Complete Works of Leonardo da Vinci

 

Leonardo da Vinci: La biografía

 

Basándose en las miles de páginas de los cuadernos manuscritos de Leonardo y nuevos descubrimientos sobre su vida y su obra, Walter Isaacson teje una narración que conecta el arte de Da Vinci con sus investigaciones científicas, y nos muestra cómo el genio del hombre más visionario de la historia nació de habilidades que todos poseemos y podemos estimular, tales como la curiosidad incansable, la observación cuidadosa y la imaginación juguetona. Su creatividad, como la de todo gran innovador, resultó de la intersección entre la tecnología y las humanidades. Despellejó y estudió el rostro de numerosos cadáveres, dibujó losmúsculos que configuran el movimiento de los labios y pintó la sonrisa más enigmática de la historia, la de la Mona Lisa. Exploró las leyes de la óptica, demostró como la luz incidía en la córnea y logró producir esa ilusión de profundidad en la Última cena.

La habilidadde Leonardo da Vinci para combinar arte y ciencia -esplendorosamente representada en el Hombre de Vitruvio- continúa siendo la regla de oro de la innovación. La apasionante vida de este gran hombre debe recordarnos la importancia de inculcar el conocimiento, pero sobre todo la voluntad contagiosa de cuestionarlo: ser imaginativos y pensar de manera diferente.

 

Leonardo da Vinci Master Draftsman

Amazon.com Review
Artist, theorist, scientist, and inventor--these words cannot capture the genius that is Leonardo DaVinci. However, curator and editor Carmen C. Bambach brings us a little closer to unlocking his mystery in Leonardo DaVinci: Mater Draftsman. The book comprises a collection of 11 essays by world-renowned Leonardo connoisseurs, along with 515 exquisite illustrations, to create a perfect balance between scholarship and aesthetics. Serving as the catalogue for the exhibition of the same name at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the book focuses on Leonardo's drawings: his studies for some of his unfinished, lost, or unrealized paintings and projects, stunning anatomical and engineering studies, 8 pages from the Codex Leicester (Leonardo's draft for a treatise on the dynamics of water), and his studies of grotesque physiognomies, which taken together, reveal the master's notion that beauty and ugliness are reciprocally enhanced by their juxtaposition. The result also sheds light on his extraordinary contribution as a draftsman "to the design process of narrative composition."
Leonardo has left us a mere handful of mostly unfinished--albeit magnificent--paintings. Yet, as Bambach explains, the quantity of his extant drawings (about 4,000 or more) is about 4 times that of the most prolific 16th-century draftsman. To be sure, it is through these drawings, along with the eloquent commentary, that Leonardo's infinite and dynamic creative power can best be glimpsed. From the whimsical to the sublime, from the scientific to the mechanical, these drawings reveal Leonardo's dependence on observation and nature, as well as his tireless use of drawing as a means to explore and express his ever-probing mind. The catalogue takes us on a chronological journey, revealing the vast influence of Leonardo's teacher Andrea Verrocchio, and subsequently shows us Leonardo's influence on his students and beyond. The beauty, power, and scope of this book are evidence that there is no end to pondering his remarkable and enigmatic genius. --Silvana Tropea


From Publishers Weekly
Leonardo da Vinci may have been "the very embodiment of the universal Renaissance genius," but he was famous for failing to complete projects and commissions; his extant paintings number not much more than a dozen. His drawings and their associated notes (currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through March 2003), therefore, are crucial to our understanding of the man as artist and polymath. As Bambach, curator of prints and drawings at the Met, notes in her introduction, critical scrutiny of Leonardo's drawings have largely "neglected issues of their technique and function." The subject is a rich one, as is the state of art-making in the Renaissance, the largely self-taught master's left-handedness, the meandering journeys his paintings and drawings took after he died and the recent findings about his Florentine patrons, as the grand heft of this immaculately produced catalogue attests. Studies such as "Leonardo's Grotesques: Originals and Copies" by Varena Forcione, a curator at the Louvre, may be daunting for Leonardo novices, but overall the essays pay clear, cogent attention topics such as the role Leonardo's notary father played in advancing his son's career, the spread of Leonardo's aesthetic innovations and the union of his scientific and artistic aptitudes. "If the artist in him often got buried by the scientific investigator," Bambach writes, "the scientist's powers of observation also immeasurably amplified the artist's powers of evocation." This is a beautiful compendium and a rich storehouse of Leonardo scholarship for both the newcomer and the art historian. 515 illus., including 333 color plates.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc
Series: Leonardo Da Vinci Master Draftsman

800 pages
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, NY; 1st edition (January 11, 2003)
Language: English

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Reseña del editor

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) stands as a supreme icon in the history of Western civilization. With much of his work lost or unfinished, the key to his legacy is without doubt to be found in the enormous body of his extant drawings and accompanying manuscript notes. Famous for their beauty and technical virtuosity, Leonardo's drawings were avidly sought by collectors even during his lifetime. This handsome book offers a unified and fascinating portrait of Leonardo as a draftsman, integrating his diverse roles as an artist, scientist, inventor, theorist, and teacher. A chronological framework is also provided in order to shed light on his extraordinary life and career. The essays and entries-written by the world's leading Leonardo scholars-survey the wide variety of drawing types that Leonardo used and also examine a small group of works by artists critical to his artistic development in Florence and to his multifaceted activity in Milan.


800 páginas
Editor: Yale University Press (18 de febrero de 2003)
Colección: Metropolitan Museum of Art Series
Idioma: Inglés

Painters of Reality The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy

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 exhibition held in Milan more than fifty years ago, is the first study in English of this major aspect of Italian art. It builds on the work of the art historian Roberto Longhi. 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 North 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 paintings 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.

Among the 136 paintings and drawings, many never before seen outside of Italy, are influential drawings by Leonardo and major paintings by Caravaggio. Other acknowledged masters in the history of European art are represented, including Lorenzo Lotto, Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, Giovanni Battista Moroni, and Giacomo Ceruti. Works also appear from significant but less widely known artists such as Sofonisba, Anguissola, Vincenzo Campi, Moretto da Brescia, and Fra' Galgario.

Painters of Reality brings together a group of scholars to illuminate why Lombard artists were influential in their own time and why they still hold appeal for modern audiences.

This catalogue is issued in conjunction with an exhibit held at the Museo Civico "Ala Ponzone," Cremona, from February 14 through May 2, 2004, and at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from May 27 through August 15, 2004.