Leonardo Da Vinci by Sherwin B. Nuland

Leonardo Da Vinci: A Life by Sherwin B. Nuland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

1. What do I feel about the book overall?
The book about which I am going to give my review is titled as Leonardo Da Vinci. The author of this book is Sherwin B. Nuland. The book is published under the Penguin lives series by the Penguin publication. It is the edition of 2005. Now before I begin my review on the book I would like to give a brief introduction about the author. Mr. Nuland is a famous surgeon and is known popularly for his book How we die? The point that he is a surgeon is important to understand the overall taste of this book.
As the name suggests the book deals with the life of the legendary painter Leonardo Da Vinci. But it’s just not the collection of historical notes on Leonardo that is assembled in this book. This book is the tryst of the author to understand the anatomist in Leonardo. The author has done complete justice to describe the Leonardo in simple words and complete sense ie. He describes Leonardo’s life as painter, sculpture, architect, without deviating from the main topic of Leonardo as an anatomist.
Overall the book serves its purpose well in demonstrating the life of Leonardo in a lucid manner. In fact, the very attempt at compiling and presenting the life and works of Leonardo in an organized manner is a Herculean task. In the sense, that the person to this date is a mystery which might not be resolved for coming years. On top of that, the very nature of the subject and his varied life and varied interest made sure that no author in future will find it easy document his life in a single lucid manner. But the author has done a great job on this part.
2. The Central theme
For this review, I have structured the talk in 4 parts. First, I will talk about the main theme and the underlying principle of the book. Then next, I will talk about the parts where I feel the books could have done better to improve the overall experience. After that, I will talk about the part where book performs well and I will conclude my talk one the excerpt from the book.
Coming to the main topic, Since the author himself is a surgeon it is only natural for such a person to write about Leonardo Da Vinci on the light of his work in the field of anatomy. But to give the complete picture about the author’s hero, the author has dedicated half of the book on the timeline of events of Leonardo to demonstrate just how great his hero is. Starting from his birth in Venice to his death at Amboise and everything in between.
One fun fact that I got to learn is that although we all know Leonardo as the painter of Mona Lisa and the Last Supper and regard him as the greatest painter, he considered painting as a seer distraction from his passion of science and maths. In simple words Leonardo hated painting and this fact has been proven in the book where the author points out numerous event where Leonardo started the painting project but left it incomplete. Many of his works that we know are still incomplete for example Saint Jerome and Adoration of the Magi
Leonardo was more interested in learning about the deep secrets of nature and for that, he invested heavily in various fields of science ranging from optics, perspective, and vision to cartography, watershed management, and geology. He was also one of the earliest who had expertise in Architecture, flight, and advanced weaponry. He was one of the earliest people to view the human body in terms of mechanics, geometry, and relationship among different parts as a whole.
3. The weak points.
Now coming to the aspect where I felt the book could have done better is the picture to illustrate the works of Leonardo, especially when he was explaining the expertise of the Leonardo in drawing the human parts. Although there are few pictures like the one depicting the fetus of around 5th month in the uterus and the comparison between Leonardo’s drawing to that of Galen’s medicine from 2nd century which was prevalent at that time, more of it would only help the readers to appreciate the drawings of the Leonardo.
Nonetheless, the author has done a great deal in describing the great discovery that Leonardo has made during his adventure as an anatomist. For example, the Leonardo first worked on the geometrical aspect of the body whose finest example is the famous Vitruvian man also called the Leonardo Man. Also, he was the first person to carry out the drawing of different parts of muscles and bones with minute accuracy, which dates back 3 or 4 decades before the work of the father of anatomy Andreas Vesalius.
4. Pros of the books
The two greatest discovery by the Leonardo in anatomy are the sinuses of Valsalva which was not known to mankind until it was discovered in 1912. And the discovery about how human perceive or view objects through the eye. The working of the eye was discovered by Leonardo when he was just 30 years old and for him to accomplish this task he had to study optics, perspective, the anatomy of eye and brain all at the same time to comprehend the complete nature of image formation in human mind. He was the 1st person to suggest that the image is formed by lights converging at retina in opposite to what was believed at that time that the image was formed at the lens of the eye.
The author also shows us the other aspect of the Leonardo about which I was completely unaware. Like he was a fan of designing instruments of mass destruction. From Leonardo’s notebooks, many sketches can be found that resembles early prototypes of tanks, advanced catapults, and helicopters. At the same time, he was engaged in the study of mechanics and motion and on that note, he published the book titled “On the flight of birds”.
The book neatly divides the life of the author into chronological order and thereby describes the challenges that the hero had to face at that time to sustain himself and his passion. His 1st problem was the unstable politics of Italy. Due to this, he had to travel a various number of times in his lifetime, because of which his many original works are missing. The 2nd-second reason was his impulsive nature of leaving the commission work uncompleted due to which he had a difficult time in managing his finance to continue his pursuit in science.
Many authors and critics at that time criticized Leonardo for his incomplete work of painting and his habit of leaving his painting incomplete for his pursuit in science and natural science, but after his death, did the people recognize the importance of work done by the Leonardo in the various field where ever Leonardo has stepped in. As per the author, Leonardo “woke up too early in the darkness when everyone else was sleeping”. Had Leonardo had access to better technology or would have taken birth a century or later, mankind would have benefitted from his in-depth knowledge of science and maths.
5. Quotes
In the end, I would like to end with the line of reference from another book named The subtle art of not giving a fuck by Mark Manson. In one of his chapter, he mentions that no man is great or less. If a person excels in one field then he must be less great in another field. In that way, he was talking about the idea of balance in life. But after reading about the Leonardo, I feel that true polymath does exist on earth and such polymath contribute to humanity in a way which the earth will much. So If you are fascinated about Leonardo and want to know more about this guy then I would definitely recommend you to read this book.
I would like to end the speech with this quote of Leonardo Da Vinci on time. “In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.”
Thank you.

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