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What drove Leonardo da Vinci to create the most famous portrait in the world?
A man cannot change who he is. But he can choose what he becomes.
Born illegitimate to a servant girl near Florence, Leonardo should have been forgotten. But the child's relentless curiosity makes it difficult for his father to ignore him. Only Lisa, the girl he befriends, seems to understand the questions he cannot answer.
When the young Leonardo draws a perfect horse from memory, his father places him as an apprentice in a Florentine art workshop. There he is noticed by the powerful Lorenzo de' Medici, who hires his services as a painter.
But for Leonardo, art is not enough. To know what is hidden, he must look beneath the surface. He wanders the alleyways of Florence seeking out the dying for dissections, driven by an insatiable need to understand the workings of the human body and the world around him.
Branded a heretic, Leonardo throws himself into the service of the Duke of Milan as an engineer. But the manipulative Duke wants war, and Leonardo must invent the weapons to wage it.
As Renaissance Italy descends into violence and betrayal, Leonardo must choose between serving powerful men and following his own relentless search for knowledge. Eventually, he returns to Florence in search of a once-familiar face-and the portrait that will become the culmination of everything he has learned.
Gioconda is a richly imagined historical novel about Leonardo da Vinci and the creation of the Mona Lisa: the story of the restless mind, dangerous curiosity and human relationships behind one of the world's most enduring works of art.
A man cannot change who he is. But he can choose what he becomes.
Born illegitimate to a servant girl near Florence, Leonardo should have been forgotten. But the child's relentless curiosity makes it difficult for his father to ignore him. Only Lisa, the girl he befriends, seems to understand the questions he cannot answer.
When the young Leonardo draws a perfect horse from memory, his father places him as an apprentice in a Florentine art workshop. There he is noticed by the powerful Lorenzo de' Medici, who hires his services as a painter.
But for Leonardo, art is not enough. To know what is hidden, he must look beneath the surface. He wanders the alleyways of Florence seeking out the dying for dissections, driven by an insatiable need to understand the workings of the human body and the world around him.
Branded a heretic, Leonardo throws himself into the service of the Duke of Milan as an engineer. But the manipulative Duke wants war, and Leonardo must invent the weapons to wage it.
As Renaissance Italy descends into violence and betrayal, Leonardo must choose between serving powerful men and following his own relentless search for knowledge. Eventually, he returns to Florence in search of a once-familiar face-and the portrait that will become the culmination of everything he has learned.
Gioconda is a richly imagined historical novel about Leonardo da Vinci and the creation of the Mona Lisa: the story of the restless mind, dangerous curiosity and human relationships behind one of the world's most enduring works of art.