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    Da Vinci's Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image
    Da Vinci's Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image
    Da Vinci's Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image
    Audiobook6 hours

    Da Vinci's Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image

    Written by Toby Lester

    Narrated by Stephen Hoye

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Everybody knows the picture: a man, meticulously rendered by Leonardo da
    Vinci, standing with arms and legs outstretched in a circle and a
    square. Deployed today to celebrate subjects as various as the grandeur
    of art, the beauty of the human form, and the universality of the human
    spirit, the drawing turns up just about everywhere: in books, on coffee
    cups, on corporate logos, even on spacecraft. It has, in short, become
    the world's most famous cultural icon-and yet almost nobody knows about
    the epic intellectual journeys that led to its creation. In this modest
    drawing that would one day paper the world, da Vinci attempted nothing
    less than to calibrate the harmonies of the universe and understand the
    central role man played in the cosmos.Journalist and storyteller
    Toby Lester brings Vitruvian Man to life, resurrecting the ghost of an
    unknown Leonardo. Populated by a colorful cast of characters, including
    Brunelleschi of the famous Dome, Da Vinci's Ghost opens up a
    surprising window onto the artist and philosopher himself and the
    tumultuous intellectual and cultural transformations he bridged. With
    sparkling prose, Lester
    captures the brief but momentous time in the history of western thought
    when the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance, art and science and
    philosophy converged as one, and all seemed to hold out the promise that
    a single human mind, if properly harnessed, could grasp the nature of
    everything.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateFeb 7, 2012
    ISBN9781452675367
    Author

    Toby Lester

    Toby Lester is the author of The Fourth Part of the World (2009) and a contributing editor to The Atlantic. A former Peace Corps volunteer and United Nations observer, he lives in the Boston area with his wife and three daughters. His work has also appeared on the radio program This American Life.

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    Reviews for Da Vinci's Ghost

