Book Review: Walter Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci

This book was a pain in the ass to lug around but, believe me, it was worth it.

Walter Isaacson's extensive experience in writing autobiographies (Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, for example), and his most recent academic posting (University Professor of History, Tulane University), placed him in an excellent position to research the life of Leonardo da Vinci and a frame within which to effectively present the findings to a general-purpose audience. Mission accomplished.

The book is physically imposing but visually appealing. The narrative spins out over 526 pages, supported by another 50 pages of abbreviations, notes, credits, and an index. The cover is rich, tactile, and textured. A haunting picture, thought to be a portrait of the subject that is resident in the Uffizi Gallery, stares out at the reader with a bright light throwing one side of the face into sharp relief while the other side is thrown into shadow. There is an informative and attractive timeline in the preamble material which provides a great overview of the life and times of Leonardo as well as covering major European events that occur during his lifetime.

Isaacson is a huge Leonardo fan and its shows through -- sometimes blindingly so -- in this book. He embarked on this project because "Leonardo da Vinci is the ultimate example of the main theme of my prior biographies: how the ability to make connections across disciplines -- arts and sciences, humanities and technology -- is a key to innovation, imagination, and genius." This book illustrates Leonardo making those cross-discipinary connections and the innovation, imagination, and genius that resulted.

Review any list of geniuses on the internet and Leonardo is generally mentioned in one of the first five places. Isaacson agrees that he was a genius but, he cautions, "we should be wary of that word:"

Slapping the genius label on Leonardo overly minimizes him by making it seem as if he were touched by lightning ... In fact, Leonardo's genius was a human one, wrought by his own will and ambition. It did not come from being the divine recipient, like Newton or Einstein, of a mind with so much processing power that we mere mortals cannot fathom it. ... this genius was of the type we can understand, even take lessons from. It was based on skills we can aspire to improve in ourselves, such as curiosity and intense observation.

The conditions for the eventual flowering of that genius, Isaacson asserts, were seeded by the conditions surrounding Leonardo's birth. He was the illegitimate son of a notary and a country farm girl, and, as a result of his illegitimacy, could not take up his father's profession. While his father did care for him in his youth, and continued to help him out over much of the course of his life, he never legitimated him (an opportunity that existed). In any case, the guild of notaries did not allow membership to illegitimate sons. With that career path unavailable, Leonardo did not attend the schools that would provide him with the type of education that was available for persons of his father's standing (He instead attended an "abacus school," an elementary academy that emphasized the math skills useful in commerce.). According to Isaacson, with a mind unburdened by the conventions of the day, Leonardo came to depend on observation and experience.

That genius was further advanced by informing relationships/associations during the formative stages of his career. The table below shows some of the influences identified by Isaacson.

Table 1. Leonardo's formative influences (as per Walter Isaacson)

Individual	Description	Factors
Filippo Brunelleschi	Polymath Designer of the dome of the Florentine cathedral	Lunar perspective Optics Architecture Uses of Euclidean geometry
Batista Alberti	Polymath Brunelleschi’s successor	Perspective Writing style Demeanor
Andrea del Verrocchio	Leonardo apprenticed at his workshop	Surface anatomy Mechanics Drawing techniques Effects of light and shade on material “The beauty of geometry” The art of procrastination??
Antonio del Pollaiuolo	Verrocchio’s primary commercial competitor in Florence	Expression of moving and twisting bodies Dissection of human bodies for anatomical study

Isaacson spends much of the book detailing Leonardo's observations, learnings, and experiments and the documenting of the same into his notebooks. Leonardo began his lifelong practice of keeping notebooks shortly after his arrival in Milan in the early 1480s. He went around with a small notebook on his belt and kept larger sheets in his studio. Today we are aware of 7200 of those pages but it is estimated that that amounts to 1/4th of the pages that he actually wrote.

