This is a light and easy introduction to Leonardo da Vinci. And it is all about what he thought and his observations.

The book gives us da Vinci's actual thoughts taken from his writings. Plenty of quotes and lots of his drawings are included.

This book is broken down into two parts:

The first thirty pages are a brief overview of his life. It follows a brief timeline of his moves to various cities in Italy and the various large endeavors in his life.

This is then followed by a series of observations and quotes by da Vinci which is thematically broken down into chapters.

Here are some of the chapters in this second half:

• On painting in general
• On the theory of colors
• Observing
• Philosophy of the art of painting
• Notes on sculpture
• Observations on architecture
• Anatomy
• Man compared with animals
• On astronomy
• Physiology
• Notes on the natural world
• Machines and warfare
• Studies on the life and habits of animals
• Prophecies

If you are looking for a light introduction to Leonardo and want to learn a bit about his life, while also getting a nice overview into the very wide spectrum of his writing and his work this is a good choice of book for you. You can see by the various chapters that he delved into a extremely wide variety of subjects.