Book 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.
Customer Reviews:
Great Book.......2007-09-16
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.
Excellent.......2007-08-21
Not one single problem with this book, I would recomend buying it for anyone anytime
Just what I wanted.......2007-06-27
I have always wanted a book just with Leonardo's sketches and annotation. Printed on beautiful paper and in great detail. This is a wonderful book, that I will draw much inspiration from.
Noteworthy notebooks.......2007-02-23
If you enjoy researching from old documents, you will enjoy this book. It isn't an easy read, however, if you're looking for just an armchair novel. Leonardo had his opinions on many subjects, and wrote fairly technically. The drawings are wonderful, as you might expect, and the diversity of subjects gives the reader a glimpse into his wide range of interests.
Gift.......2007-01-15
This was a Christmas gift for my father. He liked the background detail and all the glossy pages of artwork.
Average customer rating:
- The first Renaissance man
- Volume 1 is ok. Volume is NO (if you are an artist)!
- Not Great
- The Renaissance man of Renaissance men at work
- ok, worth it cuz its cheap
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The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (Oxford World's Classics)
Leonardo da Vinci
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Leonardo Drawings (Dover Art Library)
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Leonardo's Notebooks
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Michelangelo Life Drawings (Dover Art Library)
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Leonardo da Vinci : Flights of the Mind: A Biography
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Leonardo's Machines: Da Vinci's Inventions Revealed
ASIN: 0192838970 |
Customer Reviews:
The first Renaissance man.......2006-12-17
Nothing of Leonardo DAVinci's sketchbooks were published until the 20th century. These are some of the most important documents of the Renaissance, and they did not become known until the 20th century. There are still people who do not know how important this work was. His anatomical studies were a watershed moment, because they introduced visual diagrams as the standard for communicating knowledge of the body and self. This was no more and no less than the conviction that the true knowledge of the shape of any body could only be arrived at by seeing it from different aspects. The truth of the body, the truth of the human being can only be discovered by looking at the body from multiple aspects, like; level, motion, perspective, transformation and growth. He opened up the body, it had always been closed, now its open. Now, what goes on inside the body is going to give us the essence of what it means to be human. It is the internal struggle, the self with the self, within .you. When you look at his sketchbooks, you see just one place where the whole world opens up.
Leonardo DAVinci-- Leonardo DAVinci invented the modern self. He invented the modern self precisely in this way, through the perspective of disappearance. What he tells reality and us about the self is that it only exists by that which is perceived by the eye. Reality is a product of nature; reality is that which we perceive by the eye. Reality is only that by which we can see. Moreover, in his notebooks he gives us another foundational belief about the human subject and its form. That the sound rules are the issue of sound experience and observation. Experience and observation can only be our best teacher. Of course, this is also, what Voltaire is telling us to by the way. The challenge comes when we realize that we are both to the subject observing and the object that is observed. In our search for self, we experience a kind of division between our constitutions as objects and our constitution as subjects. However, when we look at the human form, when we look at the self we find that the body is in harmony with nature, and that it is in harmony within nature. How does DA Vinci make these kinds of claims? Alternatively, how does he ground these kinds of claims with the function of the eye or the power of the eye? Well, one of the ways he does it is thru the camera obscura. Earliest record of use of camera obscura is in DA Vinci's writings. The camera obscura gave birth to the science of optics, the science of seeing. It is with DA Vinci, that the science of seeing became the foundation of self-representation, a representation called the self, thus the representation of the human form. Now DA Vinci embodied his own concept of the painter, as philosophers. He saw painters principally as natural philosophers. To him, nature was all important, absolute, the image of the eternal. In one very significant passage of his notebooks, he defines the relationship of art to nature and its process of evolution. "The painter will produce pictures of small merit, if he takes for his standard the pictures of others. If he will study from natural objects, he will bear good fruit, as was seen in the painters after the Romans always imitating each other until their art constantly declined from age to age. Therefore, this was paramount for him in some ways what he was doing, and thinking was very radical and revolutionary and in other ways, it was very traditional. He appears to be quite a traditionalist, he studied ancient sources, Greeks, medieval sources, he studied anatomy, and these traditions get him to compare the microcosm of the body and the macrocosm of the world. These analogies extend to everything that he attempted to trace, to record and to know about the human form. Comparisons between the arteries in the body and the underground rivers of the earth. The flow of blood to the head in relation to the circulation of water to the summits of mountains. How does blood get to your head? If you want to understand that then understand how water flows up to mountains. Blood when it bursts in the veins of your nose and water rushing out of a vein in the earth. Almost everything that occurs in the human body can be found in the natural world. His interest in these analogies becomes very evident in the notebooks and sketchbooks. Scholars argue that these microcosm and macrocosm analogies are more than outright comparisons that belong to a pre scientific age, they lead him to compare the study of the body and Ptolemy's study of the earth. Consequently to use Ptolemy's method in the geography as the starting point for his own systematic study of anatomy. Therefore, anatomy and geography here become one in DA Vinci's mind. The forms of the earth and those of the human body have a parallel. "Thus in 15 entire figures you will have set before you the microcosm on the same plan as was before me adapted by Ptolemy in his cosmology, and so I shall afterwards divide them into limbs as he divided the whole world into processes. Then, I will speak of the function of each part in every direction putting before your eyes a description of the whole form and substance of man as regards his movements from place to place by means of these different parts. Thus if it please our great author I may demonstrate the nature of men and their customs in a way I describe this figure." Therefore, within the human form and within the kind of intricate details of human anatomy he discovered a way of describing and recording, not only the geographical construction of the natural world, but of Divinity itself. And when you look more closely at the system he devised to study the body, the more carefully you look at his drawings of the human form the more clearly you begin to recognize how strikingly stunningly original it is.
