Arts & Entertainment
New Documentary Explores the Lasting Impact of Leonardo da Vinci’s Life and Work
Artist, scientist, engineer and philosopher — titles that only scratch the surface of what 15th century Italian Leonardo da Vinci achieved.
A new two-part PBS documentary series from Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon dissects da Vinci’s life in an effort to make sense of his work and the impact he has to this day.
Documenting a man who lived at a time when there wouldn’t have been any archival footage or film presented a challenge. The filmmakers found the story in da Vinci’s writings.
“What you find in the notebooks is that he really blurs the lines between things like science and nature,” McMahon said. “So what we wanted to do was to blur those lines ourselves. So what we did was split the screen and show pictures that he would have drawn, along with natural cinematography, our own of the natural world that he would have observed.”
The team spent a year in Italy researching da Vinci’s work, walking the streets he once did and experiencing the same places. McMahon said the result was a film that shows who da Vinci really is.
“Even to this day, we have a deep interest in him because we think that everything he did is profound and has a certain magic,” McMahon said. “And so you get lots of representations of Leonardo in the world. A lot of them feel like he’s mysterious and shrouded in mystery. But I think what we were trying to do is get a little closer to the man, a man who was interested in science, interested in art, interested in applying everything he observed to all that he was working on.”
Catch Part 1 of the documentary at 7 p.m. Monday. Part 2 airs at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
