THE GENIUS OF LEONARDO

Fact and fiction blur in a handsome, imported hybrid. Visconti presents an admirable imagining of Leonardo’s world. He captures his audience with a well-researched and authentic-feeling fictionalized account of Giacomo, a young apprentice to the Master. To add greater immediacy and build greater interest, he makes liberal use of well-chosen and telling quotes from Leonardo’s own notebooks. His artistic collaborator, the well-received Italian illustrator Landmann (Paolo Guarnieri’s A Boy Named Giotto, 1999) adds further interest by incorporating her own renderings of images directly drawn from the notebooks as well as from the Master’s most familiar paintings and studies. The slightly oversized book’s production is lavish with full-page illustrations facing the text, punctuated with several two-page spreads (without text), and highlighted with many spot-art renderings of Leonardo’s notebook drawings. The dramatic landscapes and angular figures in Landmann’s signature, highly stylized, full-color (with silver) illustrations are detailed and involving. Though collections with especially heavy demand for arts, science, or history curriculum support focusing on Renaissance artists will certainly want to add this, Diane Stanley’s impressive and rich Leonardo Da Vinci (1996) will remain the gold standard. (Picture book. 7+)