Leonardo da Vinci by Stephen J Campbell

Leonardo da Vinci by Stephen J Campbell

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 *

Stephen J. Campbell is the Henry and Elizabeth Wiesenfeld Professor in the Department of the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University. His books include Andrea Mantegna: Humanist Aesthetics, Faith, and the Force of Images and The Endless Periphery: Toward a Geopolitics of Art in Lorenzo Lotto’s Italy.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780691193687
ISBN 10	0691193681
Title	Leonardo da Vinci
Author	Stephen J Campbell
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Princeton University Press
Year published	2025-02-04
Number of pages	352
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.