Revered today as, perhaps, the greatest of Renaissance painters, Leonardo da Vinci was a scientist at heart. The artist who created the Mona Lisa also designed functioning robots and digital computers, constructed flying machines and built the first heart valve. His intuitive and ingenious approach--a new mode of thinking--linked highly diverse areas of inquiry in startling new ways and ushered in a new era. In Leonardo's Legacy, award-winning science journalist Stefan Klein deciphers the forgotten legacy of this universal genius and persuasively demonstrates that today we have much to learn from Leonardo's way of thinking. Klein sheds light on the mystery behind Leonardo's paintings, takes us through the many facets of his fascination with water, and explains the true significance of his dream of flying. It is a unique glimpse into the complex and brilliant mind of this inventor, scientist, and pioneer of a new world view, with profound consequences for our times.

The ever increasing art historical attention being paid to the School of Leonardo lies at the root of this volume published almost sixty years after Suida's classic treatment of the subject. This is the first time since then that Lombard art of Leonardesque inspiration has been the object of a systematic analysis embracing a period of around half a century starting from 1490. The essays opening the volume provide an overview dealing with the environment, the organisation and the working practices of Leonardo's atelier and the problems faced by historians, whilst each artist is discussed in a critical profile that, taking into account the most recent academic research, acts a brief but up-to-date monograph.

"Largely as a result of Leonardo's innovative work for the Sforza court in Milan, a rich vein of naturalism developed in North Italian art during the late fifteenth century. Questioning the strongly classicizing, idealized style dominant in areas south of the Apennines, artists in the region of Lombardy turned to an investigation of the natural world based on direct observation and adherence to strict visual truth. This heritage of realism continued to be of key importance for more than two hundred years, finding its greatest expression in the art of Caravaggio and eventually influencing the course of Baroque painting throughout Europe. Religious scenes, portraits, and landscapes were all transformed by this new naturalism, which also spurred an interest in still lifes and genre scenes as subjects for paintings. Painters of Reality, titled after an influential exhibition held in Milan more than fifty years ago, is the first study in English of this major aspect of Italian art. Reexamining the subject in light of copious subsequent scholarship, the authors of this volume contribute major essays that define and discuss naturalism as it appeared in both Lombard paintings and drawings. There is also a fresh consideration of the Northern Italian predecessors whose influence is apparent, either directly or indirectly, in the paintings of Caravaggio. More detailed discussions of the subject center on the precise elements that constituted Leonardo's "hypernaturalism"; the important schools of painting that arose in Brescia, Bergamo, Cremona, and Milan; and Caravaggio's most notable successors in northern Italy, who kept Lombard realism alive into the eighteenth century. Map, artists' biographies, bibliography, and index are also included" -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.

For the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death comes an immersive journey through five centuries of history to define the Leonardo mystique and uncover how the elusive Renaissance artist became a global pop icon. Virtually everyone would agree that Leonardo da Vinci was the most important artist of the High Renaissance. It was Leonardo who singlehandedly created the defining features of Western art: a realism based on subtle shading; depth using atmospheric effects; and dramatic contrasts between light and dark. But how did Leonardo, a painter of very few works who died in obscurity in France, become the internationally renowned icon he is today, with the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper the most visited artworks in the world, attracting nearly a billion visitors each year, and Salvator Mundi selling as the most expensive artwork of all time, for nearly half a billion dollars? This extraordinary volume, lavishly illustrated with 130 color images, is the first book to unravel these mysteries by diving deep into the art, literature, science, and politics of Europe from the Renaissance through today. It gives illuminating context to both Leonardo and his accomplishments; explores why Leonardo’s fame vastly overshadowed that of his contemporaries and disciples; and ultimately reveals why despite finishing very few works, his celebrity has survived, even thrived, through five centuries of history.

An epic quest exposes hidden truths about Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, the recently discovered masterpiece that sold for $450 million—and might not be the real thing. In 2017, Leonardo da Vinci’s small oil painting the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction. In the words of its discoverer, the image of Christ as savior of the world is “the rarest thing on the planet.” Its $450 million sale price also makes it the world’s most expensive painting. For two centuries, art dealers had searched in vain for the Holy Grail of art history: a portrait of Christ as the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci. Many similar paintings of greatly varying quality had been executed by Leonardo’s assistants in the early sixteenth century. But where was the original by the master himself? In November 2017, Christie’s auction house announced they had it. But did they? The Last Leonardo tells a thrilling tale of a spellbinding icon invested with the power to make or break the reputations of scholars, billionaires, kings, and sheikhs. Ben Lewis takes us to Leonardo’s studio in Renaissance Italy; to the court of Charles I and the English Civil War; to Amsterdam, Moscow, and New Orleans; to the galleries, salerooms, and restorer’s workshop as the painting slowly, painstakingly emerged from obscurity. The vicissitudes of the highly secretive art market are charted across six centuries. It is a twisting tale of geniuses and oligarchs, double-crossings and disappearances, in which we’re never quite certain what to believe. Above all, it is an adventure story about the search for lost treasure, and a quest for the truth. Praise for The Last Leonardo “The story of the world’s most expensive painting is narrated with great gusto and formidably researched detail in Ben Lewis’s book. . . . Lewis’s probings of the Salvator’s backstory raise questions about its historical status and visibility, and these lead in turn to the fundamental question of whether the painting is really an autograph work by Leonardo.”—Charles Nicholl, The Guardian “As the art historian and critic Ben Lewis shows in his forensically detailed and gripping investigation into the history, discovery and sales of the painting, establishing the truth is like nailing down jelly.”— Michael Prodger, The Sunday Times

Like other notebooks by Leonardo, the manuscript now known as the Codex Leicester was a working record of observations, experiments, and arguments. In it he rendered observations of natural phenomena in words, images, and diagrams. When Microsoft founder Bill Gates purchased the Codex Leicester in 1994, it made headlines around the world; this volume makes Leonardo's notebook accessible to everyone. The Codex Leicester is a product of Leonardo da Vinci's restless intellectual curiosity. By about 1508, when the Renaissance master began to work on this notebook, he had already painted his most acclaimed work, the Mona Lisa, and was working in Milan on the enigmatic Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. Both pictures feature meticulously painted landscape backgrounds that testify to Leonardo's study and scientific understanding of geology, weather, rivers, and mountains -- issues that he pursued in the Codex Leicester. Leonardo Lives explores the close relationship of art and science in Leonardo's work, but it also presents the variety of ways in which he has continued to inspire artists from the 16th century to the present.

This handsome book offers a unified and fascinating portrait of Leonardo as draftsman, integrating his roles as artist, scientist, inventor, theorist, and teacher. 250 illustrations.