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The genius of Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo and Europe An exhibition at the Baula Foundation, Biel, Switzerland, showing until Jan 20, 2002, and then touring in Paris, London, New York, and Toronto. ast January, the Swiss National Museum in Zurich organised an exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci that attracted more than a quarter of a million visitors. You won’t find that many people crowding the entrance to the elegant Baula Foundation in the little town of Biel, which is known chiefly for watch making. But this exhibition (mostly of Leonardo’s works but also those of his contemporaries and students) provides an idiosyncratic and satisfying taste of the artist’s scientific and technical inventiveness. Many of the objects are being shown to the public for the first time. Leonardo and Europe opened in Assisi, where Baula Foundation president Marco Borella “fell in love with it”. It is not hard to understand why. The exhibition fairly bursts with creative exuberance. Paintings and drawings, books and documents under glass, and three-dimensional interpretations of designs from Leonardo’s notebooks are among the 233 original
works on show. In the main hall alone, dominated by an astronomical clock designed by Leonardo (1495–97), there are three-dimensional models of a rotisserie, a still, and an ingenious baby walker alongside an oven with a bellows stoking system, a hall of mirrors, and a projection machine titled “How to make a big beautiful light”. A model of a scorpion ship and other objects grace the steps of a free-standing “staircase of the spirit”. Pages from the notebooks complement the models, annotated with Leonardo’s famous mirror writing. Head up the stairway hung with re-creations of Leonardo’s designs for parachutes and flying machines to the second floor, where five rooms are organised according to themes. The music room features instruments, including a curved cornet, several violas, and a bronze lyre. A theatrical motif is evident in one Study of clock activated with weights and of the rooms that displays a magic hammer (1495–98) from Codex Madrid I mountain that rumbles apart to “Parleransi li omini di remotissimi paesi reveal a figure of Pluto ascending l’uno all’altro e risponderansi” (people inside, to the delight of this reporter. in far distant countries will talk back and Among the paintings and drawings, forth). Similarly, Leonardo’s statement two early drapery studies from that “the earth moved because a little a private collection in the USA bird alighted on it” is taken to intuit have never been exhibited before. the so-called butterfly effect associated Several images highlight the with chaos theory. However, these suggestion, little remarked up to foreshadowings are rather unconvincing. now, that Leonardo painted not The works stand so well on their only with a brush but also with own that having to think of them in an his fingers. artificial framework is distracting. Leonardo and Europe is the Still, there is no denying Leonardo’s brain child of Alessandro Vezzosi, a immense ability to communicate across Leonardo scholar and director of time and geography, and perhaps that the Museo Ideale Leonardo da is the point. And the cyberspace theme Vinci in Tuscany, Italy. His aim is is only one element of an engrossing to convey a truer sense of who experience. Borelli invites visitors to Leonardo was—the illegitimate son stroll through the exhibit, to have a of a notary who became a symbol coffee in the coffee bar, and to take a not only of the Renaissance but look at the multimedia room. You leave also of the second millennium. wanting to know more. Indeed, Vezzosi succeeds in capturing the many human dimensions Giselle Weiss of the artist—as a genius capable of c/o The Lancet, London, UK breaking off his contemplation of a Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
L
perpetual motion machine with the comment “etcetera because the soup is getting cold”, and as a visionary whose ambitious blueprints for changing the course of rivers and rejigging the landscape are interspersed with grocery lists. But in depicting Leonardo as a prophet of information technology, the exhibit is less compelling. The chief evidence offered is several quotes from the Codex Atlanticus, one of which reads:
Biblioteca National Madrid
The genius of Leonardo da Vinci
Study of angel for Taufe Christi (1473–75)
THE LANCET • Vol 359 • January 5, 2002 • www.thelancet.com
85
For personal use only. Reproduce with permission from The Lancet Publishing Group.
works on show. In the main hall alone, dominated by an astronomical clock designed by Leonardo (1495–97), there are three-dimensional models of a rotisserie, a still, and an ingenious baby walker alongside an oven with a bellows stoking system, a hall of mirrors, and a projection machine titled “How to make a big beautiful light”. A model of a scorpion ship and other objects grace the steps of a free-standing “staircase of the spirit”. Pages from the notebooks complement the models, annotated with Leonardo’s famous mirror writing. Head up the stairway hung with re-creations of Leonardo’s designs for parachutes and flying machines to the second floor, where five rooms are organised according to themes. The music room features instruments, including a curved cornet, several violas, and a bronze lyre. A theatrical motif is evident in one Study of clock activated with weights and of the rooms that displays a magic hammer (1495–98) from Codex Madrid I mountain that rumbles apart to “Parleransi li omini di remotissimi paesi reveal a figure of Pluto ascending l’uno all’altro e risponderansi” (people inside, to the delight of this reporter. in far distant countries will talk back and Among the paintings and drawings, forth). Similarly, Leonardo’s statement two early drapery studies from that “the earth moved because a little a private collection in the USA bird alighted on it” is taken to intuit have never been exhibited before. the so-called butterfly effect associated Several images highlight the with chaos theory. However, these suggestion, little remarked up to foreshadowings are rather unconvincing. now, that Leonardo painted not The works stand so well on their only with a brush but also with own that having to think of them in an his fingers. artificial framework is distracting. Leonardo and Europe is the Still, there is no denying Leonardo’s brain child of Alessandro Vezzosi, a immense ability to communicate across Leonardo scholar and director of time and geography, and perhaps that the Museo Ideale Leonardo da is the point. And the cyberspace theme Vinci in Tuscany, Italy. His aim is is only one element of an engrossing to convey a truer sense of who experience. Borelli invites visitors to Leonardo was—the illegitimate son stroll through the exhibit, to have a of a notary who became a symbol coffee in the coffee bar, and to take a not only of the Renaissance but look at the multimedia room. You leave also of the second millennium. wanting to know more. Indeed, Vezzosi succeeds in capturing the many human dimensions Giselle Weiss of the artist—as a genius capable of c/o The Lancet, London, UK breaking off his contemplation of a Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
L
perpetual motion machine with the comment “etcetera because the soup is getting cold”, and as a visionary whose ambitious blueprints for changing the course of rivers and rejigging the landscape are interspersed with grocery lists. But in depicting Leonardo as a prophet of information technology, the exhibit is less compelling. The chief evidence offered is several quotes from the Codex Atlanticus, one of which reads:
Biblioteca National Madrid
The genius of Leonardo da Vinci
Study of angel for Taufe Christi (1473–75)
THE LANCET • Vol 359 • January 5, 2002 • www.thelancet.com
85
For personal use only. Reproduce with permission from The Lancet Publishing Group.