Lives: Leonardo Da Vinci

This book completes a twenty-year quest by the author to understand an unlettered man who was a painter, architect, engineer, philosopher, mathematician and scientist. What was it that propelled Leonardo's insatiable curiosity? How could the same person, in the same moment, appear to be as naive as a child yet as profound as a sage?

There are clues in Leonardo's art, his relationships with family, patrons and lovers, his scientific research and in his famous notebooks. This authoritative and passionate insight takes us deep into the first truly modern empirical mind - one that was centuries ahead of its time.