Leonardo Davinci Book Summary

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Brief Summary

Leonardo Da Vinci had a rough start to his life, but developed an identity as an outsider and felt free to pursue his own interests. He spent years observing the world in his notebooks, designing different engineering marvels and breaking down what he saw in nature, from animal anatomy to fluid dynamics and the psychological insights expressed by bodies. He also studied under a master, learning how geometry and optics could be applied to paintings. In his following career, he was diverted from his talents as a painter and engineer by royal patrons, but found a way to excel anyway. Towards the end of his life, he ended up completing indisputable masterpieces which took him years to perfect.

About the Author

Walter Isaacson is an analyst, author, historian, journalist and professor. He was president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a policy think tank in Washington DC and was the managing editor of Time. He’s written multiple biographical works, notably Steve Jobs, Einstein: His Life and Universe, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and Kissinger: A Biography. He served as a professor at Tulane University and in various governmental positions.

Topics

Biography & Memoir

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Key Insights

This biography tells the story of one of the greatest geniuses in history, Leonardo Da Vinci. Drawing on the notebooks of the master painter, engineer, architect, and theater producer, Isaacson pulls back the curtain on Da Vinci’s life, providing the historical context to his most important works and insight into how he developed his unique abilities through self-education and observing the natural world.

As a boy, Da Vinci dealt with a difficult background, but his isolation introduced him to self-education.

Leonardo Da Vinci was born in Florence in 1492. His father was Piero da Vinci while his mother was a 16-year-old peasant girl named Caterina Lippi. They never married, making Leonardo an illegitimate child.

Piero came from a line of notaries, a respectable job at the time. He handled business transactions and resolved disputes among merchants. In normal circumstances, Leonardo would have had to inherit this position from his father, but because he was illegitimate, he was free of that obligation.

In his boyhood, Leonardo felt like an outsider. He was left-handed, which carried a stigma in Renaissance Italy, and jailed several times for his homosexuality on sodomy. Because of his illegitimacy, he was not sent to formal school and had to teach himself. This left him free to pursue whatever interested him instead of learning Latin or studying ancient scholarship in the schools. He spent his days learning about the world through observation and experimentation.

Da Vinci began a painting and engineering apprenticeship at age 14 and later surpassed his master in ability.

In 1467, when Leonardo was 14, his father moved them from Vinci to Florence, a city famous for its resident artists. There were thirty painters living in the city and dozens of other craftsmen, not to mention the highest literacy rate in all of Europe.

Leonardo became apprenticed with Andrea del Verrocchio, a master painter, and sculptor who ran an important workshop in the city. In his workshop, Verrocchio was also a goldsmith selling things like doorknobs alongside his paintings.

Verrocchio had a talent for conveying motion in his sculptures, representing people and animals in movement, which gave Leonardo a strong education in portraying motion in his own paintings. Over the years, he developed his understanding of geometry, light, and perspective.

By the time he was 20, Leonardo seemed to surpass the skills of his master. In a painting that was a joint effort between the two artists, Da Vinci and Verrocchino each paint an angel in The Baptism of Christ. Leonardo’s angel is softer and more lifelike than Verrocchi0’s which seems two-dimensional in comparison. This softness was achieved through Leonardo’s signature “smufato” style, a blurring of lines of edges to better mimic the eye’s way of seeing. It’s said that Verrocchi0 was so impressed by the angel that he quit painting altogether.

Several of Da Vinci’s famous early works were painted in the studio in the early 1470s. He painted a portrait of Ginerva de Benci, a well-known Florentine woman sitting in a three-quarter pose. He managed to capture the lady’s temperament in her...