Giorgio Vasari's biographical collection "The Lives of the Artists" is one of the most frequently cited art history books since the 16th century. It is also the first comprehensive book on art history ever created. In the work, Vasari brings together facts, knowledge, and sometimes gossip about almost 200 Renaissance artists. Most of the biographies are focused on Florentines and Romans, though Vasari also wrote about other European artists. "The...

Spike covers the full range of Michelangelo's early years and explores the overwhelming influence that his charismatic personality had upon his contemporaries and followers. He traces Michelangelo's development into a master sculptor, probes his involvement in the most troubling controversies of his age, and recreates Florence and Rome with vivid sketches.

"The traditional view of Leonardo da Vinci's career is that he enjoyed a promising start in Florence and then moved to Milan to become the celebrated court artist of Duke Ludovico Sforza. Young Leonardo proves all of this wrong. It reveals how the struggling painter was repeatedly snubbed by the prevailing trends of Florentine style before escaping to Milan empty-handed. But Milan offered little more; Sforza's patronage was lukewarm, to say the least,...

Illustrations and text portray the life of Leonardo da Vinci, who gained fame as a artist through such works as the Mona Lisa, and as a scientist by studying various subjects including human anatomy and flight.

An introduction to the art of one of the world's greatest artists.

Who were the artists of the Renaissance? Why do we still learn from Renaissance art? Using an inquiry-based approach, readers are introduced to the Italian Renaissance as it was experienced by five of the world's most renowned artists: Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian. Readers will learn about the biographies of these Renaissance artists through the perspective of three to four major works of art that not only...

Leonardo da Vinci is well known for his inventions as well as his art. But new evidence shows that many of his ideas were realized long before he sketched them out in his notebooks, some even 1700 years before him.

"He was an artist, inventor, architect, engineer, mathematician, sculptor, and scientist, he painted some of the world's most famous works of art and dreamed up over 400 machines that were spectacularly ahead of his time--he even invented the helicopter! Discover one of history's most amazing minds in this entertaining guide to his extraordinary life."--Back cover.