Book description
Vitruvian Man is the world's most famous drawing, by one of the world's
most famous artists. The image - named after a Roman architect and
engineer, Vitruvius - has become visual shorthand for artistic genius
and scientific inquiry, and yet nobody knows anything about it. In Da
Vinci's Ghost, critically acclaimed historian Toby Lester examines the
forces that converged in 1490 to turn an idea that had been around for
centuries into this image, and bring the ghost of an unknown Leonardo da
Vinci back to life. Rooted in little-known episodes of the artist's
colourful career, and taking in ideas including theories of the cosmos,
Roman land-surveying and the relationship between anatomy and
architecture, the book tells the story of his evolving, lifelong study
of the human body, restoring in vivid detail the intellectual and
cultural spheres of fifteenth-century Florence and Milan. Beautifully
illustrated with da Vinci's drawings and those of his predecessors, Da
Vinci's Ghost is both a personal story and a grand saga of intellectual
discovery that brilliantly reconstructs the artistry and scholarship of
one of history's greatest creative minds. "'In reconstructing the
forgotten story of Vitruvian Man, Toby Lester, a canny decoder of images
and a great storyteller, sheds new light on the enigmatic Leonardo da
Vinci.' (Chris Anderson, editor, Wired) 'Like Da Vinci's famous drawing,
Toby Lester's book is a small wonder-a work of brilliant compression
that illuminates a whole world of life and thought.' (Cullen Murphy,
editor at large, Vanity Fair)" Vitruvian Man is the world's most
famous drawing, by one of the world's most famous artists. The image -
named after a Roman architect and engineer, Vitruvius - has become
visual shorthand for artistic genius and scientific inquiry, and yet
nobody knows anything about it. In Da Vinci's Ghost, critically
acclaimed historian Toby Lester examines the forces that converged in
1490 to turn an idea that had been around for centuries into this image,
and bring the ghost of an unknown Leonardo da Vinci back to life. Rooted
in little-known episodes of the artist's colourful career, and taking in
ideas including theories of the cosmos, Roman land-surveying and the
relationship between anatomy and architecture, the book tells the story
of his evolving, lifelong study of the human body, restoring in vivid
detail the intellectual and cultural spheres of fifteenth-century
Florence and Milan. Beautifully illustrated with da Vinci's drawings and
those of his predecessors, Da Vinci's Ghost is both a personal story and
a grand saga of intellectual discovery that brilliantly reconstructs the
artistry and scholarship of one of history's greatest creative minds.
