Leonardo was born illegitimate, but his father supported him getting him an apprenticeship. He proved himself at a young age and was given more opportunities.
One outstanding feature of trying to understand Da Vinci was his reverence for nature. Partly it sprang from his interest in perfecting painting. He wanted to better understand what was under the skin and began to study anatomy and dissecting human (and other animal) bodies. That expanded to an interest in optics from which he learned to use shadows to create the illusion of depth.
His curiosity about nature was ever expanding. He thought a lot about flight observing birds and bats. He strived toward human flight, but unfortunately his ideas depended on the weight of available materials.
One challenge he felt was to divert the Arno River that flows by Florence. This involved studying hydrology, one side effect was to make water flow upwards. Unfortunately the resources to actually divert the river were not available.
He was also an inventor and hired by military forces.
He is best remembered for his many paintings especially the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa.
In his last years he felt he was being spied upon and kept his notes in
code. That habit helped inspire the theory about the Da Vinci Code.In his life Da Vinci lived in Florence, Milan, Rome and died in France.
Ken Burns is a key person behind this series. He is listed as an executive producers while his daughter Sarah Burns and son in law, David McMahon were the producers. Ken has a long history of
dealing with important people and events in depth and comprehensively
such as "The Civil War (1990), "Jazz" (2001), "Baseball" (1994 and
2010), "The Central Park Five" (2012), ""The Roosevelts: An Intimate
History" (2014) "The Vietnam War" (2017). "Hemingway" (2021), "Muhammed Ali" (2021) "Benjamin Franklin" (2022) and "The U.S. and the Holocaust" (2022). see http://www.therealjohndavidson.com/2022/07/benjamin-franklin-ken-burns.html
Caroline Shaw provided the music. She has 15 composing credits, 3 for the music department and 3 for acting. There is a special feature on her with the DVD for this film.
Buddy Squire was the cinematographer. He has won 5 Prime Time Emmy Awards. He has 136 Cinematography credits plus 9 as producer and 3 as director including "Hemingway" (2021), "Muhammad Ali" (2021), "Benjamin Franklin" (2022) and "The U.S. and the Holocaust" (2022).
Woody Richman did editing. He has 21 credits including "Fahrenheit 9/11" (2004), "Capitalism: A Love Story" (2019) and Muhammad Ali" (2021).
Keith David, the winner of 3 Prime Time Emmys was the narrator. He has 385 acting credits and 6 as producer.including "Bird" (2016) "Greenleaf" (2016), and "From Scratch" (2022).
Throughout the four hour documentary there were many art experts and others giving insight into how Da Vinci thought.
Guillermo del Toro was one of the commentators. He has won 3 Oscars. Guillermo has 37 writer cfredits, 47 as producer and 3 for director including "Cronos" (1993), "Pan's Labyrinth" (2006), "The Hobbitt: The Desolation of Smaug" (2013), "The Shape of Water" (2017 filmed partly in my adopted city of Hamilton), "Nightmare Alley" (2021) and "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio" (2022).
Walter Isaacson is a writer who specializes in biographies of prominent people such as Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein. See the book version http://www.therealjohndavidson.com/2018/05/leonardo-da-vinci.html
It is really mind opening that one man with relatively few tools discovered so many things and developed beautiful art. I saw the film on a DVD.
As usual I have bolded the first mention of films I have seen. They are not necessarily a recommendation, but generally I found them worthy of my time. If you follow the links you should be able to determine if a particular film is worth following up.
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