Patrons might find his failures to complete a commission exasperating, just as we may share their regrets at the perfectionism which made it difficult for him to bring a work of art to a successful conclusion, but contemporaries generally had no doubts about the genius of Leonardo da Vinci.Naturally, in that era of classical revival, he was often compared with the great scholars of ancient Greece,with Archimedes, Pythagoras, and most of all,perhaps, with Plato, whose figure in Raphael’s famous painting of the School of Athens is generally believed to be modelled on the venerable Leonardo.

Patrons might find his failures to complete a commission exasperating, just as we may share their regrets at the perfectionism which made it difficult for him to bring a work of art to a successful conclusion, but contemporaries generally had no doubts about the genius of Leonardo da Vinci.Naturally, in that era of classical revival, he was often compared with the great scholars of ancient Greece,with Archimedes, Pythagoras, and most of all,perhaps, with Plato, whose figure in Raphael’s famous painting of the School of Athens is generally believed to be modelled on the venerable Leonardo.

The life and work of Leonardo, the archetypical ’Renaissance Man’ for whom no branch of knowledge was allowed to remain a closed book, has proved endlessly fascinating to later generations. At one time he was known only as a painter, although many of his works were unknown and a number of inferior works by other hands were wrongly attributed to him. The full, amazing extent of his genius emerged only in quite recent times with the rediscovery of his notebooks and drawings. For a time, even Leonardo the painter seemed to be submerged by the weight of his new reputation as a scientist. Some readjustment has taken place since then. As a scientist and engineer, Leonardo’s achievements, though staggering enough, have proved to be a shade less novel than once we thought, while at the same time a succession of brilliant art historians, beginning with Bernhard Berenson and Kenneth Clark, have made us far more knowledgeable about his art. Though Leonardo would have jibbed at such a judgment, he was and is, first and foremost, a great painter, a man whose output was tiny compared with other g, eniuses of his time (a Michelangelo, a Raphael, a Titian) yet includes possibly the two most famous paintings in history, the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper.

Introduction

Chapter One

The Early Years 1452-69 16

Chapter Two

Florence 1469--82 28

Chapter Three

The Early Works 1473-82 64

Chapter FOUR

Milan 1482-99 118

Chapter Five

Plans and Projects 1482-99 164

Chapter Six

Travels 1499-1505 264

Chapter Seven

Art and Anatomy 1502-08 324

Chapter Eight

Milan 1508-13 358

Chapter Nine

Rome 1513--16 376

Chapter Ten

Amboise 1516-19 410

Giorgio Vasari:

Life of Leonardo da Vinci 422

Enduring Icons 430

Index 434