An absorbing inquiry into a legendary artist and his techniques.
The science of light and shadow illuminates Leonardo da Vinci’s revolutionary art.
University of Virginia art historian Fiorani’s sparkling second book explores how Leonardo’s love of science informed his art. Intimately capturing the artistic, religious, and cultural landscape of Leonardo’s world, the author traces his development as an artist from his early apprenticeship days to the lessons he learned as he painted his greatest works and up to his posthumous legacy. In his book The Lives, Giorgio Vasari’s influential portrait of Leonardo “discredited” Leonardo’s “science of art,” ruining Leonardo’s reputation for years. Throughout, Fiorani’s detailed attention to Leonardo’s notebooks show how much his interests in art and science were interwoven. He produced a handful of paintings, many unfinished, but some 4,100 notebook pages filled with notations, sketches, and technical and shadow drawings. The author notes that in his late 30s, Leonardo’s interest in the world of art shifted to focus on science and philosophy, especially optics and the “subtle pattern of shadows” on objects. His earliest works were studies of drapery, and his innovative Florentine teacher, Andrea del Verrocchio, taught him to “carefully observe each fold and to capture the effect of shifting light.” Fiorani effectively describes Leonardo’s experiments with paints that allowed him to “achieve an astounding variety of optical effects” in his first solo painting, the Annunciation. With his “stunning” portrait Ginevra, he aspired to capture not just a young woman’s beauty, but also her soul and a “new way of painting.” Adoration, which he left unfinished, “forced him to rethink what he knew and did not know about the science of optics” while Virgin of the Rocks was a “masterpiece of optics.” Last Supper, which began to deteriorate shortly after he finished it, is “perhaps the saddest example of Leonardo pushing experimentation too far.” Mona Lisa remained unfinished as well.
An absorbing inquiry into a legendary artist and his techniques.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-26196-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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