Everybody knows the picture: a man, meticulously rendered by Leonardo da
Vinci, standing with arms and legs outstretched in a circle and a
square. Deployed today to celebrate subjects as various as the grandeur
of art, the beauty of the human form, and the universality of the human
spirit, the drawing turns up just about everywhere: in books, on coffee
cups, on corporate logos, even on spacecraft. It has, in short, become
the world's most famous cultural icon—and yet almost nobody knows about
the epic intellectual journeys that led to its creation. In this modest
drawing that would one day paper the world, da Vinci attempted nothing
less than to calibrate the harmonies of the universe and understand the
central role man played in the cosmos.
Journalist and storyteller
Toby Lester brings Vitruvian Man to life, resurrecting the ghost of an
unknown Leonardo. Populated by a colorful cast of characters, including
Brunelleschi of the famous Dome, Da Vinci's Ghost opens up a
surprising window onto the artist and philosopher himself and the
tumultuous intellectual and cultural transformations he bridged. With
sparkling prose, Lester
captures the brief but momentous time in the history of western thought
when the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance, art and science and
philosophy converged as one, and all seemed to hold out the promise that
a single human mind, if properly harnessed, could grasp the nature of
everything.
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"This one started slow for me, but I loved learning everything it had to give. I loved the way the author set the time. The picture he drew of the busy Da Vinci and the importance of the human form as the center of thought form and harmony."
—
Carole (4 out of 5 stars)