Renaissance Man

Leonardo da Vinci

   Except for a couple of sections that come after Leonardo’s death, I’ve just finished Walter Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci. Isaacson aims  to do justice to all of the activities of that model of the Renaissance man. I won’t attempt a review, but will provide an Isaacson  concluding quote:

   “There have been . . . other insationable polymaths . . .But none painted the Mona Lisa, much less did so at the same time as producing unsurpassed anatomy drawings baased on multiple dissections, comiing up with scemes to divert rivers, explaining the reflection of light from the earth to the moonn, opening the still-beating heart of a butchered pig to show how ventricles work, designing musical intruments, choreographing pageants, using fossicils to dispute the biblical account  of the deluge, and then drawing the deluge . . . .”