Leonardo Studies

Scientist, painter, mechanical engineer, sculptor, thinker, city planner, storyteller, musician, architect — Leonardo da Vinci, builder of the first flying machine, was one of the great universal geniuses of Western civilization. His voluminous notebooks, the great storehouse of his theories and discoveries, are presented here in 1566 extracts that reveal the full range of Leonardo's versatile interest: all the important writings on painting, sculpture, architecture, anatomy, astronomy, geography, topography, and other fields are included, in both Italian and English, with 186 plates of manuscript pages and many other drawings reproduced in facsimile size.

his is the original score for Ken Burns’s new two-part documentary, LEONARDO da VINCI, with new compositions by Caroline Shaw.

The Italian pianist, Leonardo Locatelli, was born into a family of artists, brother and aunt already musicians, the sculptor father and grew up immersed in art. He began studying the piano at the age of 7 and at 10 he was admitted to the “G. Donizetti ”in Bergamo, where under the guidance of Marco Giovanetti he graduated with full marks in 2004, winning the Simon Mayr prize as the best graduate of the year of the institute.

Although Leonardo’s Giant Crossbow is one of his most popular drawings, it has been one of the least understood. "Leonardo’s Giant Crossbow" offers the first in-depth account of this drawing’s likely purpose and its highly resolved design. This fascinating book has a wealth of technical information about the Giant Crossbow drawing, as it’s a complete study of this project, though this is as accessible to the general audience as much as it is also informative with new discoveries for the professors of engineering, technology and art. The book explores the context of Leonardo’s invention with an examination of the extensive documentary evidence, a short history of the great crossbow and ballista, the first accurate translation of the text and the technical specifications, and a detailed analysis of Leonardo’s design process for the crossbow, from start to finish. Dozens of preparatory drawings, along with the recent discovery of nearly invisible metal stylus preparatory incisions under the ink of the Giant Crossbow drawing, are evidence of Leonardo’s intent to offer engineers and other viewers a thorough design of the massive machine. The book proposes these new discoveries with the help of a strategy that had been at the core of Leonardo’s working philosophy: the proportional method. As proven with an analysis of the Giant Crossbow project, he used a consistent approach to 1/3rd proportions throughout the design and drawing process and employed this kind of proportional strategy at the start of almost every important project. Thanks to this proof of his knowledge of geometry, evidence of his studies of impetus and force, and thanks to the highly polished and complex nature of the Giant Crossbow design, a later date for the drawing is proposed in the present book, associating the drawing with his drafting capabilities around 1490-93.

Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Caroline Shaw, who has worked with a diverse array of artists ranging from Nas and Rosalía to Renée Fleming and the New York Philharmonic, brings her formidable talents to Leonardo da Vinci, the four-hour Ken Burns documentary about the 15th-century Italian polymath. Joined by longtime collaborators Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion and Roomful of Teeth, Shaw delivers an original score of twenty-eight lively blasts analogous to da Vinci’s artistry and visionary ideas.