Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci

Volume 1 of 2-volume set. Total of 1,566 extracts reveal full range of Leonardo's versatile genius: his writings on painting, sculpture, architecture, anatomy, mining, inventions, music. Dual Italian-English texts, with 186 plates and faithful reproductions of more than 500 additional drawings.

Leonardo da Vinci's life is fascinating; he is the prototypical Renaissance man, and acknowledged genius. Leonardo's Notebooks explores this biography in his own words and in his art, connecting moments of his life to artistic accomplishments. Exploring this image-filled book is as close to reading Da Vinci's diaries as we can get. Leonardo da Vinci, artist, inventor, and prototypical Renaissance man, is a perennial source of fascination because of his astonishing intellect and boundless curiosity about the natural and man-made world. During his life he created numerous works of art and kept voluminous notebooks that detailed his artistic and intellectual pursuits. The collection of writings and art in this magnificent book are drawn from his notebooks. The book organizes his wide range of interests into subjects such as human figures, light and shade, perspective and visual perception, anatomy, botany and landscape, geography, the physical sciences and astronomy, architecture, sculpture, and inventions. Nearly every piece of writing throughout the book is keyed to the piece of artwork it describes. The writing and art is selected by art historian H. Anna Suh, who provides fascinating commentary and insight into the material, making Leonardo's Notebooks an exquisite single-volume compendium celebrating his enduring genius.