Does it include a full translation of the notebooks?
No, Pedretti provides commentary explaining what Leonardo is investigating rather than a full translation. The reproduced sketches and mirror-written Italian remain part of the visual experience.
Nonfiction · Reference · History · Science
Leonardo da Vinci
Reading facts
✓ Checked- Reading effort
- 40 / 100Moderate
- Length
- 168 pagesPowerhouse Publishing · 2000
- Reading time
- 3 h 15 minat 50 pages an hour ·
- Pace
- Measured
- Emotional intensity
- 1 / 5
About 3 h 15 min · at 30 minutes a day, about 7 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
Leonardo da Vinci’s attempts to explain water, earth, and light connect the scientific observations gathered in his Codex Leicester. This exhibition companion reproduces the notebook’s sketches and mirror-written Italian alongside Carlo Pedretti’s commentary, with Michael Desmond’s introduction placing it within Leonardo’s life and work. Its questions range from the movement of water to fossils and the moon’s light, combining close observation with theories that sometimes proved mistaken.
Reader notes
The illustrated, page-by-page format lends itself to browsing a few observations at a time. Pedretti explains what Leonardo is investigating, but provides commentary rather than a full translation; the original handwriting remains part of the visual experience.
How it reads
- Writing style
- Academic · Descriptive
- Tone
- Cerebral · Earnest
- Structure
- Reference
- Driven by
- Ideas · Information
- Evidence style
- Primary documents
- Practical orientation
- Reference
- Nonfiction form
- Explanation synthesis · Reference
Reading complexity
- Writing
- 3 / 5
- Ideas
- 3 / 5
- Structure
- 2 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 2 / 5
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
- Writing
- How much attention the sentences and language require.
- Ideas
- How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
- Structure
- How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
- Background knowledge
- Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
- Emotional intensity
- Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Themes
- Art and creativity
- Knowledge and truth
- Nature and environment
Content notes
- Violence
- None
- Sexual content
- None
- Swearing
- None
- Substance use
- None
- Abuse
- None
- Self-harm or suicide
- None
Questions readers ask
Should I read it straight through or dip into it?
The illustrated, page-by-page format suits browsing a few observations at a time. Pedretti’s commentary explains the investigations, while Desmond’s introduction places the notebook within Leonardo’s life and work.
Is it mainly about art or science?
The focus is Leonardo’s scientific observations about water, earth, and light, with questions extending to fossils and the moon’s light. The reproduced notebook pages also make his sketches and handwriting central to the experience.
Are Leonardo’s explanations presented as established science?
No, the notebook combines close observation with theories that sometimes proved mistaken. Its interest lies in Leonardo’s attempts to explain natural phenomena, from moving water to the moon’s light.
How long is it?
168 pages in the Powerhouse Publishing 2000 paperback edition.
How long does it take to read Leonardo da Vinci?
About 3 hours 15 minutes at 50 pages an hour, based on the 168-page Powerhouse Publishing edition. Dense books can take longer.
About the authors
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was an Italian Renaissance painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect whose writings preserve the range and movement of his thought. Trained in Florence, he later worked in Milan and returned to both cities, with a brief period in Rome. His surviving notebooks combine drawings, observations, practical instructions, and speculation across anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, fossils, painting, and other fields. Their fragmentary organization reflects a mind responding to the immediate demands of work and teaching rather than composing finished books. Close scrutiny of physical phenomena is central to his method, but it repeatedly opens onto questions about larger natural systems. In the Codex Leicester, observations of fossils and water sit beside inquiries into astronomy; in the Treatise on Painting, practical advice develops into an argument that painting is a disciplined form of knowledge. What distinguishes Leonardo’s body of writing is this sustained union of visual practice, measurement, experiment, and wide-ranging curiosity.
Michael Desmond
Michael Desmond is an Australian art writer and curator whose career has encompassed senior museum roles and independent work. His subjects range from international painting and sculpture to Leonardo’s scientific notebooks, digital portraiture, and living Australian artists. Desmond’s criticism often begins with visible mechanics such as a paint mark, pose, gesture, or slight digital movement, then considers how personality remains legible through abstraction or technological mediation. His writing on portraiture tests the limits of likeness as a source of character. In the exhibition volume on the Codex Leicester, written with Leonardo scholar Carlo Pedretti, he approaches the manuscript as both scientific evidence and a physical record of inquiry, acknowledging Leonardo’s errors alongside his insights.
Carlo Pedretti
Carlo Pedretti was an Italian art historian and a leading authority on Leonardo da Vinci, whose work combined an academic career at UCLA with sustained study of Leonardo’s manuscripts and drawings. His scholarship remained close to primary objects, from the Windsor drawings and Codex Atlanticus sheets to editions and facsimiles of Leonardo’s papers. Pedretti characteristically brought chronology and Leonardo’s own writings into close visual and textual analysis, using dated evidence and scattered fragments to reconstruct the development of the artist’s thought. His studies also advanced specific attributions that later scholars could test, accept, or dispute. The result is a body of work that presents Leonardo studies as an evolving documentary inquiry rather than a settled catalogue.
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Edition and details
- Publisher
- Powerhouse Publishing
- Publication year
- 2000
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 168
- ISBN
- 9781863170819
- Edition language
- English
- Original language
- English
- First published
- 2000
- Genres and form
- Nonfiction · Reference · History · Science · Technology · Art & Design · Science and nature
- Editions
- 1
- Languages
- 1 (English)