Leonardo's Notebooks

An all-new, jewel-like, reader-friendly format gives new life to this relaunch of an international best-seller.

Leonardo da Vinci--artist, inventor, and prototypical Renaissance man--is a perennial source of fascination because of his astonishing intellect and boundless curiosity about the natural and man-made world. During his life he created numerous works of art and kept voluminous notebooks that detailed his artistic and intellectual pursuits.

The collection of writings and art in this magnificent book are drawn from his notebooks. The book organizes his wide range of interests into subjects such as human figures, light and shade, perspective and visual perception, anatomy, botany and landscape, geography, the physical sciences and astronomy, architecture, sculpture, and inventions. Nearly every piece of writing throughout the book is keyed to the piece of artwork it describes.

The writing and art is selected by art historian H. Anna Suh, who provides fascinating commentary and insight into the material, making Leonardo's Notebooks an exquisite single-volume compendium celebrating his enduring genius.

Art historian Suh has edited and shaped this splendid project: a presentation of Leonardo's notebooks that makes the Renaissance master's thoughts and drawings accessible for those unable to sift through all the 7,000 pages of his original notebooks. The volume is oversize (11x12.5 inches), so the 1,000-plus reproductions in b&w and color are easy to view in detail. The writings are selected and organized to relate to the illustrations. Readers, spared the effort of deciphering the original's right-to-left writing and cryptic abbreviations, can concentrate on the content of his thoughts. The material is arranged in sections on beauty, reason and art; observations and order; and practical matters. The index is particularly helpful for those who want to know Leonardo's thoughts: dyslexia, magnanimity, pain, the importance of sketches, or shadows on waves are just a few of the many topics he addresses. Also, for readers who want to explore a more extensive scholarship on Leonardo, the bibliography cites works in English, French, German, and Italian.
Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

A compilation of da Vinci's most fascinating studies, this monumental volume demystifies his insights and clearly illustrates his ideas, experiments, and observations with hundreds of his original sketches, line drawings, and paintings.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) possessed arguably the greatest mind the world has ever known. Artist, draftsman, inventor, and philosopher, his contributions to modern society are profound and wide-reaching. Throughout his life, Leonardo kept dozens of notebooks, elegant studies on topics ranging from architecture to botany to philosophy—indeed nearly anything of which the human imagination could conceive.

Leonardo’s Notebooks collects a variety of the most fascinating of these studies and compiles them into one monumental volume that demystifies his insights and clearly illustrates his ideas, experiments, and observations with hundreds of his original sketches, line drawings, and paintings. Topics include Anatomy and the Movement of the Human Figure; Botany and Landscape; Engineering and Military Engineering; Physical Sciences; Aerodynamics and Flight; Geography—and more.

Leonardo da Vinci is recognized as the quintessential Renaissance Man. A great painter, he was equally prodigious in the fields of architecture, engineering, anatomy, and physical science.

H. Anna Suh has a master's degree in art and archaeology from Princeton University. She was on the curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and has worked on projects for scholarly publications at the Met, New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, the Princeton University Art Museum, and Harvard University. She lives in New York City.