Leonardo da Vinci, as played by Aidan Turner in new period drama
Leonardo, is a man out of his time. He imagines the world from above, sees pioneering cinematic compositions on blank walls, designs war machines that will not be fully realised by other minds until centuries later. Yet this Leonardo is also erratic, and hamstrung by his quest for perfection.
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It is true that the painter often delayed and procrastinated, taking years to complete many of his famous works and leaving countless more unfinished. Bringing humanity to the universally accepted fact of Leonardo’s genius is a new drama, written by Frank Spotnitz and Steve Thompson. But how do you create a 21st-century drama that conveys the ground-breaking nature of Leonardo’s work?