Booklist (07/01/2012):
*Starred Review* With pink tights, a notebook hanging from his belt, long hair, and beard, handsome, fit 42-year-old Leonardo cut quite a figure on the streets of Milan, where he had high hopes for major commissions from the duchy's cunning ruler, Lodovico Sforza. For all his brilliance, as King explains with commiseration, respectful amusement, and meticulous documentation, Leonardo had little to show for himself beyond his notoriety for infuriating patrons. Consequently, he was ecstatic when Sforza agreed to fund the making of a truly monumental bronze horse. But war waits for no man, not even a relentlessly inquisitive, left-handed, vegetarian genius. After the 75 tons of metal meant for his equine colossus were turned into cannons, Leonardo was asked to paint a mural 15 feet high and nearly 30 feet long in the Dominican refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie depicting the Last Supper. This is quintessential King territory, and his uniquely detailed, far-ranging, and engrossing chronicle of the creation of this revolutionary masterpiece, a quantum shift in art, perfectly complements his best-selling Michelangelo & the Pope's Ceiling (2003). Himself an exceptional portraitist and craftsman, King brings to precise life a fully dimensional, irresistibly audacious, and wizardly Leonardo and his powerfully affecting, miraculously surviving mural, a glorious culmination of the artist's astounding powers of observation and exhilarating vision of the world. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)
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