DaVinci has always been one of my favorite Renaissance artists and this graphic novel offered me many new insights on the life of DaVinci. I'm sure students will giggle and point at the nudity sprinkled with these pages, but I understand it fits the time period. Students should gain insight into his life and art, but I do wish the graphic novel would address his scientific studies a little more. I am thankful that the book included the additional readings at the end detailing more about the art and characters within the pages. This could be used as an additional resource for schools and readers should gain additional information about DaVinci after reading this title.

The ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a really cute graphic novel about Leonardo Da Vinci's life and works. I think it was a nice introduction to this famous artist, but I would have like it to go a bit deeper than it did. Anyway, it really is a good way to have a quick and cute presentation of him.

Disappointingly uninformative and very shallow biography of a fascinating historical figure. Painted art isn't good, rambling bio isn't enlightening - Leonardo just does stuff that readers will recognise. Worse, it tries to work in a zeitgeisty gay hero angle when the man's sexuality was the least interesting part of him. I don't claim to know an awful lot about Leonardo but I hoped to learn something new about him and this comic was very lacking. I suppose I found out that he was apparently quite tall but that doesn't come across very strikingly in the comic itself. Very poor book.

This is a good introduction to the life and talents of Leonardo Da Vinci- enough drama to hook the young adult reader and also enough factual information to clearly learn about the genius. The pace is brisk although the flash forwards to 1515 may need explanation to some learners. The imagery is soft and enables the story to flow. Some of the text/ dialogue is a little stilted/ clunky and doesn’t feel natural. However, the overall impact as a starter to learning about Leonardo is good and the references at the end will aid learners and new enthusiasts to delve deeper into the work of Da Vinci.

Marwan Kahil shares a work of vivid pictorial complexity. The research is evident, and the details are wonderful. I appreciated this merging of graphic novel with historical biography. Well worth it in terms of reading and the affordances for the young adult classroom are wonderful, as well.

"Leonardo Da Vinci" has a lot going for it with the subject alone, but the art style leaves a lot to be desired.

Reasonable graphic novel format biography – although with my experience of this imprint it's sad to say I really couldn't have allowed myself to expect much more. I've never really found at all interesting (or comprehensible) which side of Italian Renaissance politics da Vinci was on at any one time, with this family and that family and those royals and those popes and everyone else in the mix. So this slightly scattershot, often time-twisting flight through his life doesn't really work for me. As for the script, well some of it is a little too name-droppy, and some of it is too much of a gloss – the egg before the fresco, if you will. A fallout with Michelangelo is too sudden, abrupt and needed some build-up, at least – unless you knew in advance, there was no indication Michelangelo was going to feature (one more reason having the dramatis personae at the end is a bit daft). Visually it's actually caught the spirit of da Vinci's pages, with the now world-famous sepia scrawl looking just as honest as any of the Florentine architecture or (I assume) the faces of the players throughout the ages. All told it put a bit of flesh on the thumbnail story I might have remembered if pressed, but didn't really engage fully. In trying to show the real man as those of his day saw him (ie gossiping about his arrest for allegedly hanging out with rent boys) and not as someone to fawn over for a few great paintings, it showed too fragmented and wishy-washy a story.