A heretical mind

摘要

Two new books on Leonardo da Vinci have covers that are almost identical. Both authors have pored over Leonardo's notebooks, and claim to take us inside the mind of the Renaissance giant. Yet one book, a surprisingly short one, paints Leonardo as a genius, whereas the other, a doorstep of a volume, presents him uncut, looking something of a fallen angel. Which Leonardo you choose depends on whether you prefer your heroes on or off their pedestal. Martin Kemp, an eminent Oxford art historian and Leonardo scholar, has condensed what he calls Leonardo's "strange career" as an artist, engineer and musician into a series of key moments. Writing his book in the Tuscan villa that was once home to a smiling housewife named Lisa, thought to be the model for the most famous painting in the world, Mr Kemp warms to the ambience of the place before launching into the essential facts about the man. Yet after an auspicious beginning, the book reads like a gallery guide to Leonardo, and this may be because Mr Kemp is organising a Europe-wide exhibition of Leonardo in 2006, called the Universal Leonardo Project.