Although Leonardo’s Giant Crossbow is one of his most popular drawings, it has been one of the least understood. "Leonardo’s Giant Crossbow" offers the first in-depth account of this drawing’s likely purpose and its highly resolved design. This fascinating book has a wealth of technical information about the Giant Crossbow drawing, as it’s a complete study of this project, though this is as accessible to the general audience as much as it is also informative with new discoveries for the professors of engineering, technology and art. The book explores the context of Leonardo’s invention with an examination of the extensive documentary evidence, a short history of the great crossbow and ballista, the first accurate translation of the text and the technical specifications, and a detailed analysis of Leonardo’s design process for the crossbow, from start to finish. Dozens of preparatory drawings, along with the recent discovery of nearly invisible metal stylus preparatory incisions under the ink of the Giant Crossbow drawing, are evidence of Leonardo’s intent to offer engineers and other viewers a thorough design of the massive machine. The book proposes these new discoveries with the help of a strategy that had been at the core of Leonardo’s working philosophy: the proportional method. As proven with an analysis of the Giant Crossbow project, he used a consistent approach to 1/3rd proportions throughout the design and drawing process and employed this kind of proportional strategy at the start of almost every important project. Thanks to this proof of his knowledge of geometry, evidence of his studies of impetus and force, and thanks to the highly polished and complex nature of the Giant Crossbow design, a later date for the drawing is proposed in the present book, associating the drawing with his drafting capabilities around 1490-93.

Although Leonardo’s Giant Crossbow is one of his most popular drawings, it has been one of the least understood. "Leonardo’s Giant Crossbow" offers the first in-depth account of this drawing’s likely purpose and its highly resolved design. This fascinating book has a wealth of technical information about the Giant Crossbow drawing, as it’s a complete study of this project, though this is as accessible to the general audience as much as it is also informative with new discoveries for the professors of engineering, technology and art. The book explores the context of Leonardo’s invention with an examination of the extensive documentary evidence, a short history of the great crossbow and ballista, the first accurate translation of the text and the technical specifications, and a detailed analysis of Leonardo’s design process for the crossbow, from start to finish. Dozens of preparatory drawings, along with the recent discovery of nearly invisible metal stylus preparatory incisions under the ink of the Giant Crossbow drawing, are evidence of Leonardo’s intent to offer engineers and other viewers a thorough design of the massive machine. The book proposes these new discoveries with the help of a strategy that had been at the core of Leonardo’s working philosophy: the proportional method. As proven with an analysis of the Giant Crossbow project, he used a consistent approach to 1/3rd proportions throughout the design and drawing process and employed this kind of proportional strategy at the start of almost every important project. Thanks to this proof of his knowledge of geometry, evidence of his studies of impetus and force, and thanks to the highly polished and complex nature of the Giant Crossbow design, a later date for the drawing is proposed in the present book, associating the drawing with his drafting capabilities around 1490-93.

This study is the first to consider the whole body of Leonardo's works with an eye to a comprehensive interpretation that combines both cultural history and the history of ideas. According to Maiorino, Leonardo's was a mythmaking mode of activity that had a Daedalian range and affected art and technology alike. As both artist and inventor, Leonardo did not separate reason from experience, empiricism from abstraction, an attitude Maiorino characterizes as "Anti-Humanism". Rather than accepting the earlier view that the culture of the Renaissance was divided against itself or that it came to be divided, he argues that anti-Humanism was present from the start in such founders as Petrarch and Alberti and continued to be a current in later authors and artists; hence the significance of Leonardo to Humanism and to Baroque and Renaissance culture at large.

The #1 New York Times bestseller "A powerful story of an exhilarating mind and life...a study in creativity: how to define it, how to achieve it." --The New Yorker "Vigorous, insightful." --The Washington Post "A masterpiece." --San Francisco Chronicle "Luminous." --The Daily Beast He was history's most creative genius. What secrets can he teach us? 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.

Leonardo da Vinci: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works covers all aspects of his life and work, beginning with his paintings, including several he never completed, that form the core of his artistic oeuvre. The extensive A to Z section includes several hundred entries. The bibliography provides a comprehensive list of publications concerning his life and work Includes a detailed chronology detailing Leonardo Da Vinci’s life, family, and work. The A to Z section includes Leonardo’s main patrons, the major places he worked, and the artists and scholars whose work and ideas played an important role in the formation of his career. The bibliography includes a list of publications concerning his life and work. The index thoroughly cross-references the chronological and encyclopedic entries.

The basis for our understanding of Leonardo’s theory of art was, for over 150 years, his Treatise on Painting, which was issued in 1651 in Italian and French. This present volume offers both the first scholarly edition of the Italian editio princeps as well as the first complete English translation of this seminal work. In addition, It provides a comprehensive study of the Italian first edition, documenting how each editorial campaign that lead to it produced a different understanding of the artist’s theory. What emerges is a rich cultural and textual history that foregrounds the transmission of artisanal knowledge from Leonardo’s workshop in the Duchy of Milan to Carlo Borromeo’s Milan, Cosimo I de’ Medici’s Florence, Urban VIII’s Rome, and Louis XIV’s Paris.

The bestselling 30-Second... series takes a revolutionary approach to learning about those subjects you feel you should really understand. Each title selects a popular topic and dissects it into the 50 most significant ideas at its heart. Every idea, no matter how complex, is explained in 300 words and one picture, all digestible in 30 seconds. 30-Second Leonardo da Vinci uses this unique approach to grapple with the truly diverse thoughts of the ultimate Renaissance Man. Artist, anatomist, sculptor, inventor, architect, cartographer, mathematician, musician, botanist, geologist the word polymath does not quite do Leonardo justice. The painter of the Mona Lisa and conceptualizer of the helicopter seems like a Renaissance superhero. Here, the worlds leading Leonardo scholars present an instant and expert guide to the breadth and brilliance of his greatest innovations.