Malaysia was recently the venue for an exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci knockoffs. Marking the 500th anniversary of the artist/scientist/inventor’s death, there were 17 astonishingly accurate reproductions of his paintings on show at the National Art Gallery in KL.
They probably gave viewers a better idea of his masterworks – especially the Mona Lisa – than seeing the real thing at a considerable distance, behind security glass and selfie-taking tourists.
In the UK, the anniversary is being celebrated differently. There are no less than 13 exhibitions about Leonardo at the moment, 12 of them from the Royal Collection. The 13th is at the British Library and is also about his drawings.
When all the news tends to be about a large and extremely expensive Leonardo da Vinci painting, it’s refreshing to see the opposite being taken seriously. The current whereabouts of the world’s costliest painting (US$450 million) are unknown. The contents of the latest exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace in London are not only well known but have been in the same place for collection for almost 400 years. They are too fragile to exhibit often, and 500th anniversaries don’t happen often.
If there’s a criticism of this exhibition, it’s that there is too much Leonardo. Unlike ‘Salvator Mundi’, whose origins are murky, these drawings are so familiar it’s a surprise to find there are about 200 of them.
The British royal family can, to some extent, justify its existence by its custodianship of works such as these. If they had been presented to the open market, each one of them could be breaking records now. It’s pleasant not to be distracted by knowledge of how much this stuff is worth.
RELISHING THE UNEXPECTED
The first spoiler is that there is no Vitruvian Man. There is something similar, though, and this and other examinations of human proportions caused Leonardo some distress. People can’t be placed in the neat frameworks he was hoping for. He wasn’t squeamish in his approach though. This artist went full CSI in his investigations into how humans work.
He was a regular dissector of corpses. The famous image of an unborn infant in the womb was perhaps from his imagination, inspired by a pregnant cow he had dissected. What he imagined was usually more incisive than what others had spent years studying.
There is almost no field that he didn’t explore. Weapons were one of his favourites. In this we see a gulf between the quintessential Renaissance artist-scientist and the modern breed of artist-self-promoter. Weapons are not something anyone is going near nowadays unless they’ve got a gun-control message.
Leonardo revelled in weapons, and everything else. Some of his drawings for chariot wheels that spew knives have more than a touch of James Bond about them. The only thing he didn’t predict was ejector seats, despite his advanced knowledge of parachute technology.
The breadth of his achievements becomes a bit overwhelming after a while. There are many who question whether all William Shakespeare’s achievements could really have been the work of one man; these literary scholars should have a good look at Leonardo. He didn’t write plays but he did everything else.
REALISTIC EYE
When he wrote, it tended to be in his famous reversed “mirror writing”. The reasons for this are obscure. Strangely, this exhibition doesn’t pursue a facet of a genius who relished the unexpected. A few examples of mirror writing with mirrors would have made a useful display for young visitors, although the demographic here is fairly mature.
Some of the content is also of an adult nature. Leonardo wasn’t into self-censorship, nor was he into hiding the less attractive side of human physiology. His drawings of some individuals border on the hideous, which was certainly his intention. Unlike so many Renaissance artists whose interest were pretty people with ripped bodies, Leonardo cast a realistic eye over everything, including himself.
Despite contemporary accounts praising his good looks, our impression of him is of an old man, disintegrating before our eyes. The great Italian biographer Vasari may have been going too far when he wrote: “…An artist of outstanding physical beauty who displayed infinite grace in everything he did”.
Whatever he looked like, Leonardo could turn the most unpromising material into something almost divine. The juxtaposition of his elegant calligraphy with scientific drawings has, for me, something of Islamic manuscripts about it.
This is not a possibility to be explored by the exhibition, nor is the possibility that his mother was a freed Muslim slave, perhaps from Turkey. There is so much else to say about him that this might all seem irrelevant.
To see the freshness of his work is to feel the vigour of a man who was still inventing and sketching up to his death. This exhibition has a section that explores the scientific analysis of his achievements. Using some complex chemistry and physics, even more is revealed about a man whose secrets keep on giving.
Overlooked though some of his genius was in his lifetime, this is not the case now. Exhibitions are happening all over the world, but the best and most authentic collection of his work is undoubtedly the one showing at Buckingham Palace.
‘Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing’
Where: The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London.
When: Until Oct 13, 2019