Charles Nicholl

Leonardo is the greatest, most multi-faceted and most mysterious of all Renaissance artists, but extraordinarily, considering his enormous reputation, this is the first full-length biography in English for several decades. Prize-winning author Charles Nicholl has immersed himself in manuscripts, paintings and artefacts to produce an intimate portrait of Leonardo. He uses these contemporary materials - his notebooks and sketchbooks, eye witnesses and early biographies, etc - as a way into the mental tone and physical texture of his life and has made many discoveries about him, his work and his circle of associates. The book identifies what Nicholl argues is an unknown portrait of the artist hanging in a church near Lodi in northern Italy. It also contains new material on his eccentric assistant Tomasso Masini, his homosexual affairs in Florence, and his curious relationship with a female model and/or prostitute from Cremona. A masterpiece of modern biography.

Charles Nicholl applies a powerful biographical magnifying glass to this fascinating but little-known episode in Shakespeare's life. Marshalling evidence from a wide variety of sources, including previously unknown documentary material on the Mountjoys, he conjures up a detailed and compelling description of the circumstances in which Shakespeare lived and worked, and in which he wrote such plays as Othello, Measure for Measure and King Lear. Nicholl also throws new light on the puzzling story of Shakespeare's collaboration with the hack-author and brothel-keeper George Wilkins.

"One Mr Shakespeare that laye in the house ´ In 1612 Shakespeare gave evidence at the Court of Requests in Westminster _ it is the only occasion his spoken words are recorded The case seems routine _ a dispute over an unpaid marriage-dowry _ but it opens up an unexpected window into the dramatist´s famously obscure life-story...

In 1986 Charles Nicholl went to Thailand, intending to take a spiritual rest-cure in a Buddhist forest temple. But the way there had many surprising side turnings. A chance meeting on the night train north takes him on a circuitous journey in the company of Harry, a French gem-trader with a chequered past, and his mercurial Thai girlfriend, Katai. For the travel writer, he learns, its not what you go looking for that counts, but what you find. They drift along the banks of the Mekong, up into the Golden Triangle and into the rebel strongholds of northern Burma. Opium dreams and jade windows, spirit-callers and moon-hares: Nicholls crisp, vivid prose captures every detail of this elusive adventure, as we travel with him across borderlines both real and imaginary.

In 1880 a taciturn young Frenchman arrives at the Yemeni port of Aden, where he finds work as a foreman in a coffee warehouse. He is the poet and enfant terrible Arthur Rimbaud, author of A Season in Hell a notorious figure in France but now, at the age of twenty five, determined to start a new life. In this atmospheric study of Rimbauds lost years, Charles Nicholl pieces together the shadowy story of his life as a trader, explorer and gun-runner in East Africa. We follow his trail in Somalia and Djibouti, in the highlands of Ethiopia, in the souks of Cairo: a man on the run from his past, living out his famous teenage pronouncement, Je est un autre I is somebody else.

Afiebrado y harapiento, un joven frances desembarca en el puerto de Aden en 1880. Nada parece distinguirlo de los otros aventureros europeos que llegan a Çfrica en busca de fortuna. Pero ese muchacho de mareantes ojos azules es el poeta Arthur Rimbaud, que ha abandonado la poesia y se ha marchado de Europa para huir de si mismo. Sirviendose de las tecnicas de una pesquisa policial, este libro se plantea la ardua tarea de seguir el vago rastro de los años africanos de Rimbaud, su deambular sin rumbo como traficante de armas, fotografo, granjero y mercenario. La intensidad de esta cronica de la busqueda del Rimbaud de "los años oscuros" ha hecho que se compare al autor con Bruce Chatwin. El resultado es un libro magnetico que atrapa al lector.

