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This book does demonstrate with a lot of precise details how Leonardo's involvement and association with paintings from his early period can be proven or disproven. In some cases advanced scientific techniques such as x-ray analysis are cited to disprove or clarify statements made by previous authors about Leonardo's supposed involvement in various paintings. This book would be very helpful if someone was, for example, writing a paper about Leonardo's early career as far as exactly what paintings he worked on.
However the mysterious aspect about Leonardo da Vinci is not his painting which he eventually grew tired of and he sometimes didn't even bother to finish his own paintings. The mysterious thing about Leonardo is how did he all of a sudden become (at least in his own mind) an engineer, architect, scientist, etc., when he was never trained in any of these things ? How did someone who was trained as a painter and artist make that transition ? That's where the mystery deepens about Leonardo da Vinci.
As far as the books I've read so far that mystery has never been fully explained other than he was self taught. His art was very important for this transition because it allowed him to record his basically limitless ideas at a time when photography didn't exist yet.
But a good follow on to this book would be called 'Leonardo Da Vinci Origins Of A RENAISSANCE Genius' or 'Scientific Genius' or something like that.
Whether some or most of Leonardo's scientific ideas were valid is I think open to debate. But he did have some of the characteristics required for true genius which are intense curiosity, being very observant, and having almost unlimited energy. And he was a good painter, that much can be stated positively.
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HAUNTED PLACES IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH by Alan Brown.
University Press of Mississippi Jackson. 2002. ISBN
1-57806-477-5.
This must have been one fun book to write, since it is based
wholly on things you can't prove and stories largely made up by
imaginative people. Kind of like a book on Flying Saucer
sightings: the stories may be true, but how is anybody ever going
to be able to prove it?
Reality aside, the reader can romp through the South,
reading tales of things that go scary in the night, safe in the
knowledge that it's only a book.
Alan Brown takes us from Carrollton, Alabama's famous Face
in the Pickens County Courthouse Window to Birmingham's Downtown
Library ghost.
Since just about everybody who is alert and bristling with
caffeine has seen things out of the corner of the eye, movements
in peripheral vision that can't be viewed head-on, this book can
compel and entertain. Since everybody's been frightened at one
time or another by a nightmare after a turbulent night trying to
digest a spicy taco dinner, everybody can identify with the
implications of these ghost stories. You just have to be in the
mood. If this is your Day of Pragmatism and Reality Check, you'll
be bored. If this is a dark and stormy night with the power out
and a candle illuminating an H.P. Lovecraft book, you just may
want to pull that copy of HAUNTED PLACES off the shelf and dive
in.
If you're going to scare yourself, why not learn a little
history at the same time?
--Jim Reed, author of DAD'S TWEED COAT: SMALL WISDOMS, HIDDEN COMFORTS, UNEXPECTED JOYS Learn more: jimreedbooks.com