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The Shadow Drawing

How Science Taught Leonardo How to Paint

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
Leonardo da Vinci has long been celebrated for his consummate genius. He was the painter who gave us the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, and the inventor who anticipated the advent of airplanes, hot air balloons, and other technological marvels. But what was the connection between Leonardo the painter and Leonardo the scientist? Historians of Renaissance art have long supposed that Leonardo became increasingly interested in science as he grew older and turned his insatiable curiosity in new directions. They have argued that there are, in effect, two Leonardos—an artist and an inventor.
In this pathbreaking new interpretation, the art historian Francesca Fiorani offers a different view. Taking a fresh look at Leonardo's celebrated but challenging notebooks, as well as other sources, Fiorani argues that Leonardo became familiar with advanced thinking about human vision when he was still an apprentice in a Florence studio—and used his understanding of optical science to develop and perfect his painting techniques.

The Shadow Drawing vividly reconstructs Leonardo's life while teaching us to look anew at his greatest paintings. The result is both stirring biography and a bold reconsideration of how the Renaissance understood science and art—and of what was lost when that understanding was forgotten.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 23, 2020
      Fiorani (The Marvel of Maps), an art historian at the University of Virginia, provides new insight into the work of Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci in this fresh assessment. She examines Leonardo’s training in the Florence workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio and his study of the science of optics before moving on to a technical analysis of Leonardo’s major works, showing how he applied his scientific learning when creating The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. Using information gleaned from infrared reflectography and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy done on Leonardo’s paintings, Fiorani leads readers through the artist’s tortuous re-working of his art. “The secret of the Mona Lisa’s smile,” she notes, is created by the application of “multiple layers of colors and varnishes with low atomic density.” It also becomes clear that Leonardo “understood that the subtlest change of heart or mind involuntarily triggered an alteration in the appearance of bodies and faces” and thus saw painting as “a technique for revealing the human soul.” This beautifully written work is underpinned by immense scholarship; art lovers and historians will not be able to put it down.

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  • English

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