Earlier authors had relied exclusively on verbal descriptions of the human body. The human body had been a verbal entity but he emphasis visual description and some of the illustrations he has to bring visual dimensions to the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle the descriptions put forward by these men he presents in visual terms in these kind of body scapes. In the course of 20 years, roughly from 1489 to the end of his life, he dissected about 19 corpses and became very much obsessed with dissection. He drew these parts of bodies in minute detail every part of the human anatomy, he would draw each piece separately, together and at different angles. He laid out bodies in his drawings to mime classical poses in painting. He is referencing the history of art with the poses and the visual representation of the human subject. It is presented to us that deeply challenge these values of human nature, of life and death of living form and the cadaver it really raises some profound questions. The problem is in order to get to those questions, in order to explore some of the deeper philosophical implications of his work you have to get past the gross factor and the moral and ethical questions that his work raises. He is an artist that works very consciously with the sense of the ethical lines that he is crossing; he is not an artist that wants to make you comfortable. He sees that blood gets in the way of his observations, so he advises that you make a model of the body part and then you draw it. Model making and scientific art go hand in hand for him. You have to reconstruct reality before you can represent it. Therefore, before you can draw what is real you have to make it yourself. One of the most striking features of the notebooks is the manner in which he presents his work to us. There are no criticisms of the shortcomings that he has discovered in earlier authors, he does not boast about his own accomplishments, his writing style is pedagogical, and he is writing a teaching manual with descriptions and advice. Therefore, if you want to draw a lung, here is how you should do it. What he is trying to do is to convey to a larger audience this method of presentation and by representing human form, he relies on diagrams, and his reliance apparently causes some serious problems for the printing presses of the day. It also caused real issues for publishers because of the graphic nature of the work.
This was very important for medicine. He shows us we can separate human emotions and passions from the human body in understanding human form, and what it means to be human. There is a purely clinical dimension and this other dimension of feelings and emotions, and they do not have to come together at all, this is radical.
Thus again, this inside outside, you see it everywhere in his work. Why are we fascinated with the painting of the Mona Lisa? Because of the question we always ask, what is going on inside? The study of the Mona Lisa, it seems to me has always been organized around precisely the question that drove DA Vinci in his research. All his sketches in this obsessive and fanatical devotion to drawing every part of the body in relationship to every other part of the body at multiple levels and multiple perspectives and in motion, outside inside. There is the outside, what is going on inside, isn't that why we are obsessed with this? This painting just demands that we try to find out what is going on underneath. The truth is underneath, behind her smile, something she is keeping from us. Yet she is revealing just enough of it to make us have to find out what is going on inside of her. It is that relationship once again between the inside and the outside.
I read this book for a graduate class in the Humanities. Recommended reading for anyone interested in history, psychology, philosophy, art, and science.
Volume 1 is ok. Volume is NO (if you are an artist)!.......2006-03-15
I was hoping that after getting these books, I would learn some secret in art making from the great one, but I found them book very disappointing. Tons of texts and very few explanation.
However, the first volume is worth buying because it's about his drawing and painting theory. Beware they are very advance and i found them very confusing.
The second volume has nothing to do with art but rather pure science (Astronamy, sun, etc).
Not Great.......2005-11-03
Inexpensive, but the image quality is terrible, in some cases completely illegible and dark.
The Renaissance man of Renaissance men at work .......2005-01-09
Leonardo's curiosity and inventiveness are on display throughout this work. I cannot judge the quality of the translation , or how good the Richter edition of the Notebooks is. I can say that this is a tremendous amount of interesting observation and thought regarding the subjects from anatomy to perspective in painting, questions of architecture and aeronautics, that concern the Renaissance Man of Renaissance Men. All of this is in a way too much for another mind certainly one like my own who simply does not know anything about many of the areas Leonardo was interested in to real take in. But I think every person who takes an interest in the human mind and the way it works, in creativity and genius would do well to have and read these works.
ok, worth it cuz its cheap.......2003-09-05
This book is worth the money 'cuz its so cheap. The reproducions arent really that good, and there are some problems of provenance: the cover drawing attributed to Leonardo, but it is by his master/teacher Verrocchio.
Customer Reviews:
The first Renaissance man.......2006-12-17
Nothing of Leonardo DAVinci's sketchbooks were published until the 20th century. These are some of the most important documents of the Renaissance, and they did not become known until the 20th century. There are still people who do not know how important this work was. His anatomical studies were a watershed moment, because they introduced visual diagrams as the standard for communicating knowledge of the body and self. This was no more and no less than the conviction that the true knowledge of the shape of any body could only be arrived at by seeing it from different aspects. The truth of the body, the truth of the human being can only be discovered by looking at the body from multiple aspects, like; level, motion, perspective, transformation and growth. He opened up the body, it had always been closed, now its open. Now, what goes on inside the body is going to give us the essence of what it means to be human. It is the internal struggle, the self with the self, within .you. When you look at his sketchbooks, you see just one place where the whole world opens up.
