Leonardo da Vinci: Drawings from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin

Exhibition Catalogue Summary

To accompany the Leonardo drawing exhibition, the Birmingham Museum of Art will publish an exhibition catalogue. The 96-page illustrated catalogue will include essays by leading scholars and exhibition entries describing the featured works.

The catalogue will begin with forewords by Gail Andrews, Director of the Birmingham Museum of Art; John Buchanan, Director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (the second and last venue of the exhibition); and Maria Letizia Sebastiani, Director of the Biblioteca Reale. Additionally a letter by Alain Elkann, President of the Foundation for Italian Art & Culture, who helped facilitate this exhibition, will be included.

Distinguished scholars in both the art and science worlds will contribute essays on the exhibition, which will provide an overview and analysis of various aspects of Leonardo’s work.

The first essay, “History of Leonardo Drawings in Turin,” by Carmen C. Bambach, Curator of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will provide a general introduction to the exhibition and an overview of the history of the Leonardo drawings in Turin.

Martin Kemp, Professor of the History of Art, University of Oxford, will study the pagination, composition, and paleography of the Codex on the Flight on Birds and situate the notebook within the broader context of Leonardo’s fascination with flight in his essay “Il codice sul volo degli uccelli: A Codicological Approach.”

“Leonardo and the Flight of Birds” by Richard O. Prum, William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Peabody Natural History Museum, Yale University, will also examine the Codex and offer insight into Leonardo’s observations and understanding of bird flight in comparison with our knowledge today.

The catalogue will also include entries by Jeannine O’Grody, Curator of European Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, on the 11 drawings in the exhibition (three of which are double-sided). The entries will examine each drawing and place it within the greater framework of Leonardo’s graphic oeuvre.

The catalogue will be available for $30 on September 28, 2008 at the Birmingham Museum of Art Museum Store or via telephone at 205.254.2777.