Renaissance Man

Leonardo da Vinci 

by Walter Isaacson

“Above all, Leonardo’s relentless curiosity and experimentation should remind us of the importance of instilling, in both ourselves and our children, not just received knowledge but a willingness to question it—to be imaginative and, like talented misfits and rebels in any era, to think different.”  ― Walter Isaacson, Leonardo da Vinci





The thought and curiosity of Leonardo da Vinci is on display on every page in Walter Isaacson's masterful biography. Leading the reader like a tour guide through the many places and phases of Leonardo's life, Isaacson provides both details of the art but also context through capturing the background of the history, persons, and achievements that were experienced and made by Leonardo throughout his lengthy career.

I was impressed with Leonardo's constant creativity noted as much, if not more, in his notebooks and in his completed works; which included drawings, sculpture, paintings, and more. Present are the differences that made Leonardo unique -- his  left-handedness, his holistic views, his curiosity, and a relentless desire to know that made possible his improbable life as an artist, scientist, thinker, dreamer, and mathematician. The list of his interests is almost endless just as his curiosity was boundless. In the tradition of thinkers going back to Aristotle he revered man's desire for knowledge as seen in his statement:  "The desire to know is natural to good men."

Born out of wedlock in 1452 in the town of Vinci, he spent most of his life in Florence, Milan, and Rome, ending his days in France as a guest of the King. It was a peripatetic life premised on the primacy of sight and mind applied to the world around him in ways that seem phenomenal in retrospect and which, in spite of his successes and honors, were mitigated by his inability to finish projects. This too, impressed me as the wonders of his sketches and notes match and in some ways exceed the art he produced; art that includes "The Last Supper", the "Mona Lisa", and much more. 

Isaacson captures much of the wonder, but leaves the reader perplexed at times by his inability to truly penetrate the mind of Leonardo. The length of the text suggests a completeness that is not quite enough; perhaps no biographer could capture the totality of the magnificence of Leonardo. If ever there was an exemplar of the Renaissance Man it would be this polymath personnage from the small Italian village of Vinci.