5.0 out of 5 stars
The Ornithopter Man
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 30 July 2017
Charles Nicholl writes on page 68, "What the Renaissance was, and when and why it happened, are not precisely definable." Nevertheless, Nicholl presents the theory of Constantinople's fall in 1453. Had not a Hungarian cannon maker named Urban helped Muslims in their Eastern conquests, there may not have been a reinvigoration and concentration, in Italy, of the old Greeks. Nicholl names Euclid, Ptolemy, Plato, and Aristotle. Still, none of these is a Biblical figure or a woman, the two primary areas within DaVinci's artistic legacies. As DaVinci's earliest or biggest role model, a man named Leon Battista Alberti is called, on page 69, the "first Renaissance Man". Both men, it is worth noting for the now odd barriers of that time, were illegitimate, talented, educated, and imaginative in a time not praised for its meritocracy. Alberti is an athlete. His protege is not similarly known. Still it can be said after reading a long biography by an expert researcher and communicator that many of the subject's personal qualities are hardly to be known. As a Renaissance Man, DaVinci is not rounded and fleshed. Instead his life is his highly prolific work.
The story of DaVinci is presented as mystery, usually, but it can also be perceived for its chaos. Miraculously, all of this chaos surrounds Leonardo and none of it ever interferes directly with his art or the soul of his art. On page 138, the plot against the Medicis is covered. These were murderous times with murderous leaders and Popes, not to mention assassins. "Leonardo was there," says Nicholl, there to draw the hanging body of killer Bernardo di Bandino. The artist was 27. A reader would not know at this point what is to come, whether Leonardo DaVinci is about to become a scientist, a painter, a sculptor, or an accomplice. Together with the intrigue of power within Italy, as well as French invasion, I found the book a compelling page turner still basking in the glow of cultural ascension, not spoiled by dogma or militarism.
On page 285, he is a scientist par excellence. "The principles of horology are an important background for Leonardo's automata [knight of armor robot], though according to Mark Rosheim, a NASA scientist who has reconstructed a working model of the robot knight, Leonardo was moving far beyond the limitations of clockwork: his programmed carriage for automata is nothing less than 'the first known example in the story of civilization of the programmable analogue computer'."
Just before turning 50, on page 337, he is a tired painter living hand-to-mouth even while being sought after. It is open to interpretation, but perhaps DaVinci is many things admirable even while being "sick of painting". For one, he is not a sycophant. For another, his talent has become a curse from which we can see him withdraw, withdraw back into a weary yet modest shadow from too many critics with too many opinions, a man beyond being susceptible to anybody's proclamations. Also, he is consumed with math, including the area of circles and squares.
On page 358, he is a civil and military engineer, a genius for hire. On page 410, he is returning to Florence (Milan is the other primary location) and becoming a mentor to Francesco Melzi, eventually his "guardian of the flame". On page 463, it is noted that, in the early 16th Century, Rome was a city of 50,000 people, much smaller than Milan. There were 7,000 prostitutes working with the priests.
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