Leonardo DAVinci-- Leonardo DAVinci invented the modern self. He invented the modern self precisely in this way, through the perspective of disappearance. What he tells reality and us about the self is that it only exists by that which is perceived by the eye. Reality is a product of nature; reality is that which we perceive by the eye. Reality is only that by which we can see. Moreover, in his notebooks he gives us another foundational belief about the human subject and its form. That the sound rules are the issue of sound experience and observation. Experience and observation can only be our best teacher. Of course, this is also, what Voltaire is telling us to by the way. The challenge comes when we realize that we are both to the subject observing and the object that is observed. In our search for self, we experience a kind of division between our constitutions as objects and our constitution as subjects. However, when we look at the human form, when we look at the self we find that the body is in harmony with nature, and that it is in harmony within nature. How does DA Vinci make these kinds of claims? Alternatively, how does he ground these kinds of claims with the function of the eye or the power of the eye? Well, one of the ways he does it is thru the camera obscura. Earliest record of use of camera obscura is in DA Vinci's writings. The camera obscura gave birth to the science of optics, the science of seeing. It is with DA Vinci, that the science of seeing became the foundation of self-representation, a representation called the self, thus the representation of the human form. Now DA Vinci embodied his own concept of the painter, as philosophers. He saw painters principally as natural philosophers. To him, nature was all important, absolute, the image of the eternal. In one very significant passage of his notebooks, he defines the relationship of art to nature and its process of evolution. "The painter will produce pictures of small merit, if he takes for his standard the pictures of others. If he will study from natural objects, he will bear good fruit, as was seen in the painters after the Romans always imitating each other until their art constantly declined from age to age. Therefore, this was paramount for him in some ways what he was doing, and thinking was very radical and revolutionary and in other ways, it was very traditional. He appears to be quite a traditionalist, he studied ancient sources, Greeks, medieval sources, he studied anatomy, and these traditions get him to compare the microcosm of the body and the macrocosm of the world. These analogies extend to everything that he attempted to trace, to record and to know about the human form. Comparisons between the arteries in the body and the underground rivers of the earth. The flow of blood to the head in relation to the circulation of water to the summits of mountains. How does blood get to your head? If you want to understand that then understand how water flows up to mountains. Blood when it bursts in the veins of your nose and water rushing out of a vein in the earth. Almost everything that occurs in the human body can be found in the natural world. His interest in these analogies becomes very evident in the notebooks and sketchbooks. Scholars argue that these microcosm and macrocosm analogies are more than outright comparisons that belong to a pre scientific age, they lead him to compare the study of the body and Ptolemy's study of the earth. Consequently to use Ptolemy's method in the geography as the starting point for his own systematic study of anatomy. Therefore, anatomy and geography here become one in DA Vinci's mind. The forms of the earth and those of the human body have a parallel. "Thus in 15 entire figures you will have set before you the microcosm on the same plan as was before me adapted by Ptolemy in his cosmology, and so I shall afterwards divide them into limbs as he divided the whole world into processes. Then, I will speak of the function of each part in every direction putting before your eyes a description of the whole form and substance of man as regards his movements from place to place by means of these different parts. Thus if it please our great author I may demonstrate the nature of men and their customs in a way I describe this figure." Therefore, within the human form and within the kind of intricate details of human anatomy he discovered a way of describing and recording, not only the geographical construction of the natural world, but of Divinity itself. And when you look more closely at the system he devised to study the body, the more carefully you look at his drawings of the human form the more clearly you begin to recognize how strikingly stunningly original it is.
Earlier authors had relied exclusively on verbal descriptions of the human body. The human body had been a verbal entity but he emphasis visual description and some of the illustrations he has to bring visual dimensions to the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle the descriptions put forward by these men he presents in visual terms in these kind of body scapes. In the course of 20 years, roughly from 1489 to the end of his life, he dissected about 19 corpses and became very much obsessed with dissection. He drew these parts of bodies in minute detail every part of the human anatomy, he would draw each piece separately, together and at different angles. He laid out bodies in his drawings to mime classical poses in painting. He is referencing the history of art with the poses and the visual representation of the human subject. It is presented to us that deeply challenge these values of human nature, of life and death of living form and the cadaver it really raises some profound questions. The problem is in order to get to those questions, in order to explore some of the deeper philosophical implications of his work you have to get past the gross factor and the moral and ethical questions that his work raises. He is an artist that works very consciously with the sense of the ethical lines that he is crossing; he is not an artist that wants to make you comfortable. He sees that blood gets in the way of his observations, so he advises that you make a model of the body part and then you draw it. Model making and scientific art go hand in hand for him. You have to reconstruct reality before you can represent it. Therefore, before you can draw what is real you have to make it yourself. One of the most striking features of the notebooks is the manner in which he presents his work to us. There are no criticisms of the shortcomings that he has discovered in earlier authors, he does not boast about his own accomplishments, his writing style is pedagogical, and he is writing a teaching manual with descriptions and advice. Therefore, if you want to draw a lung, here is how you should do it. What he is trying to do is to convey to a larger audience this method of presentation and by representing human form, he relies on diagrams, and his reliance apparently causes some serious problems for the printing presses of the day. It also caused real issues for publishers because of the graphic nature of the work.
This was very important for medicine. He shows us we can separate human emotions and passions from the human body in understanding human form, and what it means to be human. There is a purely clinical dimension and this other dimension of feelings and emotions, and they do not have to come together at all, this is radical.
