Watermarks

Leonardo da Vinci and the Mastery of Nature

Leslie A. Geddes

$105

Hardback

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English

Princeton University Press
25 August 2020

History of art & design styles: c 1400 to c 1600; Renaissance art; Individual artists, art monographs; History of architecture; Biography: arts & entertainment

Foreign Affairs' 'Best Books of 2020'

Leonardo's enduring fascination with water-from its artistic representation to aquatic inventions and hydraulic engineering.

Formless, mutable, transparent: the element of water posed major challenges for the visual artists of the Renaissance. To the engineers of the era, water represented a force that could be harnessed for human industry but was equally possessed of formidable destructive power. For Leonardo da Vinci, water was an enduring fascination, appearing in myriad forms throughout his work. In Watermarks, Leslie Geddes explores the extraordinary range of Leonardo's interest in water and shows how artworks by him and his peers contributed to hydraulic engineering and the construction of large river and canal systems.

From drawings for mobile bridges and underwater breathing apparatuses to plans for water management schemes, Leonardo evinced a deep interest in the technical aspects of water. His visual studies of the ways in which landscape is shaped by water demonstrated both his artistic mastery and probing scientific mind. Analyzing Leonardo's notebooks, plans, maps, and paintings, Geddes argues that, for Leonardo and fellow artists, drawing was a form of visual thinking and problem solving essential to understanding and controlling water and other parts of the natural world. She also examines the material importance in this work of water-based media, namely ink, watercolor, and oil paint.

A compelling account of Renaissance art and engineering, Watermarks shows, above all else, how Leonardo applied his pictorial genius to water in order to render the natural world in all its richness and constant change.

By: Leslie A. Geddes
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 260mm, Width: 191mm,
ISBN: 9780691192697
ISBN 10: 0691192693
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 25 August 2020
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , General/trade , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Leslie A. Geddes is assistant professor of art history at Tulane University.

Reviews for Watermarks: Leonardo da Vinci and the Mastery of Nature

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title in Fine Arts One cannot help admiring how, through her own fertile processes of thought and analogy, Geddes mirrors the astonishing liveliness of Leonardo's creative imagination. ---Francis Ames-Lewis, Burlington Magazine Compelling. . . . an exciting addition to the new field of the environmental humanities. * Choice *