Kemp, Martin

Focuses on 100 key, broadly chronological milestones that cover a range of topics across Leonardo's many fields of discipline: painting, anatomical studies, his progressive engagement with a range of sciences, and more.

We learn of his encounters with the vast population that surrounds Leonardo: great and lesser academics, collectors and curators, devious dealers and unctuous auctioneers, major scholars and authors and pseudohistorians and fantasists; but also how he has grappled with swelling legions of 'Leonardo loonies', walked on the eggshells of vested interests in academia and museums, and fended off fusillades of non-Leonardos, sometimes more than one a week.

Explores the development of Leonardo da Vinci's intellectual and artistic vision, tracing the entire span of his career and examining the nature of his art and inventions at key stages in his life.

Explores recurring themes in the imagery of art and science that reflect the seen and unseen worlds of nature, profiling works of art from various historical eras and comparing them to modern works.

Presents a comprehensive examination of the career of fifteen-century Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor, Leonardo da Vinci and discusses his works, relationships, and views on God and nature as it is revealed in the drawings and notes of his discoveries and inventions.