Leonardo Da Vinci: The 100 Milestones

(Hardback)

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To commemorate the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death, world-renowned da Vinci expert Martin Kemp explores 100 of the master's milestones in art, science, engineering, architecture, anatomy, and more.

Leonardo da Vinci was born in the small Tuscan town of Vinci in April 1452. Over the centuries, he has become one of the most famous people in the history of visual culture. Spring 2019 marks the 500th anniversary of his death in May 1519, with exhibitions and events planned across Europe and the United States. This lavishly illustrated volume by Martin Kemp one of the world's leading authorities on da Vinci offers a fresh way of looking at the master's work. Kemp focuses on 100 key, broadly chronological milestones that cover an extraordinary range of topic across Leonardo's many fields of discipline: painting, where he brought new levels of formal and emotional grandeur to his works, includingThe Last SupperandPortrait of Lisa del Giocondo(the 'Mona Lisa'); anatomical studies, which are extraordinary for their sense of form and function (Studies of the Optics of the Human EyeandVentricles of the Brain); engineering marvels, noted for their range and extraordinary visual quality (Gearing for a Clockwork Mechanism and Wheels without AxlesandDesigns for a Flying Machine); and his progressive engagement with a range of sciences anatomy, optics, dynamics, statics, geology, and mathematics.

Reviews

Kemp sheds fascinating light on Leonardos scientific, specifically anatomical sketches. The fine-lined, painstakingly intricate Studies of the Fetus in the Womb and of the Placenta and Demonstration of the Irrigation Systems of a Female Body, for instance, showcase a wholly novel ... diagrammatic technique, not to mention the left-handed da Vincis idiosyncratic mirrored writing style: He wrote right to left. They also betray that this pre-eminent student of exteriors and man-made inventions also harbored a profound and at the time quite avant-garde obsession with human interiority. Given that his name will forever be synonymous with the Mona Lisa considered by many to be the worlds most famous picture, says Kemp its worth noting that Leonardos prolific, nearly five-decade oeuvre included only 20 paintings at most. The New York Times
Kemp sheds fascinating light on Leonardos scientific, specifically anatomical sketches. The fine-lined, painstakingly intricate Studies of the Fetus in the Womb and of the Placenta and Demonstration of the Irrigation Systems of a Female Body, for instance, showcase a wholly novel ... diagrammatic technique, not to mention the left-handed da Vincis idiosyncratic mirrored writing style: He wrote right to left. They also betray that this pre-eminent student of exteriors and man-made inventions also harbored a profound and at the time quite avant-garde obsession with human interiority. Given that his name will forever be synonymous with the Mona Lisa considered by many to be the worlds most famous picture, says Kemp its worth noting that Leonardos prolific, nearly five-decade oeuvre included only 20 paintings at most. The New York Times

Author Bio

Martin Kemp, Emeritus Research Professor in the History of Art at Oxford University, is one of the worlds leading experts on Leonardo da Vinci. His books include the acclaimed biography Leonardoda Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature (Oxford University Press) and Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting (OUP, cowritten with Giuseppe Pallanti). His most recent work is Living with Leonardo: Fifty Years of Sanity and Insanity in the Art World and Beyond (Thames & Hudson), and he has written for Nature for more than 10 years. Hes curated a series of exhibitions on Leonardo and other themes, including the London shows Spectacular Bodies at the Hayward Gallery; Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum; and Seduced: Sex and Art from Antiquity to Now at the Barbican. He was also guest curator for Circa 1492 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1992. Kemp is currently working on a new edition of Leonardos Codex Leicester, his most important scientific manuscript, purchased by Bill Gates in 1994. Kemp lives in Oxford, UK.