Leonardo: The First Scientist by Michael White
While I had no problem refuting many of The Da Vinci Code’s inaccuracies concerning the church, it was not so easy for me to identify or contradict any such inaccuracies concerning the book’s titular hero. So I decided to read a biography of Leonardo Da Vinci, and Michael White’s volume seemed a good fit.
On the upside, the book was very interesting. Until now my knowledge of Leonardo was very limited: he painted the Mona Lisa; he drew the Vetruvian Man; he designed some big metal horse that was never built; and he built a machine to turn lead into gold, which was subsequently destroyed by Hudson Hawk. I am now free of such ignorance, and have a much-expanded understanding of Da Vinci and his time. The portrayal of Da Vinci’s world, in particular, was a great strength of the book. It did an excellent job of establishing a context for Da Vinci: it explained not only his life, but what was happening around him.
I came away from the book as a great respecter of Da Vinci, but not an admirer. He was a multi-talented man, gifted in art, music, architecture, mechanical design, and science. The book’s subtitle, “the first scientist,” refers to Da Vinci’s methodology of observation, hypothesis, and experimentation that pre-dated the scientific method by hundreds of years. Some of his discoveries about optics and the nature of light, though recorded in his journals, were lost at his death until independent discovery by Isaac Newton. These respectable accomplishments aside, he was a rather horrible person. He was an opportunist, a miser, a misogynist, an open homosexual, and a hater of the church. He freely stole the ideas of others, rarely completed anything he started, ended his life paranoid and bitter.
As to the assertions about Leonardo made in The Da Vinci Code, based on this volume of history, they were, like so much else in the book, a load of bunk. Far from being the head of a secret society dedicated to preserving the worship of women, Leonardo disliked women and did not trust anyone. The idea of secretly-coded messages in his paintings and frescoes rings hollow in light of the fact that Leonardo didn’t even finish most of his paintings — most of them were finished by other people — and most of his frescoes were deteriorating (and being repaired by others) before Da Vinci’s death.
The book was in the Stephen Ambrose style of story-like history, which was a mixed blessing. Such a style makes it easy to become and stay interested in the history being recounted. However, it also makes this a populist history, not an uber-footnoted tome of academia. Despite the cited sources and obvious research that went into the book, the level of speculation involved makes it difficult at times to determine what is established fact and what is authorial fancy. That, I think, is its greatest weakness. The introduction revealed this book was a sequel of sorts to White’s earlier work, Newton: The Last Sorcerer. This one was enjoyable enough that I think I’ll add White’s volume on Newton to my “to read” list.