For five centuries, Leonardo da Vinci has stood alone as the quintessential Renaissance manathe incomparable artist, writer, thinker, and inventor who most powerfully transformed his world. In this dazzling new intimate biography, award-winning author Charles Nicholl creates a portrait of the artist for our timeaa biography that brings Leonardo to life as a complex man living in a fascinating, dangerous, quickly changing world. Drawing freely on his own original translations of Leonardoas notebooks as well as newly discovered contemporary accounts, Nicholl captures the very texture of Leonardoas mind and the pungent visceral impressions he transmuted into art. Detail by brilliant detail, Nicholl reconstructs the life and times of the artist, from his troubled childhood as the illegitimate son of an established Tuscan family to his years of apprenticeship in the burgeoning art world of Medici Florence to his unrivaled achievements in a breathtaking array of disciplines and media. Here, too, are compelling new answers to the enduring mysteries of Leonardoas sexual orientation, the true identity of the Mona Lisa, and the early experiences that inspired his lifelong obsession with human flight. A writer of irresistible charm and quicksilver imagination, Nicholl takes us from the backstreet artistsa studios of Florence to the glittering palazzi of the Medici, Sforza, and Borgia families as he pursues the most extravagantly talented and maddeningly elusive artist of all time. The result is a biography of rare grace and penetration.

"This brilliantly written reconstruction of Sir Walter Raleigh''s 1595 South American journey combines painstaking scholarship, vivid travelogue, and an intuitive sensitivity for the many meanings of the El Dorado myth. . . . Nicholl brings this six-week expedition to life. . . . A rare treat for both intellect and imagination."--"Kirkus Reviews" "Walter Raleigh . . . was one of those Elizabethan all-rounders who still seem staggeringly larger than life. . . . Mr. Nicholl''s cogent reconstruction of the journey uses Raleigh''s own account, ''The Discoverie of Guiana''--part truth, part advertising, part rhapsody--and much well-found ancillary material."--Anthony Bailey, "New York Times" "Like "The Reckoning," his brilliant account of the murder of Christopher Marlowe, Nicholl''s new book might be called an exercise in historical conjuring. The Creature in the Map is an effort not only to analyse but also to call into presence the lived experience of the voyage Raleigh undertook in 1595 to the Orinoco Delta in what is now Venezuela."--Stephen Greenblatt, "Times Literary Supplement" "Charles Nicholl belongs to an elite company, that of historians who know how to make research into arcane matters and distant times as engrossing as "In Cold Blood" or "All the President''s Men,""--Michael Dirda, "Washington Post"

Charles Nicholl logra adentrarse en los rincones más desconocidos de la mente de Leonardo para realizar, con gran belleza y habilidad, una obra maestra de la biografía. Pintor, dibujante, inventor, anatomista, musico y filosofo, Leonardo da Vinci es el mas polifacetico de todos los artistas del Renacimiento, y tambien el mas misterioso. Aunque durante siglos se han admirado sus obras y descubrimientos, el hombre que se escondia detras del artista ha sido una figura huidiza y gran parte de su vida ha permanecido, hasta ahora, en una nebulosa. En esta biografia se traza el retrato mas intimo y convincente del sorprendente individuo que hasta ahora apenas se vislumbraba tras el legendario genio del Renacimiento y el hombre universal. Ademas de descubrir nuevos aspectos sobre Leonardo y su mundo y explorar las historias que hay detras de la creacion de obras tan famosas como la Mona Lisa y La ultima cena, Charles Nicholl narra la increible travesia de este hijo ilegitimo de la Toscana, que sera aprendiz en el taller florentino de Verrochio, trabajara para las grandes familias de la Italia del Renacimiento -los Medici, los Sforza y los Borgia-, conocera a Miguel Angel y Maquiavelo, y sera una de las figuras mas celebres de su epoca. Pero este libro es excepcional sobre todo por su capacidad de adentrarse en la personalidad del artista y comprender el extraordinario vuelo de su mente. Por su vivida y minuciosa recreacion del olor, los sonidos y los colores de la epoca, y del detallado dia a dia de Leonardo da Vinci: lo que comia y la ropa que llevaba, sus chistes y rompecabezas, y su costumbre casi obsesiva de tomar notas de todo, desde la estructura del sistema solar hasta el mecanismo de un estornudo.