Thus again, this inside outside, you see it everywhere in his work. Why are we fascinated with the painting of the Mona Lisa? Because of the question we always ask, what is going on inside? The study of the Mona Lisa, it seems to me has always been organized around precisely the question that drove DA Vinci in his research. All his sketches in this obsessive and fanatical devotion to drawing every part of the body in relationship to every other part of the body at multiple levels and multiple perspectives and in motion, outside inside. There is the outside, what is going on inside, isn't that why we are obsessed with this? This painting just demands that we try to find out what is going on underneath. The truth is underneath, behind her smile, something she is keeping from us. Yet she is revealing just enough of it to make us have to find out what is going on inside of her. It is that relationship once again between the inside and the outside.
I read this book for a graduate class in the Humanities. Recommended reading for anyone interested in history, psychology, philosophy, art, and science.
Average customer rating:
- The first Renaissance man
- Da Vinci where to begin and end
- Embraces all aspects of his creations, from art to science, medicine, music and even urban planning
|
The Da Vinci Notebooks
Leonardo Da Vinci
Manufacturer: Arcade Publishing
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Binding: Hardcover
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Da Vinci, Leonardo
| ( D-F )
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General
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| Arts & Photography
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General
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Similar Items:
-
Leonardo's Notebooks
-
Leonardo da Vinci : Flights of the Mind: A Biography
-
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (Oxford World's Classics)
ASIN: 1559707992 |
Book Description
Towering across time as the painter of the Mona Lisa, forever famous as a sculptor and inventor, Leonardo da Vinci was one of the greatest minds of both the Italian Renaissance and Western civilization. Dan Browns The Da Vinci Code and recent in-depth biographies have stimulated renewed interest in da Vinci and his complex and inquiring intelligence. This brand-new selection of sketches, diagrams, and writings from his notebooks is a beautiful and varied record of da Vincis theories and observations, embracing not only art but also architecture, town planning, engineering, naval warfare, music, medicine, mathematics, science, and philosophy. The notebooksa treasure trove of unparalleled ingenuity, curiosity, and creative energyhave inspired readers for centuries. This new selection is the perfect introduction to the mysteries of da Vinci.
Customer Reviews:
The first Renaissance man.......2006-12-17
Nothing of Leonardo DAVinci's sketchbooks were published until the 20th century. These are some of the most important documents of the Renaissance, and they did not become known until the 20th century. There are still people who do not know how important this work was. His anatomical studies were a watershed moment, because they introduced visual diagrams as the standard for communicating knowledge of the body and self. This was no more and no less than the conviction that the true knowledge of the shape of any body could only be arrived at by seeing it from different aspects. The truth of the body, the truth of the human being can only be discovered by looking at the body from multiple aspects, like; level, motion, perspective, transformation and growth. He opened up the body, it had always been closed, now its open. Now, what goes on inside the body is going to give us the essence of what it means to be human. It is the internal struggle, the self with the self, within .you. When you look at his sketchbooks, you see just one place where the whole world opens up.
Leonardo DAVinci-- Leonardo DAVinci invented the modern self. He invented the modern self precisely in this way, through the perspective of disappearance. What he tells reality and us about the self is that it only exists by that which is perceived by the eye. Reality is a product of nature; reality is that which we perceive by the eye. Reality is only that by which we can see. Moreover, in his notebooks he gives us another foundational belief about the human subject and its form. That the sound rules are the issue of sound experience and observation. Experience and observation can only be our best teacher. Of course, this is also, what Voltaire is telling us to by the way. The challenge comes when we realize that we are both to the subject observing and the object that is observed. In our search for self, we experience a kind of division between our constitutions as objects and our constitution as subjects. However, when we look at the human form, when we look at the self we find that the body is in harmony with nature, and that it is in harmony within nature. How does DA Vinci make these kinds of claims? Alternatively, how does he ground these kinds of claims with the function of the eye or the power of the eye? Well, one of the ways he does it is thru the camera obscura. Earliest record of use of camera obscura is in DA Vinci's writings. The camera obscura gave birth to the science of optics, the science of seeing. It is with DA Vinci, that the science of seeing became the foundation of self-representation, a representation called the self, thus the representation of the human form. Now DA Vinci embodied his own concept of the painter, as philosophers. He saw painters principally as natural philosophers. To him, nature was all important, absolute, the image of the eternal. In one very significant passage of his notebooks, he defines the relationship of art to nature and its process of evolution. "The painter will produce pictures of small merit, if he takes for his standard the pictures of others. If he will study from natural objects, he will bear good fruit, as was seen in the painters after the Romans always imitating each other until their art constantly declined from age to age. Therefore, this was paramount for him in some ways what he was doing, and thinking was very radical and revolutionary and in other ways, it was very traditional. He appears to be quite a traditionalist, he studied ancient sources, Greeks, medieval sources, he studied anatomy, and these traditions get him to compare the microcosm of the body and the macrocosm of the world. These analogies extend to everything that he attempted to trace, to record and to know about the human form. Comparisons between the arteries in the body and the underground rivers of the earth. The flow of blood to the head in relation to the circulation of water to the summits of mountains. How does blood get to your head? If you want to understand that then understand how water flows up to mountains. Blood when it bursts in the veins of your nose and water rushing out of a vein in the earth. Almost everything that occurs in the human body can be found in the natural world. His interest in these analogies becomes very evident in the notebooks and sketchbooks. Scholars argue that these microcosm and macrocosm analogies are more than outright comparisons that belong to a pre scientific age, they lead him to compare the study of the body and Ptolemy's study of the earth. Consequently to use Ptolemy's method in the geography as the starting point for his own systematic study of anatomy. Therefore, anatomy and geography here become one in DA Vinci's mind. The forms of the earth and those of the human body have a parallel. "Thus in 15 entire figures you will have set before you the microcosm on the same plan as was before me adapted by Ptolemy in his cosmology, and so I shall afterwards divide them into limbs as he divided the whole world into processes. Then, I will speak of the function of each part in every direction putting before your eyes a description of the whole form and substance of man as regards his movements from place to place by means of these different parts. Thus if it please our great author I may demonstrate the nature of men and their customs in a way I describe this figure." Therefore, within the human form and within the kind of intricate details of human anatomy he discovered a way of describing and recording, not only the geographical construction of the natural world, but of Divinity itself. And when you look more closely at the system he devised to study the body, the more carefully you look at his drawings of the human form the more clearly you begin to recognize how strikingly stunningly original it is.
