Includes bibliographical references (pages 309-311) and index.

Introduction: Art history in action -- Prologue: A sketch of Leonardo -- The Last Supper and the first steps -- The "original" Last Supper -- Looking at Lisa -- The stolen Madonna -- The beautiful princess -- Ugly arguments -- The Saviour -- Science and seeing -- Codices and computers -- Exhibitions -- Codes and codswallop.

Approaching the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death, the world-renowned da Vinci expert recounts his fifty year journey with the work of the world's most famous artist. We learn of his encounters with the vast population that surrounds Leonardo: great and lesser academics, collectors and curators, devious dealers and unctuous auctioneers, major scholars and authors and pseudohistorians and fantasists; but also how he has grappled with swelling legions of 'Leonardo loonies', walked on the eggshells of vested interests in academia and museums, and fended off fusillades of non-Leonardos, sometimes more than one a week. Kemp leads us through his thinking on the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, retells his part in the identification of the stolen Buccleuch Madonna and explains his involvement with and his theories on the two major Leonardo discoveries of the last 100 years, one of which plummeted into controversy (La Bella Principessa), while the other underwent a rapid ascent into widespread acceptance (Salvator Mundi).