Fortunately, what Isaacson is able to convey of Leonardo’s personality is enthralling the genius is both undeniably intriguing and refreshingly fallible. But while he has made great use of the footprints his subject left behind, much about Leonardo’s inner-self and relationships remain opaque and mysterious. Isaacson does a commendable job assembling as complete a narrative of Leonardo’s life as may be possible given that five centuries have passed since his death. These provide the prospective biographer (or enthusiastic scholar) with with enough food for thought to last a lifetime. In addition to his paintings, more than 7,000 pages of his notebooks survive – filled with a remarkable assortment of drawings, sketches, notes, doodles and calculations. Leonardo may be best known for painting the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper but his interests were wide-ranging: from anatomy and architecture to fluid mechanics, geometry and music. “Leonardo da Vinci” is Walter Isaacson’s best-selling 2017 biography of the 15th century’s preeminent polymath and quintessential “Renaissance Man.” Isaacson is an author, journalist and professor at Tulane University who has also written biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and Henry Kissinger.
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