Product Description: Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) possessed arguably the greatest mind the world has ever known. Artist, draftsman, inventor, and philosopher, his contributions to modern society are profound and wide-reaching. Throughout his life, Leonardo kept dozens of notebooks, elegant studies on topics ranging from architecture to botany to philosophy—indeed nearly anything of which the human imagination could conceive.
Leonardo’s Notebooks collects a variety of the most fascinating of these studies and compiles them into one monumental volume that demystifies his insights and clearly illustrates his ideas, experiments, and observations with hundreds of his original sketches, line drawings, and paintings. Topics include Anatomy and the Movement of the Human Figure; Botany and Landscape; Engineering and Military Engineering; Physical Sciences; Aerodynamics and Flight; Geography—and more.
Best Version of da Vinci's Notebooks in Print Though there are nice, complete versions of Leonardo da Vinci's Notebooks, this well designed, edited, and packaged book presents the most important and pertinent elements from his Notebooks in a single large format hardcover version that is the perfect presentation for the general audience.
This version of da Vinci's Notebooks presents the contents in sections that group like illustrations and text together: "Beauty, Reason and Art" contains such content as da Vinci on painting, the human figures, and art forms; "Observations and Order" covers anatomy, geography, landscape and the sciences; and "Practical Matters" delves into da Vinci's inventions and experiments, architectural studies and metalwork, as well as sculpture.
The illustrations from the original Notebooks are exceptionally well reproduced in this book and the size and presentation are generous and the main focus throughout the book.
Unless you need access to the entirety of the Notebooks for research purposes, Leonardo's Notebooks as edited by H. Anna Suh, would make the perfect addition to your art or scientific library. It would look darn nice displayed on your coffee table as well.
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A Guide to my Book Rating System:
1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper. 2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead. 3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted. 4 stars = Good book, but not life altering. 5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.
Leonardo Up Close & Personal As an Art History professor, I am very impressed with Leonardo's Notebooks. This oversized book contains Leonardo da Vinci's detailed sketches, many of which are new to me. In addition, this book provides commentary written by the artist himself on his theories, inventions, plans for artwork, and philosopohies. I've referred this text to fellow professors as a remarkable resource for philosophical beliefs presented by the original Renaissance Man.
Very good book. The only thing keeping this book from top grade is that the author didn't help with a deduction of Leonardo's letters where it surely was needed - in the anatomical studies for example. This makes it hard to understand the meaning of the drawings compared with the translated text, because Leonardo's letters(in the drawings) doesn't look like anything from the Roman alphabet. So when the meaning of the letters that appears in the drawings are mentioned in the text, you can't understand what letters goes with what in the drawings, because the text ONLY use the Roman alphabet(and NOT Leonardo's letters as seen in the drawings).
In other words, to fully get the whole meaning of Leonardo's writings and drawings you do need a "Leonardo - Roman alphabet" dictionary. This is a major set back, and the worst is that the author could have avoided this so easily.
Other than that the book is amazing.
Ingenious Notebooks If you are a book lover, adding this to your collection is a must. The illustrations are well formatted with clearly written text. It is a book I keep on display and refer to often. When people visit, they cannot help but stop to thumb through the book.I have to remind them that dinner is getting cold!!
Great Book This is a great book that I had been looking forward to getting for a while. The images and writting is good, although a bit hard to understand at times. The ONLY problem I have with this book that gets it a 4 out of 5 stars for me is the fact that it is so tall and wide. Granted it makes looking at the pictures much easier but it also makes storage of this book MUCH harder. The book is to tall to stand on any but the top shelf on all of my book shelfs and it is so wide that it protudes from the edge of the shelf.
Don't let this distract you from getting this book however. It's detailed pictures are wonderful considering the orginal size of the works and the translations help with the reading. There's a section for each catagory, such as anatomy and lighting, which really helps if you want to look at certain types of works. The greatness of these pictures will have you looking at each page for hours, just to see all the details.
I would suggest this book for anyone from an art lover to a history fanatic. I use it as a reference book for one of my drawing classes. It's a great buy for anyone and everyone.
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