Leonardo da Vinci: A Penguin Life

From Publishers Weekly
Say what one will about Edna O'Brien's ravishing clip job of Joyce, Peter Gay's moderate Mozart or Edmund White's microcosmic Proust, the editors at Penguin Lives have a knack for matching up free-thinking meditators and their subjects. A surgeon and a writer about medicine, Nuland (How We Die) uses much of his brief bookAlimited in size and scope to the series's quick-take, authorially inflected formatAto explain the prodigal da Vinci as pioneering anatomist. The first 11 pages detail Nuland's personal obsession with da Vinci; the later pages describe da Vinci's concern with human and animal anatomy, and review the bibliographical jumble of his surviving notebooks and papers. Nuland's da Vinci is tireless, perhaps sublimated, in his intellectual and artistic activity, finishing few canvases (one the Mona Lisa, another The Last Supper) and almost nothing else during a long life largely financed, sometimes erratically, by patrons who indirectly supported an expensive retinue of friends, assistants and servants. He emerges as a compulsive investigatorAof geometry, optics, hydraulics, architecture, sculpture, painting, botany, biology, military mechanics and the flight of birdsAmoving from city-state to city-state in Italy, encountering ruler after ruler who sought to harness his gifts. Yet perhaps unforgivably, given the series's promise of New Yorker profile-like effervescence, da Vinci as personality slips away; what we get is a clean condensation of the facts. Only the final chapter, "Matters of the Heart and Other Matters," injects some of Leonardo's own fervor, in an in-depth look at one of his abiding obsessions, the structure and function of the human heart. Nuland's account is solid, but lacks enough of the flourish that its subject so effortlessly achieved and, that, on a much smaller scale, the Lives series seems to strive for. 4 illus. BOMC, QPB, History Book Club selections. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Scientific American
Artist, anatomist, architect, mathematician, military engineer-few have been as protean as Leonardo. Sir Kenneth Clark called him "the most relentlessly curious man in history." To Nuland, "he is also the historical figure about whom we are most relentlessly curious." In this brief life, Nuland summarizes Leonardo's achievements skillfully. Being a physician (clinical professor of surgery at Yale University), he is particularly interested in Leonardo's pioneering anatomical dissections and drawings. But to him as to other biographers, Leonardo remains essentially elusive. As the English critic Walter Pater said, "he seemed to those about him as one listening to a voice, silent for other men."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A distinguished chronicler of the human body and spirit interprets a Renaissance genius

The enigma of the Mona Lisa's smile is not less than the enigma of her creator's life force."In Leonardo da Vinci, Sherwin Nuland (whose own work Time has called "awe-inspiring") completes his twenty-year quest to understand an unlettered man who was painter, architect, engineer, philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. What was it that propelled Leonardo's insatiable curiosity? How could he be, in the same moment, as naive as a child and as profound as a sage?

Nuland finds clues in his subject's art, relationships, and scientific studies—as well as in the manuscripts spotlighted by their sale at auction to Bill Gates. Nuland detects the siren voice that lured the great artist so often into the arms of science—his fascination with anatomy, first as the basis for his paintings and then as the crucial component in his aim to systematize all knowledge of nature. Scholarly and passionate, Nuland's Leonardo da Vinci takes us deep into the first truly modern, empirical mind, one that was centuries ahead of its time.

FROM THE CRITICS

Seattle Times

...Nuland's enthusiasm and knowledge make his story interesting and easy to read.

Book Magazine

Giorgio Vasari, an artist who lived a generation after da Vinci, summed up da Vinci as a man who "began many things that he never completed." His projects were often left half-done as a result of insufficient funds or, more usually, wandering creative interests. It is Nuland who hints at the artist's fear of completion, believing da Vinci's episodic and perfectionist nature justified his scattered behavior. Apropos of a medical essay, Nuland's investigation of da Vinci's life hypothesizes the means to the end, allowing da Vinci's enigmatic behavior to remain shrouded in mystery. He is seen as a genius whose desire—and arguably obsession—to investigate nature sublimated his sexual proclivities. Nuland, a man of science who often asks more questions than he answers, uses Freud as a source to explain da Vinci's sexuality and creative impulses, perhaps inadvertently making his own theories seem clinically antiquated. For instance, borrowing from Freud, Nuland extrapolates theories of narcissism behind the Mona Lisa (homosexuals distort the notion of mother onto themselves). Separating the life story from the latter chapters on da Vinci's writing style and his anatomical compositions, Nuland keeps the biography flat, only finding real drama in lost manuscripts—well after his subject's death. —Scott Markwell

Publishers Weekly

Say what one will about Edna O'Brien's ravishing clip job of Joyce, Peter Gay's moderate Mozart or Edmund White's microcosmic Proust, the editors at Penguin Lives have a knack for matching up free-thinking meditators and their subjects. A surgeon and a writer about medicine, Nuland (How We Die) uses much of his brief book--limited in size and scope to the series's quick-take, authorially inflected format--to explain the prodigal da Vinci as pioneering anatomist. The first 11 pages detail Nuland's personal obsession with da Vinci; the later pages describe da Vinci's concern with human and animal anatomy, and review the bibliographical jumble of his surviving notebooks and papers. Nuland's da Vinci is tireless, perhaps sublimated, in his intellectual and artistic activity, finishing few canvases (one the Mona Lisa, another The Last Supper) and almost nothing else during a long life largely financed, sometimes erratically, by patrons who indirectly supported an expensive retinue of friends, assistants and servants. He emerges as a compulsive investigator--of geometry, optics, hydraulics, architecture, sculpture, painting, botany, biology, military mechanics and the flight of birds--moving from city-state to city-state in Italy, encountering ruler after ruler who sought to harness his gifts. Yet perhaps unforgivably, given the series's promise of New Yorker profile-like effervescence, da Vinci as personality slips away; what we get is a clean condensation of the facts. Only the final chapter, "Matters of the Heart and Other Matters," injects some of Leonardo's own fervor, in an in-depth look at one of his abiding obsessions, the structure and function of the human heart. Nuland's account is solid, but lacks enough of the flourish that its subject so effortlessly achieved and, that, on a much smaller scale, the Lives series seems to strive for. 4 illus. BOMC, QPB, History Book Club selections. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Nuland is the author of the best-selling How We Die and clinical professor of surgery at Yale, where he teaches medical history and ethics. In this "Penguin Life" biography, his characteristically nonacademic, essay-like style is interspersed with clearly labeled opinions about disputed topics regarding the artist's life, such as his sexual orientation and activity. Nuland devotes the first 120 pages of his brief book to Leonardo's pursuit of life as what we would call a scientist. The remaining 50 pages are focused specifically on his works as an anatomist. Nuland chronicles Leonardo's insights and mistakes and discusses his place in the history of anatomical studies. Leonardo was the first to make many discoveries in science and anatomy, but few of his contemporaries ever knew of his achievements. Michael White's Leonardo: The First Scientist (LJ 8/00) also discusses Leonardo's scientific life but is longer and much more comprehensive. Nuland's book is written for a general audience and is a bit more accessible. If you can afford only one book, get the White. Otherwise, Nuland's is a good choice for public and college libraries. (Index not seen.) [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/00; BOMC selection.]--Eric D. Albright, Duke Univ. Medical Ctr. Lib., Durham, NC Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

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