Free Press. - Da Vincis ghost: genius, obsession, and how Leonardo created the world in his own image

Praise for

D A V INCIS G HOST

[A] richly rewarding history... [Vitruvian Man] captures, as Lester eloquently observes, the intoxicating, ephemeral moment when art, science, and philosophy all seemed to be merging, and when it seemed possible that, with their help, the individual human mind might actually be able to comprehend and depict the nature of everything.

The New York Times Book Review

Lesters book is a fascinating account in many ways. His great skill is for contextualizing long-forgotten ideas and carrying them across centuries, showing how and why they circulate, seem to be forgotten, and are suddenly remembered only to be reinterpreted anew.... Though previous biographies do treat Leonardos Vitruvian Man, most only sketch the context of the microcosm and point out that Leonardo was deriving his ideas from many sources, including contemporary master-builders and artist-engineers such as Francesco di Giorgio and the earlier Leon Battista Alberti. Da Vincis Ghost sets the drawing firmly in its time and intellectual place.

The New Republic

This short, engaging book provides historical and intellectual contexts for one of the worlds most famous drawings, Leonardos Vitruvian Man.... Leonardo, Lester argues, is every bit as medieval and derivative as he is modern and visionary.

The New Yorker

A taut, engrossing tale that spans nearly 2,000 years and has its origins in the ancient Rome of Caesar Augustus.

Christian Science Monitor

Chief among the many pleasures of Toby Lesters new book, Da Vincis Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image , is the Leonardo da Vinci who emerges from its pages. You wont find Robert Langdons rarefied, enigmatic wizard of the Italian Renaissance here. The Leonardo Lester draws is charmingly human.

San Francisco Chronicle

Its an absorbing tale that integrates philosophy, geography, cartography, architecture, anatomy and even the mysticism of Hildegard of Bingen. In the wrong hands, this ambitious undertaking could be dry, impenetrable and pedantic. Luckily, it is in the thoroughly capable hands of Toby Lester, a master of connected thinking whose sparkling prose makes medieval anatomical and architectural theory not only comprehensible but downright fascinating.

Star Tribune

Toby Lester takes the reader on a well-researched, meandering journey that begins during the Roman Empire and illuminates a string of connections between art, architecture, the beginnings of modern medicine, and the church, culminating in the Vitruvian Man, as we know him.

PopMatters

A compact and entertaining treatise on the history of ideas, written with the light touch of a journalist.

Bloomberg

This is an enthralling book about a famous drawing and its equally famous creator, who becomes disarmingly, even heartbreakingly human in the authors sympathetic hands.

The American Scholar

A very readable history of what can justifiably be called the worlds most famous drawing, Leonardos Vitruvian Man. Lester [has] a special talent for focusing on what seems a very narrow subjecthere, a single imageas a lens into a broader understanding of an age, and how people viewed the world around them.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Lester eloquently proposes the Vitruvian Man as a study of human proportion; as an overview of the human anatomy; as an exploration of an architectural idea; as an illustration of an ancient text, updated for modern times; as a vision of empire; as a cosmography of the lesser world; as a celebration of the power of art; as a metaphysical proposition... Da Vincis Ghost celebrates the emergence of humanism in 15th-century Italy.

Salon.com

[Lester] weaves a sparkling account of Da Vincis personal life with an intriguing history of studies of the human form. So entwined are these narratives that he speculates on a tantalising theory: that Vitruvian Man was a self-portrait. It is a fine revelation on which to round off a fascinating book.

New Scientist

Leonardo da Vincis Vitruvian Manpoised within a circle and a squareis arguably historys most iconic image. Writer Toby Lester offers the absorbing story of this Renaissance rendering. Touching on anatomy, medicine, geography, mathematics, philosophy and aesthetics, he explores the idea that the body, geometry and mystic reality are linked. Its progenitor was Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, who posited that human proportions echo the cosmos and should set the form for architecture and for all civilization.

Nature

Lester braids intellectual threadsphilosophy, anatomy, architecture, and arttogether in a way that reaffirms not only Leonardos genius but also re-establishes the significance of historical context in understanding great works of art.

Publishers Weekly , Starred Review

A fascinating journey with a lively pace, intriguing illustrations, a large cast of characters, and intertwined stories that jump and skip through history.

Library Journal

Given how many texts have been devoted to Leonardo da Vinci, any new study must be special. Toby Lesters Da Vincis Ghost hits the mark. It offers a compelling portrait of Leonardo... and leavens scholarship with storytelling and graceful prose.

Financial Times

A tale entertainingly told, in sections of a few pages each that alight on a topic, a place, or a person, and gradually build up images of the artist, of his milieu, and of the concepts that were ultimately distilled in Vitruvian Man... the drawing at the heart of this book is one of the compelling images of Western art, and Lester has done a real service by setting it in context with so deft a touch and with so strong a narrative drive.

The Times Literary Supplement

A tour de force, positively bursting with information... Da Vincis Ghost is more than just a brilliantly put together collection of fascinating factoids and speculative narrative. It charts a cultural history of a powerful meme that sat at the centre of the Western European thought for over a thousand years.

The Book Bag

Like almost everyone, Ive seen Leonardos drawing of the nude man in the circle. But until I read Toby Lesters terrific new book, I had no idea about the story behind the pictureor even that there was a story behind the picture. Deftly weaving together art, architecture, history, theology, and much else, Da Vincis Ghost is a first-rate intellectual enchantment.

Charles Mann, author of 1493

Da Vincis Ghost is as ingeniously crafted as one of its namesakes famous inventions. Like Leonardo himself, Toby Lester can take a single sheet of paperin this case, the most famous drawing in all of art historyand make it teem with stories, characters, insights, and ideas.

Adam Goodheart, author of 1861: The Civil War Awakening

In reconstructing the forgotten story of Vitruvian Man, Toby Lester, a canny decoder of images and a great storyteller, sheds new light on the enigmatic Leonardo da Vinci.

Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired and author of The Long Tail and Free

Like Da Vincis famous drawing, Toby Lesters book is a small wondera work of brilliant compression that illuminates a whole world of life and thought. Lester proves himself to be the perfect guide to the Renaissance and beyondaffable, knowledgeable, funny. Leonardos Vitruvian Man turns out to be a road map that can take us to remarkable placesonce you learn how to read it.

Cullen Murphy, editor at large of Vanity Fair

Erudite, elegant, enthralling. This is a wonderful book. Toby Lester understands, and makes us understand, the unique intensity with which Leonardo saw the world. He saw it not only in its infinite diversity but also as an impression of his own self, an explanation of what it means to be human. Hence Vitruvian Man.

Sister Wendy Beckett, BBC and PBS commentator on the history of art