Learning from Leonardo

PREFACE

In his classic Lives of the Artists, the Italian painter and architect Giorgio Vasari said of Leonardo da Vinci:

His name became so famous that not only was he esteemed during his lifetime but his reputation endured and became even greater after his death.

Indeed, during the Renaissance Leonardo was renowned as an artist, engineer, and inventor throughout Italy, France, and other European countries. In the centuries after his death, his fame spread around the world, and it continues undiminished to this day.

I have been fascinated by the genius of Leonardo da Vinci for several decades and have spent the last ten years studying his scientific writings in facsimile editions of his famous Notebooks. My first book about him, The Science of ...