CS ENG DEF DEF - Skira Grandi Mostre

LEONARDO 1452–1519
Drawing the world
Milan, Palazzo Reale
from 16 April to 19 July 2015
The most important exhibition ever devoted to the great master, to be held during EXPO 2015
The extraordinary exhibition due to be inaugurated on 15 April 2015, the anniversary of the birth of
Leonardo – born in Vinci on 15 April 1452 – is the biggest and most important Leonardo show ever to be
held in Italy. It will open its doors to the public at Palazzo Reale on 16 April, in the run-up to the opening of
EXPO 2015.
Developed entirely in Milan, the exhibition is promoted by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities
and Tourism, which has specially granted State Guarantee insurance, and by the Milan City Council –
Department of Culture. The show was conceived and produced by Palazzo Reale and Skira, as part of their
fifteen-year-long partnership. The result of more than five years of hard work, the exhibition is curated by
Pietro C. Marani and Maria Teresa Fiorio, two of the most important art historians specializing in the study
of this Renaissance genius. It brings together over two hundred artworks from around one hundred
museums and institutions throughout the world which, given the exceptional nature of the exhibition, have
loaned some of their greatest treasures for the occasion, such as the three paintings by Leonardo from the
Louvre and thirty autograph drawings from the collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
The Pinacoteca Ambrosiana – considered Leonardo's “home” in Milan – which is lending the famous
Portrait of a Musician and thirty-eight drawings from the Codex Atlanticus, is also a key contributor to the
exhibition.
“A project born from a network of relationships enthusiastically and painstakingly created over a long
period with the world’s leading cultural institutions, who wanted to contribute to this great event by
loaning some 'jewels' from their collections. A superbly curated exhibition, which will be the most important
and prestigious devoted to Leonardo’s genius during the semester of Expo Milano 2015, the main attraction
of the programme ExpoInCittà,” commented Filippo Del Corno, Councillor for Culture.
The exhibition benefits from the generous support of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, the main sponsor of
the initiative. “Bank of America Merrill Lynch supports the arts all over the world, operating a particularly
important programme in a country such as Italy, where art is receiving more and more corporate and private
support to fill the void left by cuts in public spending,” said Marco Morelli, Vice Chairman Europe, Middle
East, Africa GCIB and CEO in Italy of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “Our Art Conservation Project has
sponsored the restoration of seventy-two projects in twenty-seven countries worldwide, including the
digitalization of Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Trivulzianus at the Biblioteca Trivulziana and the restoration of
the statue of Napoleon in the Pinacoteca di Brera. We believe that a dynamic art sector is fundamental to the
social and economic development of communities and we are proud to have contributed to making this
extraordinary Leonardo da Vinci exhibition possible.”
The exhibition is also sponsored by SNAM which, in keeping with its philosophy, intends to celebrate an
artist who devoted his whole life to knowledge and progress, and by the Salone del Mobile. Its media
partner is the Corriere della Sera.
The anthology paints a picture of Leonardo that is neither mythographical, rhetorical nor celebratory.
Instead it embraces all the work of this multifaceted figure, considered both as an artist and scientist,
through a number of key themes identified by the curators: drawing, a fundamental part of Leonardo’s
work; the ongoing dialogue of the arts: drawing, painting and sculpture; the dialogue with antiquity; the
absolute innovation of the motions of the mind; his tendency towards utopian designs and dreams, such as
the ability to fly or walk on water, which will feature in a specific section of the exhibition; mechanical
automation and so on. These themes made him a standard bearer for the unity of knowledge, through the
continuous interweaving of science and the arts in his work.
The twelve sections of this extraordinary exhibition illustrate the central themes of Leonardo’s long artistic
and scientific career, embracing not only the period of his training in Florence, but also his two stays in
Milan, and even his move to France, thus emphasizing certain constants in his artistic and scientific vision.
The exhibition narrative also conveys his vocation for interdisciplinarity and his constantly intertwining
interests by adopting an analogical approach to the study of the phenomena and their graphic portrayal,
summed up and culminating in his later paintings.
The various sections of the show feature Leonardo’s autograph paintings, drawings and manuscripts,
introduced by works of the painters, sculptors, technicians and theorists who preceded him. These
provide additional context to the master’s contribution to the history of art, science and technique, while
painting a picture of Leonardo as an artist and scientist of his time, eschewing the mythological and the
banal. However, the two final sections also illustrate Leonardo’s influence as a painter and theorist on
modern art and the formation of the legend that surrounds him, centred on the Mona Lisa.
These are the twelve sections of the exhibition:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Drawing as the cornerstone
Nature and the science of painting
The dialogue of the arts
The dialogue with antiquity
Anatomy, physiognomy and the motions of the mind
Invention and mechanics
Dream
Reality and utopia
The unity of knowledge
De cœlo et mundo: images of the divine
Leonardo’s legacy: pupils, followers and the book on painting
The legend of Leonardo
The exhibition features seven great pictorial masterpieces by Leonardo: the St Jerome from the Pinacoteca
Vaticana, the Dreyfus Madonna from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Head of a Woman
from the Galleria Nazionale di Parma, the Portrait of a Musician from the Ambrosiana and three iconic
works from the Louvre: the Belle Ferronière, the small Annunciation and St John the Baptist.
