{"product_id":"the-shadow-drawing-how-science-taught-leonardo-how-to-paint-9781250800213","title":"The Shadow Drawing: How Science Taught Leonardo How to Paint","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"[\u003ci\u003eThe Shadow Drawing\u003c\/i\u003e] reorients our perspective, distills a life and brings it into focus--the very work of revision and refining that its subject loved best.\" --Parul Sehgal, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times \u003c\/i\u003e(Editors' Choice)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn entirely new account of Leonardo the artist and Leonardo the scientist, and why they were one and the same man.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLeonardo da Vinci has long been celebrated as the epitome of genius. He was the masterful painter who gave us the \u003ci\u003eMona Lisa\u003c\/i\u003e and the \u003ci\u003eLast Supper\u003c\/i\u003e, and the visionary inventor who anticipated airplanes, hot-air balloons, and other technological marvels. But what was the connection between Leonardo the painter and Leonardo the scientist? And what can a mysterious, long-lost book teach us about how Leonardo truly conceived his art? \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eShortly after Leonardo's death, his peers and rivals created the myth of the two Leonardos: there was Leonardo the artist and then, later in life, Leonardo the scientist. In this pathbreaking biographical interpretation, the art historian Francesca Fiorani tells a very different and much more interesting story. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTaking a fresh look at Leonardo's celebrated but challenging notebooks as well as other, often obscure sources, Fiorani shows that Leonardo became fluent in science when he was still a young man. As an apprentice in a Florence studio, he was especially interested in the science of optics, which tells us how we see what we see. For the rest of his life he remained, according to a close observer, obsessed with optics, believing that his art would grow only as his knowledge of light and shadow deepened. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eGiven Leonardo's scientific bent, one might think this meant that he wanted to turn himself into a human camera. In fact, he aspired to use science to capture--as no artist before him had ever done--the interior lives of his subjects, to paint the human soul in its smallest, tenderest motions and vicissitudes. And then he hoped to take one further step: to gather his scientific knowledge together in a book that would be even more important than his paintings. His \u003ci\u003eTreatise on Painting\u003c\/i\u003e would be disfigured, ignored, and lost in subsequent centuries; now, Fiorani traces this singular work's byzantine path through history and reconstructs the wisdom Leonardo hoped it would impart. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eRanging from the teeming streets of Florence to the most delicate brushstrokes on the surface of the \u003ci\u003eMona Lisa\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Shadow Drawing \u003c\/i\u003evividly reconstructs Leonardo's life while teaching us to look anew at his greatest paintings. The result is both a stirring biography and a bold reconsideration of how the Renaissance understood science and art--and of what was lost when the two were sundered.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Picador USA\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 05\/03\/2022\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781250800213\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 394","brand":"Francesca Fiorani","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41993062711477,"sku":"9781250800213","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_49b980df-5ab2-410f-a387-53685ec7eee5.jpg?v=1648523090","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/the-shadow-drawing-how-science-taught-leonardo-how-to-paint-9781250800213","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}