Leonardo's Legacy

May 3, 2010
Every year more than 5 million people line up to see Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa-but why? In his latest, German science writer Klein (The Secret Pulse of Time) seeks to understand why "this portrait of a Florentine housewife of no more than average beauty" is so "deeply penetrating." Klein makes a compelling case that DaVinci's ability to trigger an empathetic physical response in the viewer lay in his scientific acumen: the asymmetry of the Mona Lisa's smile, for instance, deliberately reflects the asymmetry of the human brain. While Leonardo is remembered primarily as an artist, his accomplishments as a scientist were at least as important; among other work, he studied the motion of water, worked out the trajectory of missiles, and designed impregnable fortifications, all with just a bare-bones knowledge of arithmetic. Klein insists that "the Mona Lisa so riveting because it incorporated many of the optical rules that Leonardo discovered," such as the way proportions change in relation to distance and colors transform as light passes through the atmosphere. Including a detailed chronology of the artist's life, this makes an illuminating new look at Leonardo's unique genius. 70 B&W photos.