Da Vinci and the Boys
The Renaissance masters—Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello—weren't just Ninja Turtle names, they were rival geniuses who built Western art through talent, ego, and cutthroat competition.
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Chapters
7 totalEdition notes and short pages
Da Vinci and the Boys
Da Vinci and the Boys
The Artists Who Built the Renaissance
by JJ
Dedication
For every kid who thought the Ninja Turtles were real people.
Surprise, they kind of were.
And they absolutely slapped.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
TO THE ACTUAL Four Masters.
Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello.
Thanks for dragging Western civilization out of the mud and doing it with paint, bronze, marble, and divine chaos.
To Florence, for being ground zero for genius and gossip.
To the Medici, for laundering their power in beauty.
And to you, reader, for choosing a book that sounds like a joke and finding out it wasn’t one.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JJ IS A historian of the hidden obvious, a writer who weaponizes curiosity like a scalpel and specializes in Trojan Horse books that look fun, read fast, and hit hard.
When not dismantling myths or reanimating the past, he can be found doing seventeen things at once, usually better than he should.
This is one of many books.
And yes, he’s already working on the next one.
COPYRIGHT
© 2025 JAMES JOHNSON. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of narrative nonfiction.
Historical events and figures are real, but the tone is intentionally modern, irreverent, and sometimes spicy. Any snark is applied with love. All depictions are based on reputable historical sources, but no Renaissance egos were harmed in the making of this book.
Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this work is a crime. Not quite on par with forging a Donatello, but still pretty rude. Don’t do it.
First Edition. Printed in the age of memes and memory holes.