Lives of Leonardo da Vinci

Giorgio Vasari, Matteo Bandello, Paolo Giovio , Sabba da Castiglione

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English

Pallas Athene
01 August 2023

Art & Architecture; Renaissance art; Painting & paintings; Drawing & drawings; Individual artists, art monographs; Biography: arts & entertainment

Series: Lives of the Artists

For many people the greatest artist, and the quintessential Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was a painter, architect, theatre designer, engineer, sculptor, anatomist, geometer, naturalist, poet and musician. His Last Supper in Milan has been called the greatest painting in Western art.

Illegitimate, left-handed and homosexual, Leonardo never made a straightforward career. But from his earliest apprenticeship with the Florentine painter and sculptor Andrea Verrochio, his astonishing gifts were recognised. His life led him from Florence to militaristic Milan and back, to Rome and eventually to France, where he died in the arms of the King, Francis I.

As one of the greatest exponents of painting of his time, Leonardo was celebrated by his fellow Florentine Vasari (who was nevertheless responsible for covering over the great fresco of the Battle of Anghiari with his own painting). Vasari's carefully researched life of Leonardo remains one of the main sources of our knowledge, and is printed here together with the three other early biographies, and the major account by his French editor Du Fresne. Personal reminiscences by the novelist Bandello, and the humanist Saba di Castiglione, round out the picture, and for the first time the extremely revealing imagined dialogue between Leonardo and the Greek sculptor Phidias, by the painter and theorist Lomazzo, is published in English.

An introduction by the scholar Charles Robertson places these writings and the career of Leonardo in context. 67 pages of colour illustrations, including the major paintings and many of the astonishing drawings, give a rich overview of Leonardo's work and mind.

67 colour illustrations

By: Giorgio Vasari, Matteo Bandello, Paolo Giovio, Sabba da Castiglione
Edited by: Charles Robertson
Imprint: Pallas Athene
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 145mm, Width: 114mm,
Weight: 178g
ISBN: 9781843681731
ISBN 10: 1843681730
Series: Lives of the Artists
Pages: 192
Publication Date: 01 August 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Unspecified

Reviews for Lives of Leonardo da Vinci

"""The London publishing house Pallas Athene has come up with the very welcome and worthwhile project of assembling English translations of early biographies of artists in an easily accessible publication."" - Historians of Netherlands Art Reviews"