Leonardo: The Artist and the Man

The other reviewers of this work have provided a good idea of what to expect, so I will confine my comments to only one aspect of this biography, the one which I found the most informative and fascinating: The manner in which Leonardo was trained and educated. The greatest service Serge Bramly provides in this work is a full, three dimensional portrait of what "education" was all about in the Renaissance. What comes through quite clearly is that while Leonardo Da Vinci was certainly a possessor of that rare combination of brilliant intellect and tremendous talent, what he became - the person who remains in Western history the epitome of "genius" - was the result of how he was trained. The Northern Italy of Brunaleschi, Verrochio, Da Vinci, Rafael, Botticelli, Michelangelo, and so many others was no historical accident. They were educated and trained in such a comprehensive manner that they realized that all knowledge was not only useful, but that it all related - and was therefore interesting.Bramly postulates that when the very young Leonardo first came to Verrochio's workshop, the first thing he saw was the master working on a problem that required a knowledge of mathematics, geometry, engineering and physics: The design and construction of an over six foot diameter bronze sphere with cross on top, weighing over a ton, which had to be transported from its place of casting and construction to the principal cathedral of Florence, lifted over 250 feet in the air, attached to the top of "Il Duomo" and secured in such a manner that it would never topple even when buffeted by the strongest storm winds. As Bramly aptly points out, there was no such thing as "art for arts' sake" back then, the concept never even having occurred to these artists because they would have considered it absurd. The same as any scientist or engineer of the day would never have dreamed of a life or world without art. All knowledge and all skills related to one another.When Leonardo learned to draw and paint, he had to learn how to create pencils and brushes from scratch, to find and understand the properties of the raw materials from which to grind the pigments for his paints, how to work with wood and cloth so as to create a canvass. Those things alone involve the fields of geology, physics, biology (the various types of animal hairs suitable for brushes), carpentry +. The composition of his works required an in depth study of geometry, trigonometry and some degree of calculus; the faithful execution of living subjects a knowledge of anatomy and the physics of light. Each thing lead to another, and Da Vinci followed all of these paths of scientific and artistic discovery - which for him and others of his day were one and the same. This hands-on type of training in all things relevant to his trade - which meant just about all things - is what lead Da Vinci to be interested in so many diverse fields of study. The more dots he connected, the more dots he discovered that needed connecting.All of this stands in stark contrast to how we educate people today: On career paths to ever more finite fields of specialization, excluding and discarding anything and everything that does not relate to that narrow path. The vast majority of dots are excluded, so it is no wonder why so few people know how to connect them.So read and imbibe the training of this genius and his contemporaries. Then compare, for example, what Alan Blum said in his provocative and controversial "Closing of the American Mind;" John Ralston Saul's take on our age of the enshrinement of the idiot-savant in "Voltaire's Bastards;" or Robert Hughes' short, enjoyable but nevertheless stinging critique of our times in "Culture of Complaint." Then also consider that in the eighteenth century in the English colonies of North America there existed more or less contemporaneously a Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison and so many others. Like with North Italy during the Renaissance, it was no historical accident. If you sat at the dinner table of any of these men, it would be not just normal but expected for you to converse intelligently on topics as diverse as politics, philosophy, economics, history, agriculture, horticulture, architecture, physics, biology, botany. And to recite a few memorized poems, create puns, match wits, play a musical instrument and perhaps compose a piece or two for entertainment. Their training, likewise, was one which taught that all knowledge was important, interrelated and was interesting.In sum, in my mind Bramly's greatest achievement in this work was to show that Da Vinci's don't just fall out of the sky. They are taught, and they are taught and trained in a very broad, inclusive manner. Would that we could return to the basics of that type of education instead of the super-specialist who excludes all else. Da Vinci's type brought us the wonders of the Renaissance. Our "modern" methodology has brought us the type of individual whose arrogance is inversely proportional to the narrowness of his knowledge, the kind who create meticulously planned and detailed exercises that inevitably become disasters, like Viet Nam, Serbia's "ethnic cleansing" and today's Iraq. Devote an individual's education to a particular species of tree and he'll want to cut down all the others to get to the one he knows the most about. But teach people about forests, and they'll be interested in all the trees - and see how each is important in its own right as well as its importance to the whole.

Please be warned that this book was also issued under the title Leonardo: Discovering the Life of Leonardo Da Vinci in a hardback. All the color and black and white pictures are the same, as is the text. I bought the "Discovering" edition at a used bookstore while awaiting the "Artist and the man",from a seller on Amazon, thinking they were different books. I prefer the hardback "Discovering" edition and it costs the same or less here on Amazon as the paperback "The Artist and the man" edition. Best way to avoid this problem is to click the "Look inside" option if available to see if the first chapter begins with same words.

I turned to this books to get a second opinion on Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code." I found this book very helpful in dispelling some of the myths that Brown advocates, such as the nature of the two "Virgin Of The Rocks," the mysterious knife in "The Last Supper," and several hypothesis of "The Mona Lisa."By the way, there is no mention of the Priory of Sion.Bramly is very engaging. He can tell a tale that grips you. I suggest reading the first chapter about DaVinci's wizened self-portrait. The whole books reads like it. Admittedly, he read emotions into DaVinci that we cannot verify. This is no different that what Steven Ambose or Fawn M. Brodie have done with their biographies. It helps the presentation of the material, even if fudges the facts a bit. People do have emotional lives, and we would react similarly in similar situations.Another of Bramly's strengths is that he puts DaVinci's life in the context of Renaissance Italy. The Boot was very different than today, made up of the independent city-states. It was the milieu that Machiavelli wrote about in "The Prince." It was among these warring princes, and DaVinci's patronage by the Medic family that helped underwrite his famous works. DaVinci's life is almost a political thriller and he moves from city-state to city-state and mingling with the great men.Other reviews have commented on this books scanty biography material, and the many diversion into politics and so forth. This is because we have so few detail's about DaVinci's day-to-day life. We do not have the usual memories, diaries, and documents that we would have for a contemporar5y person. All we have are the notebooks, the biography made a few years after DaVinci's death, and the masterworks themselves. To his credit, Bramly works around this paucity of material in such a way that you do not notice it.This book has B&W images from his astounding notebooks, and several pages of color inserts. There is only one flaw-the Mona Lisa is one of the images in B&W. This is more than a shame, and I hope it can be corrected in future editions.Bramly devotes a hefty section dealing with DaVinci's homosexuality. He also includes some rather graphic images from his notebooks, and a rudely funny homage to the male member. Parents who home school their children may want to use another biography of DaVinci, since this material is college level.I recommend this book. His has the right vide and fell for DaVinci's life and history. I think one of his best moments what when he made a connection between Massacio's painting of the inverted Peter being crucified, and the Virtuvian Man. After tracking down the images on the internet, I was dumbfounded about how right he was. Thank-you Bramly.

crap book - more like a poor grade photocopy where the images are indistinct