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Leonardo da Vinci

An Untraceable Life

Stephen J Campbell author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Princeton University Press

Publishing:1st Apr '25

£30.00

This title is due to be published on 1st April, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

Leonardo da Vinci cover

How our image of the Renaissance’s most famous artist is a modern myth

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) never signed a painting, and none of his supposed self-portraits can be securely ascribed to his hand. He revealed next to nothing about his life in his extensive writings, yet countless pages have been written about him that assign him an identity: genius, entrepreneur, celebrity artist, outsider. Addressing the ethical stakes involved in studying past lives, Stephen J. Campbell shows how this invented Leonardo has invited speculation from figures ranging from art dealers and curators to scholars, scientists, and biographers, many of whom have filled in the gaps of what can be known of Leonardo’s life with claims to decode secrets, reveal mysteries of a vanished past, or discover lost masterpieces of spectacular value.

In this original and provocative book, Campbell examines the strangeness of Leonardo’s words and works, and the distinctive premodern world of artisans and thinkers from which he emerged. Far from being a solitary genius living ahead of his time, Leonardo inhabited a vibrant network of artistic, technological, and literary exchange. By investigating the politics and cultural tensions of the era as well as the most recent scholarship on Leonardo’s contemporaries, workshop, and writings, Campbell places Leonardo back into the milieu that shaped him and was shaped by him. He shows that it is in the gaps and contradictions of what we know of Leonardo’s life that a less familiar and far more historically significant figure appears.

"[An] erudite study. . . . buttressed by scrupulous research and extensive knowledge of his subject, [Leonardo da Vinci] is a thought-provoking reassessment of an artistic giant and his legacy." * Publishers Weekly *
"Perceptive and authoritative…. [Leonardo da Vinci is] a vigorous meditation on life-writing and one artist’s reality." * Kirkus Reviews *

ISBN: 9780691193687

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

352 pages