Leonardo Da Vinci, Master Draftsman

Leonardo da Vinci may have been""the very embodiment of the universal Renaissance genius,"" but he was famous for failing to complete projects and commissions; his extant paintings number not much more than a dozen. His drawings and their associated notes (currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through March 2003), therefore, are crucial to our understanding of the man as artist and polymath. As Bambach, curator of prints and drawings at the Met, notes in her introduction, critical scrutiny of Leonardo's drawings have largely""neglected issues of their technique and function."" The subject is a rich one, as is the state of art-making in the Renaissance, the largely self-taught master's left-handedness, the meandering journeys his paintings and drawings took after he died and the recent findings about his Florentine patrons, as the grand heft of this immaculately produced catalogue attests. Studies such as""Leonardo's Grotesques: Originals and Copies"" by Varena Forcione, a curator at the Louvre, may be daunting for Leonardo novices, but overall the essays pay clear, cogent attention topics such as the role Leonardo's notary father played in advancing his son's career, the spread of Leonardo's aesthetic innovations and the union of his scientific and artistic aptitudes.""If the artist in him often got buried by the scientific investigator,"" Bambach writes,""the scientist's powers of observation also immeasurably amplified the artist's powers of evocation."" This is a beautiful compendium and a rich storehouse of Leonardo scholarship for both the newcomer and the art historian. 515 illus., including 333 color plates.