While working on his 2022 documentary series Benjamin Franklin, Ken Burns had lunch in Washington, D.C., with Walter Isaacson, a fellow chronicler of history’s great geniuses (and Franklin biographer). Isaacson, also a professor at Tulane University and former editor of Time magazine, had just interviewed Burns about the Founding Father but was eager to turn talk to another innovator: Leonardo da Vinci. Isaacson insisted that it was time for Burns to make a film about the Renaissance polymath, whom Isaacson had written a book on in 2017.
It took some convincing, but Burns, who up until that point had only made documentaries about American subjects—covering everything from Mark Twain and the Civil War to the American buffalo and country music—finally gave in to his friend’s appeal. The astounding result is Burns’s latest film, Leonardo da Vinci, which he co-directed with his daughter Sarah Burns and her husband, David McMahon.
