Da Vinci's Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image

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More About This Book

Overview

EVERYONE KNOWSTHE IMAGE. NO ONE KNOWS ITS STORY. This is the story of Vitruvian Man: Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing of a man in a circle and a square. Deployed today to celebrate subjects as various as the nature of genius, the beauty of the human form, and the universality of the human spirit, the figure appears on everything from coffee cups and T-shirts to book covers and corporate logos. In short, it has become the world’s most famous cultural icon, yet almost nobody knows anything about it. Leonardo didn’t summon Vitruvian Man out of thin air. He was playing with the idea, set down by the Roman architect Vitruvius, that the human body could be made to fit inside a circle, long associated with the divine, and a square, related to the earthly and secular. To place a man inside those shapes was therefore to imply that the human body was the world in miniature. This idea, known as the theory of the microcosm, was the engine that had powered Western religious and scientific thought for centuries, and Leonardo hitched himself to it in no uncertain terms. Yet starting in the 1480s he set out to do something unprecedented. If the design of the body truly did reflect that of the cosmos, he reasoned, then by studying its proportions and anatomy more thoroughly than had ever been done before—by peering deep into both body and soul—he might broaden the scope of his art to include the broadest of metaphysical horizons. He might, in other words, obtain an almost godlike perspective on the makeup of the world as a whole. Vitruvian Man gives that exhilarating idea visual expression. In telling its story, Toby Lester weaves together a century-spanning saga of people and ideas. Assembled here is an eclectic cast of fascinating characters: the architect Vitruvius; the emperor Caesar Augustus and his “body of empire”; early Christian and Muslim thinkers; the visionary mystic Hildegard of Bingen; the book-hunter Poggio Bracciolini; the famous dome-builder Filippo Brunelleschi; Renaissance anatomists, architects, art theorists, doctors, and military engineers; and, of course, in the starring role, Leonardo himself—whose ghost Lester resurrects in the surprisingly unfamiliar context of his own times. Da Vinci’s Ghost is written with the same narrative flair and intellectual sweep as Lester’s award-winning first book, the “almost unbearably thrilling” (Simon Winchester) Fourth Part of the World. Like Vitruvian Man itself, the book captures a pivotal time in the history of Western thought when the Middle Ages was giving way to the Renaissance, when art and science and philosophy all seemed to be converging as one, and when it seemed just possible, at least to Leonardo da Vinci, that a single human being might embody—and even understand—the nature of everything.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Before The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci created what would become one of the most reproduced images in the world, known formally as Vitruvian Man. A “man in a circle and a square,” the image continues to be “deployed variously to celebrate all sorts of ideas,” but it also represents da Vinci’s particular preoccupations. Da Vinci, writes Atlantic contributing editor Lester, wanted to “to investigate the makeup and function of everything.” One of the great contributions of books like this is to keep the reader from taking for granted a familiar object. Lester’s detective story has a satisfying number of insights, such as that Leonardo’s drive to accurately represent the human body was grounded in a desire to find the location of the soul. Lester (The Fourth Part of the World) also covers a broad swath of history, suggesting, for instance, that Hildegard of Bingen was one of da Vinci’s main precursors in believing the human body to be a microcosm of the world. Finally, Lester braids intellectual threads—philosophy, anatomy, architecture, and art—together in a way that reaffirms not only Leonardo’s genius but also re-establishes the significance of historical context in understanding great works of art. Illus. (Feb.)
Library Journal
Leonardo da Vinci set out to incorporate a perfect interpretation of the universe through his drawing Vitruvian Man, a male nude with four outstretched arms—perhaps indicating motion, perhaps measuring—and four outstretched legs proportioned within a circle in a square. It is one of Leonardo's best-known images, and Lester (contributing editor, Atlantic; The Fourth Part of the World: An Astonishing Epic of Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, and the Birth of America) uses it as a device to celebrate the life and work of the artist and to pull together the philosophical, cosmic, and aesthetic influences on this prototypical Renaissance man and his profound effect on art and invention. Lester tells of Leonardo's childhood; apprenticeship in Andrea del Verrocchio's studio; ambition to break with the pack and decision to keep his mysterious notebooks; fascination with how things are made and work; interest in the classics, including Vitruvius's Ten Books on Architecture; and military designs. VERDICT A book for anyone who has wondered about the genius of Leonardo da Vinci and the Italian Renaissance, it will enlighten students and specialists as well as the reading and museum-going public.—Ellen Bates, New York
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Kirkus Reviews
Atlantic editor Lester (The Fourth Part of the World: The Epic Story of History's Greatest Map, 2009, etc.) returns with another narrative-on-crank, this time about Leonardo da Vinci's ubiquitous drawing known officially as his Vitruvian Man. The author has a fondness of superlatives (see his subtitles), but in the case of da Vinci, it's hard to avoid them. Vitruvian Man--the drawing of a man, arms and legs in two different positions inside a circle and a square--is named for Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, a Roman military and civil engineer, whose Ten Books on Architecture proposed the idea that the human body was a microcosm--learn the body's secrets and design and you learn the universe's. Providing many useful illustrations, Lester shows how versions of this idea appeared in the works and drawings of numerous others before da Vinci eventually pinned it down on a sheet of paper not much larger than a standard piece of office stationery. The author charts da Vinci's career, noting his autodidacticism, his phenomenal desire to know everything, and his decision to keep notebooks and fill them with ideas, drawings, plans and observations. We also see a man who had trouble with deadlines: Da Vinci's own work interested him far more than his commissions. Lester is fond of the bait-and-switch tactic. For example, he tells us about a visit to an archive in Venice to see the original drawing; then, at the threshold, he changes the subject, and we wait about 200 pages for the viewing, which, oddly, is underwritten and anticlimactic. The author also likes portentous endings and beginnings to chapters. Leonardo-lite, but the illustrations are illuminating and da Vinci's life is inspiring.
Jonathan Lopez
…richly rewarding history…
—The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781439189238
  • Publisher: Free Press
  • Publication date: 2/7/2012
  • Pages: 304
  • Sales rank: 29,738
  • Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 9.10 (h) x 1.20 (d)

Meet the Author

Toby Lester is a contributing editor to and has written extensively for The Atlantic. A former Peace Corps volunteer and United Nations observer, he lives in the Boston area with his wife and three daughters. His previous book, The Fourth Part of the World (2009), about the map that gave America its name, was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers Award and was picked as a Book of the Year by several other publications. His work has also appeared on the radio program This American Life.

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Sort by: Showing all of 3 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted February 15, 2012

    awesome

    toby lester is a genius

    1 out of 6 people found this review helpful.

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    Posted February 10, 2012

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