This fascinating exploration of Leonardo da Vincis life & work identifies what it was that made him so unique & explains the phenomenon of the worlds most celebrated artistic genius who 500 years on still grips & inspires us. Martin Kemp offers us exceptional insights into what it was that made this Renaissance man so special & the real meaning behind such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa & the Last Supper. Tracing Leonardos career in all its variety we learn of his unfulfilled dreams relationships with powerful patrons & the truth about his views on God humans & nature. The famous notebooks are the key to understanding the secret of Leonardos success & genius as they clearly reveal the workings of his mind & display the true innovative & investigative nature of his creative vision. Over 20 000 pages of drawings & notes detail his incredible discoveries & inventions
- from the workings of the human eye to designs for flying machines & giant crossbows. Bringing the story up to the present day Martin Kemp considers what he means to us today investigates the Leonardo industry & speculates about what he would be doing if he were alive today. This updated edition of Martin Kemps best-seller is the first book on Leonardo to include two newly discovered works the most important such discoveries in over a hundred years.
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This title is a Taschen 25
- Special edition! It covers Leonardo: from art & anatomy to helicopters & submarines. One of the most
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Milan 1496 & forty-four-year-old Leonardo da Vinci has a reputation for taking on commissions & failing to complete them. He is in a state of professional uncertainty & financial difficulty. For eighteen months he has been painting murals in both the Sforza Castle in Milan & the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The latter project will become the Last Supper a complex mural that took a full three years to complete on a surface fifteen feet high by twenty feet wide. Not only had he never attempted a painting of such size but he had no experience whatsoever in painting in the physically demanding medium of fresco. For more than five centuries the Last Supper has been an artistic religious & cultural icon. The art historian Kenneth Clark has called it the keystone of European art & for a century after its creation it was regarded as nothing less than a miraculous image. Even today according to Clark we regard the painting as more a work of nature than a work of man. & yet there is a very human story behind this artistic miracle which was created against the backdrop of momentous events both in Milan & in the life of Leonardo himself. In Leonardo & the Last Supper Ross King tells the complete story of this creation of this mural: the adversities suffered by the artist during its execution; the experimental techniques he employed; the models for Christ & the Apostles that he used; & the numerous personalities involved
- everyone from the Leonardos young assistants to Ludovico Sforza the Duke of Milan who commissioned the work. Ross Kings new book is both a record of Leonardo da Vincis last five years in Milan & a biography of one of the most famous works of art ever painted.
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Leonardo Da Vinci is considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time & perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived responsible for the Mona Lisa The Last Supper The Madonna of the Carnation & Vitruvian Man. Leonardo was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter sculptor architect musician scientist mathematician engineer inventor anatomist geologist cartographer botanist & writer & this captivating book provides the reader with a unique insight into the life & work of one of history's most intriguing figures. All of Leonardo Da Vinci's work is presented in this compact volume
- from his paintings & frescos to detailed reproductions of his remarkable encrypted notebooks. As well as featuring each individual artwork sections of each are shown in isolation to reveal incredible details
- for example the different levels of perspective between the background sections of the Mona Lisa & the disembodied hand in The Last Supper. 640 pages of colour artworks & photographs of Da Vinci's original notebooks accompanied by fascinating biographical & historical details are here.

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Da Vinci in detail: Leonardos life & work
- the definitive edition. All pictures all drawings! Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) possessed
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Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) possessed one of the greatest minds of all time; his importance & influence are inestimable. This XXL-format comprehensive survey is the most complete book ever made on the subject of this Italian painter sculptor architect engineer scientist & all-around genius. With huge full-bleed details of Leonardos masterworks this highly original publication allows the reader to inspect the subtlest facets of his brushstrokes. Part I explores Leonardos life & work in ten chapters drawing upon his letters contracts diary entries & writings. All of his paintings are presented & interpreted in depth with The Annunciation & The Last Supper featured on fold-out pages. Part II comprises a catalogue raisonne of Leonardos paintings which covers all of his surviving & lost painted works &

Includes:: texts describing their states of preservation. Each & every painting that can be justifiably attributed to Leonardo is included here; thanks to new findings & scientific research this is the first time his definitive painting oeuvre is being published. Part III contains an extensive catalogue of his drawings (numbering in the thousands they cannot all be reproduced in one book); 663 are presented arranged by category (architecture technical anatomical figures proportion cartography etc). Over half of the drawings included were provided by Windsor Castle marking the first time that the Castle has allowed a publisher to reproduce so many of their drawings. This sumptuous Taschen offering is the most thorough & beautifully produced Leonardo book ever published.

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Now available for the first time in paperback this book remains the definitive survey of the life & work of Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington (born 1917). Carrington burst onto the Surrealist scene in 1936 when as a precocious nineteen-year-old debutante she escaped the stultifying demands of her wealthy English family by running away to Paris with her lover Max Ernst. She was immediately championed by Andre Breton who responded enthusiastically to her fantastical dark & satirical writing style & her interest in fairy tales & the occult. Her stories were included in Surrealist publications & her paintings in the Surrealists' exhibitions. After the dramas & tragic separations of the Second World War Carrington ended up in the 1940s as part of the circle of Surrealist European emigres living in Mexico City. Close friends with Luis Bunuel Benjamin Peret Octavio Paz & a host of both expatriate Surrealists & Mexican modernists Carrington was at the centre of Mexican cultural life while still maintaining her European connections. Leonora Carrington: Surrealism Alchemy & Art" provides a fascinating overview of this intriguing artist's rich body of work. The author considers Carrington's preoccupation with alchemy & the occult & explores the influence of indigenous Mexican culture & beliefs on her production." ...

From the bestselling author of The Snowman
- an explosive new thriller. In the depths of winter a killer stalks the city streets.
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Includes: RECENTLY DISCOVERED NEW MATERIAL In the spring of 1860 Fabrizio the charismatic Prince of Salina still rules
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From the bestselling author of The Snowman
- an explosive new thriller. In the depths of winter a killer stalks the city streets.
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