One of the most significant groups of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci will be loaned to a US museum †the Birmingham Museum of Art (BMA) †for the first time by the Biblioteca Reale (Royal Library) in Turin, Italy. Organized by the BMA, the exhibition “Leonardo da Vinci: Drawings from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin,” will open September 28 and run through November 9.
The works encompass one of da Vinci’s most celebrated notebooks, the Codex on the Flight of Birds, and 11 important drawings, including one described by Bernard Berenson as the “most beautiful drawing in the world.” The drawings have never before traveled as a group nor in their entirety been made available outside of Italy.
The exhibition provides a rare glimpse into the mind of the greatest draftsman of all time, whose designs still fascinate and challenge viewers today. Often called “the universal genius,” da Vinci is recognized for his restless, inventive mind, and the drawings in Turin illustrate in microcosm the extensive range of his interests.
The drawings are acute observations, fantastical explorations, anatomical studies and utilitarian working drawings; one sheet includes a fragment of a poem. They are executed in a variety of media, including red chalk, black chalk, metal point and pen and ink †some on red, blue and green prepared paper. Dating from about 1480 to 1510, the works traverse the most fertile period of da Vinci’s career.
Among the most celebrated of the Turin sheets is the preparatory sketch of the angel for the first version of the “Madonna of the Rocks,” circa 1483, originally intended for a chapel altarpiece in the church of San Francesco Grande in Milan. A sheet from circa 1505‰6 is associated with several of da Vinci’s projects, above all, the “Battle of Anghiari.” The sheet is one of several made in preparation for the painting. In addition to two figures seen from the back, with carefully delineated musculature outlined and hatched in pen and ink, brief musings of hastily scrawled figures in action flit across the page.
Three sheets are filled with equine studies, two in metal point and one in red chalk. They are probably in preparation for da Vinci’s planned monument of patron Francesco Sforza, which would have been the largest equestrian statue ever made. Da Vinci’s desire to master the anatomy of a horse is found in each articulated detail of foreleg, shoulder and flank. Drawings of insects, and even a minute sketch of a cloud of butterflies, reveal a glimpse into da Vinci’s investigations of the natural world.
The Birmingham Museum of Art is at 2000 Eighth Avenue North. For information, www.artsbma.org or 205-254-2565.
