Ken Burns’ documentary focuses on Leonardo da Vinci, thanks in part to Ben Franklin

Famed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns didn’t plan to pursue a film on Leonardo da Vinci, his first non-American subject. But he was drawn to the subject, thanks in part to the master painter’s similarities to Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin was the focus of a Burns documentary in 2022, for which Burns interviewed an old friend, biographer Walter Isaacson, who had also written about Leonardo. One night over dinner in Washington, D.C., following the film’s premiere, Isaacson pestered the filmmaker to consider Leonardo da Vinci for his next project by drawing comparisons to Franklin. “I said, ‘Walter, I just do American stuff,’” Burns recalled. “He said, ‘Oh, they’re both scientists, they’re both artists, they’re both the most captivating figures of their age.’”

Burns wasn’t entirely convinced, but when he mentioned the idea to his longtime collaborators, his daughter Sarah Burns and son-in-law David McMahon, they immediately said yes.

“So I just figured this old dog could be taught new tricks,” Burns said.

The couple moved to Florence with their kids for a year to research and interview a number of experts, resulting in the two-part, four-hour documentary Leonardo da Vinci, codirected by both of the Burnses and McMahon, that premieres Nov. 18 and 19 on PBS.

The film charts Leonardo’s impressive and unlikely life, from his origins as a child born out of wedlock in 1452 to his international fame as one of the greatest painters and thinkers of all time. Beyond his groundbreaking approach to art, Leonardo was a true Renaissance man well-versed in science, engineering, philosophy, theater, and math, among other fields.

His personal life is still somewhat of a mystery as biographical information about him remains scant — we know his life and death, his parentage, where he worked in Italy and France, and that he was gay, experts say. Much contemporary analysis of Leonardo relies on his works, many of which were unpublished and unfinished.

“We don’t know much about him. For [a] biography, that would normally be the kiss of death, but it’s not,” Burns said. “Into that vacuum you get to put in, not the ticktock and the tabloid, but the exploration of what his mind was about.”

Using shots of lush landscapes, references to scientific wonders, and close-ups of nature, Burns’ Leonardo da Vinci provides a departure from his playbook of archived footage to deliver a lyrical film that spotlights the universal and timeless impact of Leonardo’s surprisingly modern thinking.

Burns says if Leonardo were alive today, he would likely be a filmmaker (in addition to his many talents) because his paintings capture immense movement and don’t feel “frozen” like two-dimensional works often do.

Leonardo’s artistic revolution lies in the details, like deciding to paint women not in profile, as was tradition, but with the subject looking directly at the viewer. That choice — which today we would consider feminist — is part of the wonder that is the Mona Lisa. Before he painted her, though, he shocked the Italian art world at age 21 with a portrait of 16-year-old Ginevra de’ Benci. She does not hide behind modesty or detached beauty as was typical for women of that era; her gaze is startlingly forthright. She looks “right at you,” said Burns, “and it’s not a pleasant exchange. It’s a complicated, deep one.”

That agency and the movement in Ginevra’s eyes provide a glimpse into the young artist’s progressive thinking that later became the foundation for Mona Lisa. Breaking down these portraits as well as his inventions and prolific notebooks, the film highlights why Leonardo’s work continues to inspire people today, from art historians to filmmakers to engineers.

Beyond the documentary, mysteries about Leonardo’s legacy still abound. Salvator Mundi, a portrait of Jesus attributed to Leonardo, broke the record for most expensive painting ever sold in 2017 when it was purchased for $450 million — but new research argues that much of the work was painted by Leonardo’s assistant. Closer to home here in Philadelphia, the Art Museum has been considering one amateur art historian’s claim that a painting in the PMA collection is a true Leonardo.

As for Burns, he says Leonardo’s greatest lesson is to embrace curiosity. “He’s the most modern person I’ve ever come across. He’s also the most curious,” he said. He doesn’t often like to be prescriptive about what he hopes audiences take away from his films, but in this case he does hope that viewers will learn from Leonardo. “I want everybody to want to be better, to be more curious, to ask the bigger questions, to not be asleep to this miracle of life,” Burns said. “You want to be more like him.”

Lately, the filmmaker has been spending a lot of time in Philadelphia. In September, he received the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal for “illuminating the nation’s greatest triumphs and tragedies and inspiring all of us to learn about the principles at the heart of the American idea.”

Burns has also been filming in the region for his forthcoming project on the American Revolution. “We accept the violence of the Civil War. We don’t really accept and understand what happened during the Revolution,” he said. “It’s really bloody, and it’s not fun, and it’s very complicated to tell. But it’s so much better than the kind of bug-in-amber [narrative] that’s protected, that we’ve made our revolution as just a bunch of guys in Philadelphia thinking great thoughts.”

There’s much more to the story, Burns said. And he has documented it all in a six-part, 12-hour film expected to release in 2025.

“Leonardo da Vinci” premieres Nov. 18 and 19 on PBS.