The author documented every single work of art that can be traced back to Leonardo, some of the originals of which cannot be found but are known through the existence of known copies. He clearly indicates the ones that he thinks are the most important by (i) devoting a separate chapter to each and (ii) setting the chapter titles in italics in the Table of Contents. The so-identified works are Vitruvian Man, Virgin of the Rocks, The Last Supper, and the Mona Lisa.

I found Isaacson's treatment of Leonardo's works of art to be one of the most attractive features of the book. He spent time setting up the origin of the work, the subject, the context, and the construct. He then provided a detailed description of the finished product as he saw it. In describing Leonardo's contribution (the fish and the dog) to Verrocchio's Tobias and the Angel, Isaacson states:

The shiny and shimmery scales of the fish show that Leonardo was already mastering the magic of how light strikes an object and dances to our eyes. Each scale is a gem. The sunshine coming from the top left of the picture produces a mix of light and shade and sparkle. Both behind the gill and the front of the liquidy eye is a spot of luster. Unlike other painters, Leonardo even took care to render the blood dripping from the fish's cut belly. ...

In this deeply pleasing and sprightly painting, we can see the power of the master-pupil collaboration. Leonardo was already an extreme observer of nature, and he was perfecting the ability to convey the effects of light on objects. Added to that, he had imbibed from Verrocchio, the master sculptor, the excitement of conveying the motion and narrative. 

Verrocchio's Tobias and the Angel

So not only does Isaacson provide an extensive description of the effort, he also identifies influences from other disciplines/arenas and identifies the source of the influence. In this manner, we are able to see the growth of Leonardo and his incorporation of new learnings into his works. As an example, the enigmatic smile associated with the Mona Lisa is ascribed by the author to Leonardo's understanding of the facial muscles and the effects of their movement on the lips; an understanding acquired as a result of extensive dissections carried out during his second stint in Milan.

Isaacson draws on his history pedigree to provide excellent historical context for the biography. The politics, wars, rulers, and battles for influence in and between the The Vatican, Florence, Rome, Milan, and Paris -- as described by the author --  provide an excellent backdrop to the main story. Many of the Renaissance greats flow effortlessly in and out of the narrative and the only one to have a negative reaction to Leonardo was Michelangelo. Eventually it seemed as though Leonardo would do anything that he could to avoid encountering Michelangelo.

Leonardo was bitten by a bug of "failure-to-deliver." He started a number of projects and abandoned them prior to conclusion. He took on commissions that he never started. Even the things that he did deliver on took longer than anticipated. His reputation was of such that associations would write delivery clauses into contracts, all to no avail. Isaacson had a bit of a blind spot to this Leonardo failing, almost chalking it up to the price of genius.

Leonardo gets most of his attention today because of his paintings (partly his fault because he never published any of the extensive and comprehensive work that he put into his notebooks.) but he was so much more. "with a a passion that was both playful and obsessive, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, optics, botany, geology, water flows, and weaponry." Isaacson explores each of these facets of his life within this tome.

The picture of Leonardo that emerges from Isaacson's book is a composite of the following:

• A man of "outstanding beauty and personal grace"
• Unreliable
• Inveterate observer
• Information sponge
• Compulsive documentarian
• Great thinker
• Conversationalist
• Respected and loved by those who came into contact with him
• A reluctant painter
• An indulgent lover
• An underachiever 
• A conflict avoider
• Someone who placed great store in experience and experimentation and showed some disdain for scholarly learning
• Stubborn as a mule when warranted
• "Fevered imagination"
• "Ability to connect art to the wonders of nature."

The book has an easy, flowing, time-based narrative through the first nine chapters in which the early years of Leonardo's life is captured. It bogs down, however, between Chapters 10 and 14 as the author changes tempo and tone as he tries to establish Leonardo's techno/scientific bona fides. Adding to this dash of cold water is the fact that the covered topics do not even fit in chronologically. The pace picks back up in Chapter 15 and continues unabated until the end.

I highly recommend this book.

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