    4/5

    62 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Kind of a brief overview. Was looking for more ‘mystical’ vertruvian man information.
      Good listen.
    • 3/5
      Way too many Italian names to try to keep straight. Author's frequent use of lists in his sentences annoyed me to no end.
    • 5/5
      There were lots of things that I didn't know about Leonardo da Vinci's iconic image of the man in the square/circle. First up, I didn't know that it had pretty much remained hidden or obscure until 1956 when Kenneth Clark reproduced it in a work entitled "The Nude: A study in ideal form". Not did I know that it really harked back to Vitruvius and his "Ten books on Architecture" ..written around 25 BC....even though I have a copy of these and read them years ago. The only thing that I recall clearly from Vitruvius's book is that he recommends ringbarking trees and leaving them in the field to dry out for a few years before cutting them down to use as construction materials. But he also gives (in words only) the ideal proportions for a man and says that the ideal man fits within both a square and a circle. When Leonardo produced his drawing he also reproduced the words of Vitruvius ...but also corrected them and added his own findings. Lester draws attention to the fact that there was a widespread belief that man (women didn't seem to come into it) was created in God's image and was a microcosm of the earth and that all the ideal proportions for architecture, church layout etc etc could be related to the ideal human form. But he also makes it clear that Leonardo did not just think this image up. He had access to many similar images that had been produced across the years and even to one by his friends, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, that had a figure in a circle and in a square. And Leonardo himself had been collecting measurements of people to help him in his painting and design work. (I made a few measurements myself when my kids were growing to see how the ideal proportions changed. The head on kids is proportionately large than with the adult, for example).One piece of genius by Leonardo was to move the centre of the square down so that the circle is centred on the navel and the square on the genitals. Vitruvius apparently states that the navel is the midpoint of man but it's not and this had puzzled many other artists trying to emulate the figure There is also more than a bit of evidence that the face in the drawing is of Leonardo himself. Another thing that I hadn't realised was that Leonardo was poorly educated and was making tremendous efforts to educate himself as an adult...teaching himself latin for example. But, the book also draws attention to Leonardo's restless nature and his tendency to start things and then move on to something new before finishing what he'd started. One of the things that jumped out at me from Lester's book was the fact that many others had drawn things like the connections in the brain to the source of common sense but the drawings were really crude. Leonardo's were individual works of art. Lester also explains why the left foot looks slightly twisted and unnatural: well it's because the foot was generally taken as the measurement reference point and it needed to be shown side-on for it to be used as a reference in this way. Although there is a short section at the end about the various ways the image had become iconic and enjoyed widespread usage in modern times, I felt that this was maybe a bit underdone...especially in view of the publisher's notes on the back of the book that draw attention to the fact that "everybody knows the image". It's easy reading and interesting. Lester has brought a lot of information together here. Happy to give it 5 stars.
    • 2/5
      The author conducted research on the topic and then chose to theorize about what happened in detail and theorize what Leonardo felt. The information varies from somewhat interesting to truly trivial and boring. It would have been better to have presented the facts and let the reader make inferences. As it stands, the book often goes well beyond the facts with little support behind the hypotheses. I was dissapointed but found some useful information. Aditionally, the author makes DaVinci out as a genious in all things, which is unreasonable.
    • 4/5
      I have always been fascinated with Leonardo Da Vinci. Teaching my fifth graders about the history of science increased my fascination, as did reading Leonardo Da Vinci by Kathleen Krull. When I saw this audiobook in Tantor's Bargain Bin, I had to buy it. It was lucky I had the audio version because the amount of detail would have defeated me in a print book. This book is a very scholarly study of the varied and various influences that led Da Vinci to create the drawing we know as Vitruvian Man.Lester begins the story with Vitruvius who was a Roman architect in about 29 BC. He decided to achieve fame and possible fortune by writing a book about architecture which was dedicated to Caesar Augustus and which used Augustus as a model for human perfection. For Vitruvius and architects to at least Leonardo's time, the human proportion was a model of the divine and building should also be based on the same proportions. This idea, though not illustrated by Vitruvius, spurred Leonardo to make his famous drawing - Vitruvian Man.Listening, I was immersed in the personalities of the time and in the political and artistic cultures of Italy. The author placed Leonardo in both his culture and his time and speculated on how they formed the man. It was fascinating and filled with very rich detail.Stephen Hoye's voice was pleasant to listen to. I admire his ability to pronounce all those Italian names. I did have a moment or two of fear the Hoye would read us the bibliography. I can't imagine that the print version, as scholarly as it was, didn't have an extensive one. Fortunately, he did not.
    • 3/5
      During my last visit to Venice, I was lucky to have a glance at the original drawing of Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. Its size is a bit larger than DIN A4, thus rather small and underwhelming as an object (like Dürer's drawings in the Albertina). This account about the topic and the creation of Leonardo's master piece feels underwhelming too. It would have been a stellar magazine article. There simply is not enough material to merit a book-length treatment. Perhaps it is sufficient for somebody totally new to Leonardo and his work.
