Leonardo di Vinci - Book Report/Review Example

Leonardo da Vinci: Book Format Criticism The book, Leonardo da Vinci by Sherwin Nuland, is a pieceof work that discusses the life of Leonardo da Vinci with the intent of discussing his life in the context of his work. The book is divided into eight chapters in which the chronology of his life events is discussed, after which his work is looked at for its most relevant resources. As the work is created in a casual, conversational style of writing, the book relates the way in which Leonardo’s work developed, looking specifically at the manuscripts and his work on anatomy.

The book Leonardo da Vinci by Sherwin Nuland, is designed to make the life of the great artistic master and scientist accessible to the average reader. Leonardo da Vinci has been developed as an autobiography, but with the intent of revealing the man through his work. The author clearly believes that a true picture of the nature of the Leonardo is not available to modern researchers. He states “Leonardo was not to be found in that place. In fact, he is not to be found in any place. He is not a creature of places or monuments or even of permanence” (2).

The enigma of his personal life is as powerful as the contrast of his great works, his manuscripts providing some context for his work, but mostly revealing his passions for discovery. The book provides a view of Leonardo that is keyed to the inventions that he created, while understanding that he was a man outside of his own time period, his thoughts sending him into scientific discovery and inventive creation that was beyond the technologies of his time to complete. The structure of the book is through a division of eight chapters.

The first chapter overviews what is known about the man, creating a discussion about the author’s search to understand da Vinci. It begins with a personal discussion of how he sought to learn how to understand Leonardo through the places that represented his life, only to learn that some of them were not accurately recorded. He states that “Still, it was his birthplace, even if its austere old bricks seemed to have no message for us” (Nuland 1). Nuland discovers that the place he visited was not the place of Leonardo’s birth, despite being advertised as such, but the greater point is that the subject of his research was a bit of an enigma.

He instead decides to search for Leonardo through his work. Nuland states that “Leonardo da Vinci was a creature of ideas” (2), thus framing da Vinci’s experience through the work that he has left behind. The evidence of this statement is in the body of work that the author has created, his study of the man based now upon understanding him through his work, rather than looking for clues of him through settings and through a personal concept of connecting to his personality. The book is broken down, after the first chapter, into three subsequent chapters that outline his life history, pieced together by what is known and what has been supposed.

The last three chapters begin with an overview of his manuscripts, with the last two chapters discussing his work on topics of the anatomy. The writing style of the book is conversational, the relaxed and casual nature of the writer as he engages his audience intent on contrasting the author’s feeling that attaining a sense of the man is beyond his scope of discovery. One of the problems with this writing style is that it is almost too honest, the ideas presented in such a way to make the validity seem somewhat subjective.

While it is most likely that there is only an objective nature to the realities within the work, the nature of the way it is presented creates a sense of doubt. This style carries throughout the work, even showing up in his notes about different aspects of the book. In his note on the Sforza Horse, he states about its current location that “It is just another of the Leonardian hoaxes” (Nuland 85). This type of casual banter with the reader creates both a relax discourse and a sense of the fluctuations of the truth within history.

While the organization of the book is done in an accessible way, the documentation of all of the resources seems to be somewhat less accurate and extensive that it might have been. Once again, there is an uncertainty that exists about the truth of all that is written. For a biography on a man who was a visual illustrator of all that he imagined, there was a lack of illustration to emphasize the facts as they were related. The use of stronger documentation and illustrations would have provided for a deeper sense of the validity of all that was related within the work.

The nature of the way in which the book has been designed has created a piece of work that puts into question the nature of the researcher, that is Sherwin Nuland, for his expertise on the topic. While it is most likely that this is a style choice, rather than an accurate description of the author, the style choices have created a problem where the validity of the scholarly nature of the work is concerned. The book written by Sherwin Nuland on the life of Leonardo da Vinci is intended to provide insight into the mind of the master through an examination of his work.

However, because of the conversational nature of the writing, this understanding is not fully reached. While the book is accessible to the non-academic, it is also without enough cited resources and illustrations to make it a dependable piece of literature. The doubts that are created are just as powerful as the facts and research that is revealed. Through reading this book, the reader will have ideas about da Vinci, but without the feeling that solid conclusions have been drawn. The organization of the work is clean, but the content needs to be examined for its true validity.

Works Cited Nuland, Sherwin B. 2005. Leonardo da Vinci. New York: Penguin Books.