Some of Leonardo’s original codices will also be on display, together with at least one hundred autograph
drawings: the Codex Trivulzianus 2162 – his autograph notebook – held by the Biblioteca Trivulziana of
Castello Sforzesco, which can be “virtually” looked through on a touchscreen station; thirty-eight drawings
from the Codex Atlanticus, on loan from the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, which has supplied the largest
number of works for the exhibition; thirty drawings from The Royal Collection / HM Queen Elizabeth II,
six of which can be viewed on the recto and verso; five from the British Museum; four from the Gabinetto
dei Disegni e delle Stampe at the Uffizi; five from the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and five from
the Biblioteca Reale in Turin. There are also a number of other drawings from the Morgan Library in New
York and the Fondation Custodia in Paris. Some of these museums are lending other important works by
painters active at the same time as Leonardo.
What is more, the exhibition will include a considerable number of artworks – paintings, drawings,
manuscripts, sculptures, codices, incunabula and sixteenth-century books – from the world’s most
important museums and libraries and from private collections, including works by Antonello da Messina,
Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, Paolo Uccello, Ghirlandaio, Verrocchio, Lorenzo di Credi, Francesco di Giorgio
Martini, Bonaccorso Ghiberti, Bramante and other anonymous treatise writers from the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries.
The diffusion and fortune of Leonardo’s art and models is illustrated in the exhibition by splendid works by
Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Marco d’Oggiono, Francesco Napoletano, Solario, Francesco Melzi,
Giampietrino, Cesare da Sesto, Girolamo and Giovanni Ambrogio Figino and other important artists.
The Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia, which is named after the great master, is also
lending two historic models of machines – the self-propelled cart and the gold-beating machine –
constructed on the basis of Leonardo’s drawings.
Milan is paying homage to Leonardo with numerous initiatives, including a series of events held off site
(as well as at Palazzo Reale), which will involve places associated with Leonardo in the city itself and
throughout Lombardy: the Sala delle Asse in the Castello Sforzesco will be reopened to the public after
restoration that has brought to light extraordinary traces left by the hand of Leonardo, who worked in its
rooms for many years in the service of Ludovico il Moro. A multimedia installation will recount to visitors
the history of the room and Leonardo’s part in its monumental decoration. In the Sala della Balla, also in
Castello Sforzesco, there will be two touchscreen stations for looking through, enlarging and exploring the
pages of the Codex Trivulzianus, the autograph notebook of the Florentine genius. Events will also be held
at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (‘The World of Leonardo’) and the Acquario Civico (‘Leonardo and Water’).
Lastly, the Cineteca Italiana will be promoting a programme of nine films on Leonardo, which will be
screened at the MIC – Museo Interattivo del Cinema during May.
The exhibition, curated by Pietro C. Marani and Maria Teresa Fiorio, boasts a highly prestigious academic
committee, formed back in 2009, which has involved: Carmen C. Bambach (Metropolitan Museum, New
York), Roberto Paolo Ciardi (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome), Martin Clayton (Royal Library,
Windsor Castle), Luisa Cogliati Arano (Ente Raccolta Vinciana, Milan), Vincent Delieuvin (Musée du
Louvre, Paris) Marzia Faietti (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence), Paolo Galluzzi (Istituto e
Museo Galileo Galilei, Florence), Martin Kemp (Oxford University, Oxford), Antonio Paolucci (Musei
Vaticani, Vatican City, Rome) and Richard Schofield (Università Iuav, Venice).
The Catalogue
The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition is, in fact, much more than a weighty tome. This large-format
volume of over six hundred pages, edited by Marani and Fiorio, features twenty essays by international
Leonardo specialists, which analyse the infinite aspects of the way in which the genius from Vinci drew the
world. The book contains brand new academic contributions from: Carmen C. Bambach (Metropolitan
Museum, New York), Juliana Barone (University of London), Andrea Bernardoni (Istituto e Museo Galileo
Galilei, Florence), Roberto Paolo Ciardi (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome), Martin Clayton (Royal
Library, Windsor), Marzia Faietti (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence), Frank Fehrenbach
(Harvard University, Cambridge), Paolo Galluzzi (Istituto e Museo Galileo Galilei, Florence), Claudio
Giorgione (Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, Milan), Martin Kemp (Oxford
University, Oxford), Rodolfo Maffeis (Università di Firenze and Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence), Furio
Rinaldi (Università Tor Vergata, Rome and Metropolitan Museum, New York), Richard Schofield
(Università IUAV, Venice), Marco Versiero (Università l’Orientale, Naples and Istituto di Studi Filosofici,
Naples) and Edoardo Villata (Università Cattolica di Milano).
Available in both an Italian and English language edition, the catalogue is an exceptional and extremely
up-to-date monograph, destined to become a reference book for many years to come.
In addition to this detailed catalogue, Skira’s extensive specialist bookshop will offer visitors a short guide,
also available in two languages, and an extraordinary array of other publications on the work of Leonardo,
including A bottega da Leonardo, a delightful children’s book and a vast range of other merchandise.
The exhibition is designed by Corrado Anselmi and benefits from the technical sponsorship of Kartell and
Flos.
After making their way around the exhibition, visitors will also have the chance to experience an exceptional
virtual reality, following an agreement with Samsung. In fact, thanks to the revolutionary Samsung Gear
VR goggles, they will be able to explore the locations and experiences associated with Leonardo’s genius.
Skira has also developed an amazing brand new app called ‘Being Leonardo’, which can be downloaded
onto IOS and Android tablets.
This spectacular show offers exceptional academic content and looks set to draw not only countless EXPO
2015 visitors to the Palazzo Reale, but also numerous Milanese. Locals already know and appreciate
Leonardo’s works to be found around the city and will certainly want to benefit from this once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to visit such a major retrospective devoted to the works of this timeless genius.