Living with Leonardo: Fifty Years of Sanity and Insanity in the Art World and Beyond - Hardcover

Martin Kemp

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0500239568 ISBN 13: 9780500239568

Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2018

Synopsis

Living with Leonardo is a set of highly focused memoirs, a personal journey interwoven with historical research that encapsulates the author s relationship with Leonardo da Vinci over more than half a century.

We learn of his encounters with the vast population that surrounds Leonardo: great and lesser academics, collectors and curators, devious dealers and unctuous auctioneers, major scholars and authors and pseudohistorians and fantasists; but also how he has grappled with swelling legions of Leonardo loonies , walked on the eggshells of vested interests in academia and museums, and fended off fusillades of non-Leonardos, sometimes more than one a week. Kemp leads us through his thinking on the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, retells his part in the identification of the stolen Buccleuch Madonna and explains his involvement with and his theories on the two major Leonardo discoveries of the last 100 years, one of which plummeted into controversy (La Bella Principessa), while the other underwent a rapid ascent into widespread acceptance (Salvator Mundi). We learn firsthand of the thorny questions that surround attribution, the scientific analyses that support the experts interpretations, and the continuing importance of connoisseurship.

Throughout, from the most scholarly interpretations to the popularity of Dan Brown s Da Vinci Code, we are reminded of Leonardo s rare genius and wonder at how an artist from 500 years ago continues to make such compelling posthumous demands on all those who engage with him.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction: Art History in Action
Prologue: a Sketch of Leonardo
1. The Last Supper and the First Steps
2. The Original Last Supper
3. Looking at Lisa
4. The Stolen Madonna
5. The Beautiful Princess
6. Ugly Arguments
7. The Saviour
8. Science and Seeing
9. Codices and Computers
10. Exhibitions
11. Codes and Codswallop

About this title

Review:

Fascinating --Sunday Times

Kemp is a natural storyteller...this book leads you on a journey through the life, work and legacy of one of history's most intriguing figures. Kemp emerges as a guide whom you feel you can trust- and, perhaps just as importantly, who will prove entertaining company when you pitch camp --The Times

Fascinating --The Lady

Kemp is a natural storyteller. His account of a career at the coalface of the Leonardo industry is as amusing as it is insightful, as informative as it is frank --The Times, Art Books of the Year

About the Author:

Martin Kemp is emeritus research professor in the history of art at Oxford University. He is a leading authority on Leonardo da Vinci and his bibliography on the artist includes Leonardo; Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, Design; and La Bella Principessa: The Story of the New Masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0500239568
• ISBN 13: 9780500239568
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320