Leonardo da Vinci Book

"All biographers secretly want to annex and channel the sex-lives of their subjects", writes Julian Barnes in his novelesque biography of Flaubert and continues, "you must make your judgment on me as well as on Flaubert". Apparently, writing Leonardo da Vinci biography, Charles Nicholl wasn't aware of that. Though being a different kind of a biography reader, I did not intend to make any judgment on Mr Nicholl. Until I finished his book with, I must confess, a little a lot of skimming.

As every devoted Leonardo researcher Charles Nicholl, of course, has his own views, theories and interpretations of every known and enigmatic event in Leonardo's life. It's only natural that writing a book on the subject he wants to share them with his audience and add something to already (too) huge Leonardo discourse. There's nothing wrong with that. What is wrong though is that a) main focus of Mr Nicholl's attention is Leonardo's relationship with his father, ser Piero, and Leonardo's relationship with men b) instead of nicely putting his assumptions in one chapter, Mr Nicholl scattered them through the whole book. That said, if Sigmund Freud (who as you may know wrote his own essay on the subject, called Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood) was alive now, he'd been immensely happy to get acquainted with Charles Nicholl's book. Probably he even would've written something on Leonardo's biographer's memories of childhood as well. I have to emphasize here, before I continue, that my complaints have nothing to do with Leonardo's possible homosexuality or the influence his father's figure might have had on Leonardo's life and art. Undoubtedly, these are the topics to be discussed in a decent da Vinci biography, but these are not the only topics to be discussed, not the only way to look at the man who created the greatest masterpieces of all time. Mr Nicholl, however, tries to interpret everything Leonardo did from the perspective of either a confused man with suppressed desire or an illegitimate child (equal to an unloved child in this case). In some cases Mr Nicholl goes bold and blends both a man and a child. As a result, reader has not a glimpse of Leonardo personality, let alone his sparkling genius. According to the book, Leonardo was mostly a doubtful, restless person who kept fighting against his nature in many ways. In between these acts of inner struggle he painted a few things. However you wouldn't be told why these things are considered to be magnificent and insightful, but you certainly would be told how these paintings, drawings and murals prove that Leonardo preferred men to women and suffered from his childhood father related trauma. I'll give you an example. According to Mr Nicholl, Leonardo worked for notorious Cesare Borgia not because he was at that time a powerful and wealthy ruler of a huge domain; not because Cesare employed Leonardo (at last!) as military architect and engineer; certainly not because Cesare gave da Vinci an unlimited pass to every bit of his empire which also meant that Leonardo could not worry about his safety. No. Cesare Borgia was a strong, handsome man, a father-lover figure poor confused homosexual illegitimate child was bound to cling to.

The other thing Mr Nicholl is obsessed with is Leonardo's expenses. He goes into exquisite detail describing (oh so many times) what Leonardo bought and what the cost for each item was. Surely this helps to estimate how wealthy da Vinci was and how he preferred to spend his income, it just needs some more structure. Again, why not devote the whole chapter to how, when and on what Leonardo spent his money? Why scatter? Apparently, Mr Nicholl believes in magical power of blending things and making one continuous never-ending narrative. The same goes for giving some background information. Sometimes I asked myself if I was still reading the book about da Vinci or a book about Renaissance Florence? Lorenzo Medici? The house of Sforza? The problem is that be it a book on any mentioned topic, it wouldn't get any better, because wealthy families, conflicts and other painters were represented in a way too naïve and biased manner. Moreover, almost every other creative person (be it a painter, or a poet, or an architect) mentioned in the book somehow influenced Leonardo or was influenced by him (despite the fact that some connections are not obvious and it's not enough to live in one town or one period of time to influence one another).

In the preface Mr Nicholl writes that his intention was to show Leonardo da Vinci as a human being, not a demigod epitome of a so-called "Renaissance Man". Indeed, he succeeded. I'd say he surpassed his original idea, and in this case it means to utterly fail. Nonetheless, Mr Nicholl obviously loves his hero. At the very end of the book he even goes lyrical, saying that no matter what happened to Leonardo's body, liable to rot, his restless mind was set free. It would have been a nice way to finish Leonardo da Vinci biography if this biography in question was at least not that bad and chaotic.

If this book is to be your first Leonardo da Vinci biography or if you consider buying this book in paper, put it down very slowly. Go for Martin Kemp first. Or Ross King. Or Wikipedia page (at least it's free!). I know what I'm talking about - this book was my long awaited birthday treat to myself a year ago. If this book is a part of your collection of Leonardo biographies (my case) then go for it and form your own opinion.