{"title":"Francesca Fiorani","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrancesca Fiorani’s work invites readers into a rich exploration of \u003cstrong\u003earts and culture\u003c\/strong\u003e, blending evocative storytelling with thoughtful reflection. Her narratives often unfold with a delicate attention to visual detail and emotional depth, as seen in titles like \u003cem\u003eThe Shadow Drawing\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThrough her books, readers can expect a profound engagement with themes of creativity, memory, and the subtle interplay between light and shadow. Fiorani’s writing is a compelling journey into the heart of artistic experience, ideal for those who appreciate literature that bridges imagination and cultural insight.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"the-shadow-drawing-by-francesca-fiorani-9781250800213","title":"The Shadow Drawing","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eLeonardo da Vinci\u003c\/em\u003e has long been celebrated as the epitome of genius. He was the masterful painter who gave us the \u003cem\u003eMona Lisa\u003c\/em\u003e and the \u003cem\u003eLast Supper\u003c\/em\u003e, and the visionary inventor who anticipated airplanes, hot-air balloons, and other technological marvels. But what was the connection between Leonardo the painter and Leonardo the scientist? And what can a mysterious, long-lost book teach us about how Leonardo truly conceived his art?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eShortly after Leonardo's death, his peers and rivals created the myth of the two Leonardos: there was Leonardo the artist and then, later in life, Leonardo the scientist. In this pathbreaking biographical interpretation, the art historian Francesca Fiorani tells a very different and much more interesting story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTaking a fresh look at Leonardo's celebrated but challenging notebooks as well as other, often obscure sources, Fiorani shows that Leonardo became fluent in science when he was still a young man. As an apprentice in a Florence studio, he was especially interested in the science of optics, which tells us how we see what we see. For the rest of his life he remained, according to a close observer, obsessed with optics, believing that his art would grow only as his knowledge of light and shadow deepened.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eGiven Leonardo's scientific bent, one might think this meant that he wanted to turn himself into a human camera. In fact, he aspired to use science to capture—as no artist before him had ever done—the interior lives of his subjects, to paint the human soul in its smallest, tenderest motions and vicissitudes. And then he hoped to take one further step: to gather his scientific knowledge together in a book that would be even more important than his paintings. His \u003cem\u003eTreatise on Painting\u003c\/em\u003e would be disfigured, ignored, and lost in subsequent centuries; now, Fiorani traces this singular work's byzantine path through history and reconstructs the wisdom Leonardo hoped it would impart.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRanging from the teeming streets of Florence to the most delicate brushstrokes on the surface of the \u003cem\u003eMona Lisa\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe Shadow Drawing\u003c\/em\u003e vividly reconstructs Leonardo's life while teaching us to look anew at his greatest paintings. The result is both a stirring biography and a bold reconsideration of how the Renaissance understood science and art—and of what was lost when the two were sundered.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Macmillan Publishers New Zealand Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48244685144300,"sku":"9781250800213","price":42.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781250800213-the-shadow-drawing-1.jpg?v=1788009893"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.live\/collections\/francesca-fiorani.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}