, and the London Review of Books.


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The venerable prize-winning Nicholl (Somebody Else: Arthur Rimbaud in Africa 1880-91, 1999) examines one of the icons of Western culture. For all Leonardo's well-deserved reputation as universal man, Nicholl devotes his opening section to the artist's (illegitimate, to boot) upbringing on a Tuscan farm, demonstrating the way many of Leonardo's future interests and observations derive from this period and from the circumstances of his life (Freud's interpretations are weighed regularly). Copiously researched, and enhanced by the author's residence in Italy and his own observations, particularly, of the Tuscan way of life, the book makes logical deductions from scraps of source material. Nicholl gives us short vignettes, about ten to each of the seven broader sections. In each, he asks questions about Leonardo's life: Why did he leave Florence, in 1481, for 18 years? Why was he impaziente of painting by 1500? He also follows the strings of Leonardo studies-from paintings to notebooks, jokes (dirty and otherwise), subpoenas, studio assistants, cryptic scribbles-and is led to deductions about Leonardo's sexuality (be sure to read to the end), what he was trying to achieve in his paintings, and the question that seems to baffle all who confront Leonardo's career: Why was he so successful if what survives of his work is so fragmentary and unfinished? Particularly fascinating is Nicholl's presentation of the broad context of the era, outlined by one who has penetrated the layers of surviving hints about the culture. We learn about the contents of artists' studios and of probate inventories, census and tax records, and museum curatorial files. Nicholl understands and decodes the shorthand jargonof Renaissance Italian and reminds us of the frequently autobiographical nature of Leonardo's notebook musings. Details are compelling in a long book that defies skimming. More decoding of Leonardo: a beautifully written, masterful biography of the great artist/scientist as person. (Illustrations throughout; plates not seen)


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