Earlier authors had relied exclusively on verbal descriptions of the human body. The human body had been a verbal entity but he emphasis visual description and some of the illustrations he has to bring visual dimensions to the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle the descriptions put forward by these men he presents in visual terms in these kind of body scapes. In the course of 20 years, roughly from 1489 to the end of his life, he dissected about 19 corpses and became very much obsessed with dissection. He drew these parts of bodies in minute detail every part of the human anatomy, he would draw each piece separately, together and at different angles. He laid out bodies in his drawings to mime classical poses in painting. He is referencing the history of art with the poses and the visual representation of the human subject. It is presented to us that deeply challenge these values of human nature, of life and death of living form and the cadaver it really raises some profound questions. The problem is in order to get to those questions, in order to explore some of the deeper philosophical implications of his work you have to get past the gross factor and the moral and ethical questions that his work raises. He is an artist that works very consciously with the sense of the ethical lines that he is crossing; he is not an artist that wants to make you comfortable. He sees that blood gets in the way of his observations, so he advises that you make a model of the body part and then you draw it. Model making and scientific art go hand in hand for him. You have to reconstruct reality before you can represent it. Therefore, before you can draw what is real you have to make it yourself. One of the most striking features of the notebooks is the manner in which he presents his work to us. There are no criticisms of the shortcomings that he has discovered in earlier authors, he does not boast about his own accomplishments, his writing style is pedagogical, and he is writing a teaching manual with descriptions and advice. Therefore, if you want to draw a lung, here is how you should do it. What he is trying to do is to convey to a larger audience this method of presentation and by representing human form, he relies on diagrams, and his reliance apparently causes some serious problems for the printing presses of the day. It also caused real issues for publishers because of the graphic nature of the work.
This was very important for medicine. He shows us we can separate human emotions and passions from the human body in understanding human form, and what it means to be human. There is a purely clinical dimension and this other dimension of feelings and emotions, and they do not have to come together at all, this is radical.
Thus again, this inside outside, you see it everywhere in his work. Why are we fascinated with the painting of the Mona Lisa? Because of the question we always ask, what is going on inside? The study of the Mona Lisa, it seems to me has always been organized around precisely the question that drove DA Vinci in his research. All his sketches in this obsessive and fanatical devotion to drawing every part of the body in relationship to every other part of the body at multiple levels and multiple perspectives and in motion, outside inside. There is the outside, what is going on inside, isn't that why we are obsessed with this? This painting just demands that we try to find out what is going on underneath. The truth is underneath, behind her smile, something she is keeping from us. Yet she is revealing just enough of it to make us have to find out what is going on inside of her. It is that relationship once again between the inside and the outside.
I read this book for a graduate class in the Humanities. Recommended reading for anyone interested in history, psychology, philosophy, art, and science.
Da Vinci where to begin and end.......2006-09-29
His all inspiring nature seems to outlive time.
My only probably with this book is the repeated assumption that he was gay. First of all who cares, second of all no one really knows aside from his paintings of gentlemen and the such. I feel the book would be stronger without Emma Dickens assumptions of his sexuality. If you wanna give us the facts, then gives us the facts. The main problem with any book like this, when talking about one of the great masters, is that they feel the need to try and juice things up with unproven facts about them as if they were a screenplay for a movie that isn't quite exciting enough. And I definitely don't think that Da Vinci's story from his own writings scarcely needs assumptions like that to intrigue a reader.
Other then that, what can one say that hasn't been said before about Da Vinci!
Embraces all aspects of his creations, from art to science, medicine, music and even urban planning.......2006-05-22
The new collection of writings, sketches and diagrams from Da Vinci's notebooks embraces all aspects of his creations, from art to science, medicine, music and even urban planning. This new edition includes an essay on his life by Emma Dickens and is published to coincide with the film of THE DA VINCI CODE on May 19th.
Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch
Book Description
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) is widely considered to have possessed one of the greatest minds the world has ever known. Artist, draftsman, inventor, and philosopher, his contributions to modern society are profound and wide reaching. Throughout his life, Leonardo filled many notebooks with elegant studies on topics ranging from the nature of water, light and shade, philosophy, botany, astronomy, architecture, and the human figure. This lovely week-at-a-glance desk calendar excerpts the most extraordinary of Leonardo’s musings and illustrates them with his glorious artwork, providing stimulation and inspiration for each week of the year.
