A true genius whose talents embraced painting, engineering, anatomy and human flight, Leonardo da Vinci was an extraordinary human being, indeed one of the most intriguing figures in world history. In this biography, Martin Kemp offers a vivid portrait of the Renaissance giant that exploresthe essential nature of this forever fascinating artist-engineer, both as an individual and as a historical phenomenon, feeding the "the continuing public appetite for Leonardo and his doings" found in The Da Vinci Code. Kemp takes us on an absorbing journey through the life and work of Leonardo, looking first at the historical man, portraying an impressive and cultivated figure, an artist who in truth completed few paintings, rarely satisfied a commission, and yet lived in the style and ended his career with amassive salary. More important, the author examines the ideas underlying Leonardo's investigations of nature, illuminating his vision of the artist-engineer as matching nature itself in his creativity. Kemp argues that Leonardo's apparent diversities reveal a desire to find an inner unity in thefunctioning of everything in the observable world. For Leonardo, writes Kemp, every act of looking and drawing was an act of analysis, and he used these analyses to re-make and re-interpret his surroundings. Beautifully illustrated with a unique "thumbnail museum" that offers a tour of all Leonardo's paintings, plus 30 additional illustrations and life-size reproductions of pages from his famous notebooks, Leonardo is a powerful portrait of one of the towering geniuses of world history. Read Less