Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman (New York Metropolitan Museum of Art Series) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300098782 ISBN 13: 9780300098785

Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, NY, 2003

Synopsis

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) stands as a supreme icon in the history of Western civilization. With much of his work lost or unfinished, the key to his legacy is without doubt to be found in the enormous body of his extant drawings and accompanying manuscript notes. Famous for their beauty and technical virtuosity, Leonardo’s drawings were avidly sought by collectors even during his lifetime.

This handsome book offers a unified and fascinating portrait of Leonardo as a draftsman, integrating his diverse roles as an artist, scientist, inventor, theorist, and teacher. A chronological framework is also provided in order to shed light on his extraordinary life and career. The essays and entries―written by the world’s leading Leonardo scholars―survey the wide variety of drawing types that Leonardo used and also examine a small group of works by artists critical to his artistic development in Florence and to his multifaceted activity in Milan.


Published in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art

About this title

About the Author

Carmen C. Bambach is Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Reviews

Leonardo da Vinci may have been "the very embodiment of the universal Renaissance genius," but he was famous for failing to complete projects and commissions; his extant paintings number not much more than a dozen. His drawings and their associated notes (currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through March 2003), therefore, are crucial to our understanding of the man as artist and polymath. As Bambach, curator of prints and drawings at the Met, notes in her introduction, critical scrutiny of Leonardo's drawings have largely "neglected issues of their technique and function." The subject is a rich one, as is the state of art-making in the Renaissance, the largely self-taught master's left-handedness, the meandering journeys his paintings and drawings took after he died and the recent findings about his Florentine patrons, as the grand heft of this immaculately produced catalogue attests. Studies such as "Leonardo's Grotesques: Originals and Copies" by Varena Forcione, a curator at the Louvre, may be daunting for Leonardo novices, but overall the essays pay clear, cogent attention topics such as the role Leonardo's notary father played in advancing his son's career, the spread of Leonardo's aesthetic innovations and the union of his scientific and artistic aptitudes. "If the artist in him often got buried by the scientific investigator," Bambach writes, "the scientist's powers of observation also immeasurably amplified the artist's powers of evocation." This is a beautiful compendium and a rich storehouse of Leonardo scholarship for both the newcomer and the art historian. 515 illus., including 333 color plates.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A house could be built out of all the books that have been written about the protean genius Leonardo, yet this volume is unique in its in-depth inquiry into the creation, content, and significance of his drawings, and in its glorious array of more than 500 superb reproductions. Bambach, a drawings and print curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, site of the unprecedented comprehensive international-loan exhibition on which this volume is based, observes that because Leonardo finished relatively few major projects, his legacy consists primarily of his drawings, of which some 4,000 survive, treasured for their "beauty and technical virtuosity." And then there are the notebooks, a mind-boggling wealth of material reflecting the phenomenal achievements of this largely self-taught, endlessly curious, and avidly observant "artist, author, scientist, inventor, theorist, and teacher." Adopting a chronological approach, Bambach and her impressive slate of contributors explore the synergy generated by Leonardo's many passions and consider such aspects of his work as the consequences of his left-handedness and the influence of his patrons. A milestone in Leonardo studies and in art publishing. Donna Seaman
Copyright İ American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, NY
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300098782
• ISBN 13: 9780300098785
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 800
• Editor: Carmen C. Bambach