Customer Reviews:
beautiful reproductions, nice calendar pages.......2007-01-11
excellent calendar of this type, with useful and clear reproductions of his drawings, revealing his genius and our continued need to learn from him.
it starts in 2006, which was convenient for my friend who began using it before the new year.
Average customer rating:
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Leonardo's Notebooks
Manufacturer: Black Dog & Leventhal
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 1579125212 |
Product Description
Exquisite collection of notes, sketches, and drawings by artist, inventor, and quintessential Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci.
Average customer rating:
- The first Renaissance man
- Text Only
- The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
|
Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
Edward MacCurdy
Manufacturer: Konecky & Konecky
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 156852448X |
Product Description
1180 Pages
Customer Reviews:
The first Renaissance man.......2006-12-17
Nothing of Leonardo DAVinci's sketchbooks were published until the 20th century. These are some of the most important documents of the Renaissance, and they did not become known until the 20th century. There are still people who do not know how important this work was. His anatomical studies were a watershed moment, because they introduced visual diagrams as the standard for communicating knowledge of the body and self. This was no more and no less than the conviction that the true knowledge of the shape of any body could only be arrived at by seeing it from different aspects. The truth of the body, the truth of the human being can only be discovered by looking at the body from multiple aspects, like; level, motion, perspective, transformation and growth. He opened up the body, it had always been closed, now its open. Now, what goes on inside the body is going to give us the essence of what it means to be human. It is the internal struggle, the self with the self, within .you. When you look at his sketchbooks, you see just one place where the whole world opens up.
Leonardo DAVinci-- Leonardo DAVinci invented the modern self. He invented the modern self precisely in this way, through the perspective of disappearance. What he tells reality and us about the self is that it only exists by that which is perceived by the eye. Reality is a product of nature; reality is that which we perceive by the eye. Reality is only that by which we can see. Moreover, in his notebooks he gives us another foundational belief about the human subject and its form. That the sound rules are the issue of sound experience and observation. Experience and observation can only be our best teacher. Of course, this is also, what Voltaire is telling us to by the way. The challenge comes when we realize that we are both to the subject observing and the object that is observed. In our search for self, we experience a kind of division between our constitutions as objects and our constitution as subjects. However, when we look at the human form, when we look at the self we find that the body is in harmony with nature, and that it is in harmony within nature. How does DA Vinci make these kinds of claims? Alternatively, how does he ground these kinds of claims with the function of the eye or the power of the eye? Well, one of the ways he does it is thru the camera obscura. Earliest record of use of camera obscura is in DA Vinci's writings. The camera obscura gave birth to the science of optics, the science of seeing. It is with DA Vinci, that the science of seeing became the foundation of self-representation, a representation called the self, thus the representation of the human form. Now DA Vinci embodied his own concept of the painter, as philosophers. He saw painters principally as natural philosophers. To him, nature was all important, absolute, the image of the eternal. In one very significant passage of his notebooks, he defines the relationship of art to nature and its process of evolution. "The painter will produce pictures of small merit, if he takes for his standard the pictures of others. If he will study from natural objects, he will bear good fruit, as was seen in the painters after the Romans always imitating each other until their art constantly declined from age to age. Therefore, this was paramount for him in some ways what he was doing, and thinking was very radical and revolutionary and in other ways, it was very traditional. He appears to be quite a traditionalist, he studied ancient sources, Greeks, medieval sources, he studied anatomy, and these traditions get him to compare the microcosm of the body and the macrocosm of the world. These analogies extend to everything that he attempted to trace, to record and to know about the human form. Comparisons between the arteries in the body and the underground rivers of the earth. The flow of blood to the head in relation to the circulation of water to the summits of mountains. How does blood get to your head? If you want to understand that then understand how water flows up to mountains. Blood when it bursts in the veins of your nose and water rushing out of a vein in the earth. Almost everything that occurs in the human body can be found in the natural world. His interest in these analogies becomes very evident in the notebooks and sketchbooks. Scholars argue that these microcosm and macrocosm analogies are more than outright comparisons that belong to a pre scientific age, they lead him to compare the study of the body and Ptolemy's study of the earth. Consequently to use Ptolemy's method in the geography as the starting point for his own systematic study of anatomy. Therefore, anatomy and geography here become one in DA Vinci's mind. The forms of the earth and those of the human body have a parallel. "Thus in 15 entire figures you will have set before you the microcosm on the same plan as was before me adapted by Ptolemy in his cosmology, and so I shall afterwards divide them into limbs as he divided the whole world into processes. Then, I will speak of the function of each part in every direction putting before your eyes a description of the whole form and substance of man as regards his movements from place to place by means of these different parts. Thus if it please our great author I may demonstrate the nature of men and their customs in a way I describe this figure." Therefore, within the human form and within the kind of intricate details of human anatomy he discovered a way of describing and recording, not only the geographical construction of the natural world, but of Divinity itself. And when you look more closely at the system he devised to study the body, the more carefully you look at his drawings of the human form the more clearly you begin to recognize how strikingly stunningly original it is.
