Publisher's Synopsis
This richly imagined novel traces the formative years of Leonardo da Vinci as he navigates the vibrant yet rigid world of 15th-century Florence. Torn between ambition and introspection, Leonardo wrestles with the limits of tradition, the mysteries of creation, and the loneliness of unmatched brilliance. Leonardo the Florentine offers an intimate portrait of a visionary shaped by the forces of history, beauty, and doubt.
Rachel Annand Taylor (1876-1960) was a Scottish poet, biographer and literary critic. According to Gilbert Murray's foreword, Leonardo the Florentine "will offend many readers and bewilder more; that it will be strange and morbid, and at times startling . . . but that such qualities will almost be forgotten, for good or ill in an exotic and riotous luxury of imagination and phrasing."