It's Monday, What are You Reading?
Leonardo da Vinci
by Walter Isaacson
This post is the one-hundred and thirty-third entry for this meme suggested by Sheila@ One Persons Journey Through A World of Books. [Entries 22-25 in the series were posted at the Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories]
This book is really a change of pace, for me. Although it is a biography, it is for a person of long ago. This is what caught my attention: “how the ability to make connections across disciplines - arts and sciences, humanities and technology - is a key to innovation, imagination, and genius.” This is what drew Isaacson to Leonardo. Jobs was likewise attracted to Leonardo da Vinci. Also, Leonardo’s curiosity and intense observations - illustrated by the 7,200 pages of notes and scribbles from his notebooks that survive - are compelling. The hard copy of the book is printed on slick paper, with many, many images - many from the notebooks. I’m treating it as a reference as much as a book to be read cover to cover…though I hope to... ;-)
Book Description from Amazon:
The author of the acclaimed bestsellers Steve Jobs, Einstein, and Benjamin Franklin brings Leonardo da Vinci to life in this exciting new biography.
Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo’s astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson weaves a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo’s genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy.
He produced the two most famous paintings in history, The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. But in his own mind, he was just as much a man of science and technology. With a passion that sometimes became obsessive, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry. His ability to stand at the crossroads of the humanities and the sciences, made iconic by his drawing of Vitruvian Man, made him history’s most creative genius.
His creativity, like that of other great innovators, came from having wide-ranging passions. He peeled flesh off the faces of cadavers, drew the muscles that move the lips, and then painted history’s most memorable smile. He explored the math of optics, showed how light rays strike the cornea, and produced illusions of changing perspectives in The Last Supper. Isaacson also describes how Leonardo’s lifelong enthusiasm for staging theatrical productions informed his paintings and inventions.
Leonardo’s delight at combining diverse passions remains the ultimate recipe for creativity. So, too, does his ease at being a bit of a misfit: illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left-handed, easily distracted, and at times heretical. His life should remind us of the importance of instilling, both in ourselves and our children, not just received knowledge but a willingness to question it—to be imaginative and, like talented misfits and rebels in any era, to think different.
Happy Reading!
Dr. Bill ;-)