Earlier authors had relied exclusively on verbal descriptions of the human body. The human body had been a verbal entity but he emphasis visual description and some of the illustrations he has to bring visual dimensions to the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle the descriptions put forward by these men he presents in visual terms in these kind of body scapes. In the course of 20 years, roughly from 1489 to the end of his life, he dissected about 19 corpses and became very much obsessed with dissection. He drew these parts of bodies in minute detail every part of the human anatomy, he would draw each piece separately, together and at different angles. He laid out bodies in his drawings to mime classical poses in painting. He is referencing the history of art with the poses and the visual representation of the human subject. It is presented to us that deeply challenge these values of human nature, of life and death of living form and the cadaver it really raises some profound questions. The problem is in order to get to those questions, in order to explore some of the deeper philosophical implications of his work you have to get past the gross factor and the moral and ethical questions that his work raises. He is an artist that works very consciously with the sense of the ethical lines that he is crossing; he is not an artist that wants to make you comfortable. He sees that blood gets in the way of his observations, so he advises that you make a model of the body part and then you draw it. Model making and scientific art go hand in hand for him. You have to reconstruct reality before you can represent it. Therefore, before you can draw what is real you have to make it yourself. One of the most striking features of the notebooks is the manner in which he presents his work to us. There are no criticisms of the shortcomings that he has discovered in earlier authors, he does not boast about his own accomplishments, his writing style is pedagogical, and he is writing a teaching manual with descriptions and advice. Therefore, if you want to draw a lung, here is how you should do it. What he is trying to do is to convey to a larger audience this method of presentation and by representing human form, he relies on diagrams, and his reliance apparently causes some serious problems for the printing presses of the day. It also caused real issues for publishers because of the graphic nature of the work.
This was very important for medicine. He shows us we can separate human emotions and passions from the human body in understanding human form, and what it means to be human. There is a purely clinical dimension and this other dimension of feelings and emotions, and they do not have to come together at all, this is radical.
Thus again, this inside outside, you see it everywhere in his work. Why are we fascinated with the painting of the Mona Lisa? Because of the question we always ask, what is going on inside? The study of the Mona Lisa, it seems to me has always been organized around precisely the question that drove DA Vinci in his research. All his sketches in this obsessive and fanatical devotion to drawing every part of the body in relationship to every other part of the body at multiple levels and multiple perspectives and in motion, outside inside. There is the outside, what is going on inside, isn't that why we are obsessed with this? This painting just demands that we try to find out what is going on underneath. The truth is underneath, behind her smile, something she is keeping from us. Yet she is revealing just enough of it to make us have to find out what is going on inside of her. It is that relationship once again between the inside and the outside.
I read this book for a graduate class in the Humanities. Recommended reading for anyone interested in history, psychology, philosophy, art, and science.
Text Only.......2005-09-19
Just be warned that this volume contains the text of the notebooks, none of the drawings. Leonardo's thoughts on 50 topics are gathered together under topical headings from his many manuscripts. Thus, this work is arranged, rendered into English and introduced by Edward MacCurdy. As such, it is a lovely book with large, readable type. Well-bound in red boards with gold lettering on the spine. It is a book to be dipped into from time-to-time rather than one you might read from cover-to-cover.
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci .......2005-07-11
This definitive translation of Leonardo's notebooks brings together into one volume the famous reflections and speculations of the greatest mind of the Renaissance. It is a result of a lifetime of study and research by the outstanding authority on the life and works of the great Florentine.
Because of the unique and diverse character of Leonardo's achievements, the reissue of The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci is an event of enduring importance in the fields of art, literature, science and technology. And the general reader can once again glimpse the inner workings of the mind of the towering figure of the renaissance, "perhaps the most richly gifted by nature among all the sons of men."
Average customer rating:
- The first Renaissance man
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The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
da Vinci Leonardo
Manufacturer: IndyPublish.com
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Customer Reviews:
The first Renaissance man.......2006-12-17
Nothing of Leonardo DAVinci's sketchbooks were published until the 20th century. These are some of the most important documents of the Renaissance, and they did not become known until the 20th century. There are still people who do not know how important this work was. His anatomical studies were a watershed moment, because they introduced visual diagrams as the standard for communicating knowledge of the body and self. This was no more and no less than the conviction that the true knowledge of the shape of any body could only be arrived at by seeing it from different aspects. The truth of the body, the truth of the human being can only be discovered by looking at the body from multiple aspects, like; level, motion, perspective, transformation and growth. He opened up the body, it had always been closed, now its open. Now, what goes on inside the body is going to give us the essence of what it means to be human. It is the internal struggle, the self with the self, within .you. When you look at his sketchbooks, you see just one place where the whole world opens up.