    • 5/5
      A whole book about a single drawing - albeit a drawing so pervasive that it practically defined the word "meme" decades before the internet was a gleam in some nerd's eye? I was intrigued enough to pick up the audiobook version of this work, and am so glad I did.You know the drawing I'm talking about, don't you? Da Vinci's yellowed sketch of a naked man outlined in a circle and a square? Even if you never realized it had a name - "Vetruvian Man" - you know the picture I'm talkin about: everyone does. But I had no idea of the fascinating cosmological, religious, medical, artistic, and architectural significance of the drawing until I devoured this short but thoroughly-researched account of the sketch's antecedents in ancient and medieval text and art. Yes, the book provides intriguing insights into Da Vinci's life and world, but the truly captivating take-away from the book is a deeper understanding of how mankind's perceptions of the world - and his role in it - have evolved through time, shaped along the way by religion, art, philosophy, medicine, science, math, cartography, fear, wonder, and - above all - curiosity.Turns out some pictures really are worth 1000 words!
    • 4/5
      The drawing is well known, if not universally recognized (and I mean universal in the literal sense). Leonardo DaVinci’s print of the human male figure, arms and legs outstretched, touching both a square and a circle drawn within the square, can be found on t-shirts and mousepads, corporate logos, as well as parodies including The Simpsons. It’s on the €1 Euro coin, but perhaps most impressively, it’s been launced into space on several long distance and very long term missions.It’s called “Vitruvian Man”, and among Leonardo’s eclectically vast tableau of work it remains one of his most enigmatic pieces. Author Toby Lester delves deeply into this single DaVinci masterpiece to expose its roots, its meanings and its lasting impressions.Lester provides insight into the genesis of this work which currently resides at the Accademia Gallery in Venice, though it’s not currently on display. The name comes from the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius: “Writing at the dawn of the Roman imperial age, Virtuvius proposed that a man can be made to fit inside a circle and a square, and some fifteen hundred years later Leonardo gave that idea memorable visual form. But there’s much more to the story than that. Vitruvius had described his figure in an architectural context, insisting that the proportions of sacred temples should conform to the proportions of the idea human body – the design of which, he believed, conformed to the hidden geometry of the universe.”Lester identifies some seriously heavy metaphysical connotations of the drawing as well, and the concept that it engenders. “The circle represented the cosmic and the divine; the square represented the earthly and the secular. Anybody proposing that a man could be made to fit inside both shapes was therefore making an age-old metaphysical statement. It was the world, in miniature.”He continues, “It’s an idealized self-portrait in which Leonardo, stripped down to his essence, takes his own measure, and in doing so embodies a timeless human hope: that we must might have the power of mind to figure out how we fit into the grand scheme of things.”Leonardo’s Virtuvian Man is estimated to be drawn in about 1490, but it’s just a guess since he didn’t date the work. The timing fits in with the style of draftsmanship, kinds of paper and pen he used, and even his handwriting of the time. Most importantly, it would place the work during “the very period in his career when he was immersed in his intensive study of human proportions and had a special interest in comparing his own measurements to those listed in Virtruvius’ work," wrote Lester.Leonardo spent many years examining the human body in great detail, and he left numerous drawings based on his first-hand anatomical dissections. He started to make specific connections between the human body and architecture, which one can see creep into his notebook doodlings in the 1480s.Vitruvius provided specific measurements of the idealized male form and these measurements act as a starting point for Leonardo’s work. Leonardo expands and improves upon the original description. Lester writes that DaVinci “corrected previous interpretations of an ancient text…to capture the essential message of (Vitruvius): that the human form embodied the natural harmonies present in the circle and the square.”And the face upon the Vitruvian man is likely Leonardo’s self-portrait as well.The book includes detailed notes and a plethora of images, taking advantage, in the digital form, to link seamlessly back and forth from the various reference points within the ebook edition.Lester’s book is a good read. It’s most successful, in my opinion, in its details surrounding Leonardo the man, his motivations, and the outline of his career. It fails, however, in its dubious connections presumed by author Lester, based upon an unfortunately incomplete record and circumstantial evidence. Leonardo spent some time with individuals that had their own connections with Vitruvius' work, and he had access to many historical works with various ties to the ancient work as well. Lester sometimes acknowledges that it’s “impossible to say”, for example, how much of certain concepts Leonardo was able to absorb by reading, but too often relies on ideas that Leonardo 'must have' read this, or 'likely' spoke to someone about that.I enjoyed this book. Lester does a nice job writing readable history. The concepts are, at times, tough to wrap ones arms around, and Lester does well in providing just enough background and context to make things attainable.
    • 5/5
      I found the audio version of this book to be an incredibly concise work of Italian Renaissance culture. Certainly a large portion of this book is devoted to Leonardo Da Vinci but Lester also touches upon his peers whether they are in art, architecture, philosophy or religion. There really is no question as to how much Da Vinci brought to the world of art and though he found unconventional methods to find the answers to his questions his discoveries changed the way artists viewed the human body forever.Although the audio version was mesmerizing I plan on following it up with the book version. Hopefully, there are illustrations and pictures of the works of art and artists discussed. Highly recommended for those who enjoy this subject.