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Leonardo da Vinci
Flights Of The Mind
by Charles Nicholl


6.4

based on 17 reviews
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based on 5 votes
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Official Publisher Site

The author attempts to reconstruct the life of the true Renaissance man, drawing heavily on the artist's own notebooks as well as newly discovered accounts by his contemporaries.

Viking Books, 622 pages
11/18/2004
$28.95

ISBN: 0670033456

Nonfiction
Biographies & Memoirs

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Kirkus Reviews

Details are compelling in a long book that defies skimming.

Christian Science Monitor Christopher Andreae

Enthralling, immensely detailed... [Nicholl] cuts through much of the scholarly debate that today sometimes threatens to smother any cogent view of certain Leonardo issues.

The New York Times Book Review David Gelernter

Charles Nicholl's 'Leonardo da Vinci isn't merely a lovely book; it's Leonardesque. Leonardo knew how to make drawings and paintings glow with lyrical mystery. At its best, Nicholl's book glows too.

Daily Telegraph Jasper Rees

This gripping, beautifully designed biography is scholarship at its most accessible, and demotic.

Washington Post Alexander Nagel

Nicholl's book is pure biography, filled with carefully researched and sometimes little-known facts, masterfully woven together.

The Independent Frances Spalding

A humane understanding plays through his lively, fluent prose. It occasionally leads him to make suppositions that do not always convince, in part owing to the sparsity of facts. But, overall, this biography is a hugely impressive feat of historical and imaginative empathy.

The New Yorker Adam Gopnik

His life of Leonardo is fresh, detailed, vivid, and presents perhaps the most fully human Leonardo we have; the book is filled with fine brief accessory lives and neat, two-paragraph evocations of complicated bits of social history.

Houston Chronicle Lisa Jennifer Selzman

But it is in the consideration of da Vinci's creative processes that this history is most riveting.

The Globe And Mail [Toronto] David Franklin

Clearly structured and detailed, and is, in the end, more valuable as a panoramic social history of Leonardo's Europe than as a monograph. It is an approachable, safe introduction to the artist for the general reader and the student alike.

The Guardian Lisa Jardine

Nicholl is always careful to warn us if he is adducing evidence from beyond his subject's own life, or risking a guess or a flash of purely personal insight into his much-researched hero's personality.

Daily Telegraph Martin Gayford

A very readable and reliable narrative in which only very occasionally does one feel the author is giving his imagination too much freedom.

Publishers Weekly

Da Vinci's polymathic pursuits, as well as his own translations from the artist's numerous notebooks, are some of this dense but readable volume's most compelling aspects.

Booklist Donna Seaman

Nicholl takes a marvelously fresh and human approach to the fascinating life of Leonardo. [1 Nov 2004, p.461]

The Economist

Gratifying to read, yet it ties itself in knots trying to follow every lead that Leonardo, his contemporaries and a legion of scholars have left behind... Such information would be more enlightening if it informed an analysis of how Leonardo became the great creative thinker we now consider him to be.

The Spectator David Ekserdjian

When it comes to the art, Nicholl is as a rule pretty reliable, but it is clear that in the main he is paraphrasing received opinion rather than making up his own mind. He has obviously looked at Leonardo’s own works carefully, but he does not know nearly as much about Renaissance art more generally, and irritating little errors creep in.

Los Angeles Times A. Richard Turner

The reader is smothered by inconsequential detail, making any intellectual focus or thematic structure hard to discern. His discussion of Leonardo's science lacks a wider context, and he seems uncomfortable treating Leonardo's works of art in terms other than their subject matter.

The Independent Charles Darwent

Nicholl has written two distinct and unsatisfying books here: one that picks over a skeletal past, another that tries to ground that past in the present... Its subject as unknowable as he's ever been.

The average user rating for this book is 6.4 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

dieter p gave it a1:
Sorry The author gives proof that he does his homework. But this book proofs: you cant judge a book by his cover. The author should not write about so mutch about nothing. I am not interested when a mistress of som man becomes a mistress. Not even when that man is connected in some way to Da Vinci. When i like to read about a dinner, is the insekt, that whas a part of the birth on a greenere, realy of no interest for me. Get my point? Stikk to the theme you choose. Then that book could be of some value. D.Pudig

panormo gave it a10:
a lot of research in primary sources, powerful writing, deep knowledge of the cultural context, balanced judgment

Kit C gave it a10:
Found this book fascinating and well-written, and a good intro to the history of Renaissance Italy too. Actually couldn't put it down at times! Feel I know much more than I did about Leonardo da Vinci and his times. Makes me want to keep reading about the period.

brittany j gave it a5:
This book while true to the life of da Vinci, seems drawn out and unfocused at times.

craig s gave it a6:
Tis work is compelling in certain areas and overly tedious in others. Some of the most interesting areas expose Leonardo's flawed and often dilatory nature.

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Leonardo da Vinci Flights Of The Mind by Charles Nicholl

Leonardo da Vinci
Flights Of The Mind
by Charles Nicholl