Leonardo DAVinci-- Leonardo DAVinci invented the modern self. He invented the modern self precisely in this way, through the perspective of disappearance. What he tells reality and us about the self is that it only exists by that which is perceived by the eye. Reality is a product of nature; reality is that which we perceive by the eye. Reality is only that by which we can see. Moreover, in his notebooks he gives us another foundational belief about the human subject and its form. That the sound rules are the issue of sound experience and observation. Experience and observation can only be our best teacher. Of course, this is also, what Voltaire is telling us to by the way. The challenge comes when we realize that we are both to the subject observing and the object that is observed. In our search for self, we experience a kind of division between our constitutions as objects and our constitution as subjects. However, when we look at the human form, when we look at the self we find that the body is in harmony with nature, and that it is in harmony within nature. How does DA Vinci make these kinds of claims? Alternatively, how does he ground these kinds of claims with the function of the eye or the power of the eye? Well, one of the ways he does it is thru the camera obscura. Earliest record of use of camera obscura is in DA Vinci's writings. The camera obscura gave birth to the science of optics, the science of seeing. It is with DA Vinci, that the science of seeing became the foundation of self-representation, a representation called the self, thus the representation of the human form. Now DA Vinci embodied his own concept of the painter, as philosophers. He saw painters principally as natural philosophers. To him, nature was all important, absolute, the image of the eternal. In one very significant passage of his notebooks, he defines the relationship of art to nature and its process of evolution. "The painter will produce pictures of small merit, if he takes for his standard the pictures of others. If he will study from natural objects, he will bear good fruit, as was seen in the painters after the Romans always imitating each other until their art constantly declined from age to age. Therefore, this was paramount for him in some ways what he was doing, and thinking was very radical and revolutionary and in other ways, it was very traditional. He appears to be quite a traditionalist, he studied ancient sources, Greeks, medieval sources, he studied anatomy, and these traditions get him to compare the microcosm of the body and the macrocosm of the world. These analogies extend to everything that he attempted to trace, to record and to know about the human form. Comparisons between the arteries in the body and the underground rivers of the earth. The flow of blood to the head in relation to the circulation of water to the summits of mountains. How does blood get to your head? If you want to understand that then understand how water flows up to mountains. Blood when it bursts in the veins of your nose and water rushing out of a vein in the earth. Almost everything that occurs in the human body can be found in the natural world. His interest in these analogies becomes very evident in the notebooks and sketchbooks. Scholars argue that these microcosm and macrocosm analogies are more than outright comparisons that belong to a pre scientific age, they lead him to compare the study of the body and Ptolemy's study of the earth. Consequently to use Ptolemy's method in the geography as the starting point for his own systematic study of anatomy. Therefore, anatomy and geography here become one in DA Vinci's mind. The forms of the earth and those of the human body have a parallel. "Thus in 15 entire figures you will have set before you the microcosm on the same plan as was before me adapted by Ptolemy in his cosmology, and so I shall afterwards divide them into limbs as he divided the whole world into processes. Then, I will speak of the function of each part in every direction putting before your eyes a description of the whole form and substance of man as regards his movements from place to place by means of these different parts. Thus if it please our great author I may demonstrate the nature of men and their customs in a way I describe this figure." Therefore, within the human form and within the kind of intricate details of human anatomy he discovered a way of describing and recording, not only the geographical construction of the natural world, but of Divinity itself. And when you look more closely at the system he devised to study the body, the more carefully you look at his drawings of the human form the more clearly you begin to recognize how strikingly stunningly original it is.
Earlier authors had relied exclusively on verbal descriptions of the human body. The human body had been a verbal entity but he emphasis visual description and some of the illustrations he has to bring visual dimensions to the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle the descriptions put forward by these men he presents in visual terms in these kind of body scapes. In the course of 20 years, roughly from 1489 to the end of his life, he dissected about 19 corpses and became very much obsessed with dissection. He drew these parts of bodies in minute detail every part of the human anatomy, he would draw each piece separately, together and at different angles. He laid out bodies in his drawings to mime classical poses in painting. He is referencing the history of art with the poses and the visual representation of the human subject. It is presented to us that deeply challenge these values of human nature, of life and death of living form and the cadaver it really raises some profound questions. The problem is in order to get to those questions, in order to explore some of the deeper philosophical implications of his work you have to get past the gross factor and the moral and ethical questions that his work raises. He is an artist that works very consciously with the sense of the ethical lines that he is crossing; he is not an artist that wants to make you comfortable. He sees that blood gets in the way of his observations, so he advises that you make a model of the body part and then you draw it. Model making and scientific art go hand in hand for him. You have to reconstruct reality before you can represent it. Therefore, before you can draw what is real you have to make it yourself. One of the most striking features of the notebooks is the manner in which he presents his work to us. There are no criticisms of the shortcomings that he has discovered in earlier authors, he does not boast about his own accomplishments, his writing style is pedagogical, and he is writing a teaching manual with descriptions and advice. Therefore, if you want to draw a lung, here is how you should do it. What he is trying to do is to convey to a larger audience this method of presentation and by representing human form, he relies on diagrams, and his reliance apparently causes some serious problems for the printing presses of the day. It also caused real issues for publishers because of the graphic nature of the work.
This was very important for medicine. He shows us we can separate human emotions and passions from the human body in understanding human form, and what it means to be human. There is a purely clinical dimension and this other dimension of feelings and emotions, and they do not have to come together at all, this is radical.
Thus again, this inside outside, you see it everywhere in his work. Why are we fascinated with the painting of the Mona Lisa? Because of the question we always ask, what is going on inside? The study of the Mona Lisa, it seems to me has always been organized around precisely the question that drove DA Vinci in his research. All his sketches in this obsessive and fanatical devotion to drawing every part of the body in relationship to every other part of the body at multiple levels and multiple perspectives and in motion, outside inside. There is the outside, what is going on inside, isn't that why we are obsessed with this? This painting just demands that we try to find out what is going on underneath. The truth is underneath, behind her smile, something she is keeping from us. Yet she is revealing just enough of it to make us have to find out what is going on inside of her. It is that relationship once again between the inside and the outside.
I read this book for a graduate class in the Humanities. Recommended reading for anyone interested in history, psychology, philosophy, art, and science.
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