Group of Leonardo Drawings
Shown for First Time in U.S. Birmingham, AL, February 15, 2008 (updated May 21, 2008) — The Birmingham Museum of Art announced today that one of the most significant groups of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci will be loaned to a U.S. museum for the first time by the Biblioteca Reale (Royal Library) in Turin, Italy. Organized by the Birmingham Museum of Art, the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Drawings from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin, will open September 28 and run through November 9, 2008 in Birmingham. The works encompass one of Leonardo’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.
This exhibition provides a rare glimpse into the mind of the greatest draftsman of all time, whose designs still fascinate and challenge us today. Often called “the universal genius,” Leonardo is recognized for his restless, inventive mind, and the drawings in Turin illustrate in microcosm the extensive range of his interests. “It is a tremendous honor to be the first museum to present these drawings as a group to the United States,” says Gail Andrews, director of the Birmingham Museum of Art. “We are deeply grateful to the Biblioteca Reale and to the Foundation for Italian Art and Culture for facilitating this initiative. The Birmingham Museum of Art is committed to bringing to our community objects of global significance that broaden appreciation for artistic endeavor, our understanding of the world and ourselves. These drawings by Leonardo da Vinci offer an unparalleled opportunity for careful observation and insight into the mind of a master.” 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 Leonardo’s career. Exhibition Highlights:
“Most Beautiful Drawing in the World” 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 (ca. 1483), originally intended for a chapel altarpiece in the church of San Francesco Grande in Milan. Its powerful and expressive silverpoint parallel hatching led art critic and connoisseur Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) to describe it as the “most beautiful drawing in the world.” Rarely displayed to the public, the Madonna of the Rocks made international news in 2003 when it was displayed for two hours outside of its protective case. A sheet from 1505/6 is associated with several of Leonardo’s projects, above all, the Battle of Anghiari. Leonardo’s most celebrated commission, his unfinished mural painting for the assembly room of the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, was pitted in competition with Michelangelo’s battle scene on the opposite wall. The sheet in Turin 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. Other figures, unrelated to the Battle of Anghiari, also are sketched in. The Turin sheet reveals the variety of projects Leonardo would consider on a single page, and is a prime example of his “thinking on paper” so often remarked upon. Leonardo continually measured and mapped the world around him. He studied human anatomy with sketches of legs, the body in movement during battle, and proportion studies for the head and eyes on an extended sheet that includes notes and observations in his mirror writing. Three sheets from Turin are filled with equine studies, two in metal point and one in red chalk. They are probably in preparation for Leonardo’s planned monument of patron Francesco Sforza, which would have been the largest equestrian statue ever made. Leonardo’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 Leonardo’s investigations of the natural world. The exhibition will also feature Leonardo’s Codice sul volo degli uccelli (Codex on the Flight of Birds) of 1505/6, which is contained in a bound notebook of 18 recto and verso sheets. It is filled with Leonardo’s observations on the movement of birds and ideas to reproduce these natural movements with a machine. His comments on flapping and gliding wings, equilibrium, and harnessing the power of wind and its currents are interspersed with sketches of birds, flowers, machines, architecture, turbulent rivers, and diagrams. Leonardo’s ideas for flying machines from the mid-1480s concentrated on the power of the pilot to take off and stay aloft. After 20 years of studying aerodynamics, however, he came to realize that manpower alone would not make human flight possible. By focusing instead on the ability of birds to take advantage of the wind, and the construction of their wings, Leonardo hoped to overcome the issues of weight and gravity. Explanatory panels and a new didactic software program will aid the visitor in penetrating Leonardo’s famed mirrored writing and lateral thinking. The program will allow visitors to virtually page through the Codex and animate the drawings. Appreciation of Leonardo’s skills and intellect transcend time. “We are still learning from him,” says exhibition curator Jeannine O’Grody, Ph.D., Birmingham Museum of Art Curator of European Art. “As few paintings have come down to us, the heart of his artistic legacy is in the works on paper. Leonardo’s famed powers of expression are found principally in his drawings, which provide a visual delight and intellectual astonishment that, if possible, have increased with time.” The Biblioteca Reale The Biblioteca Reale was established during the reign of Carlo Alberto of Savoy (r. 1831-1849). The House of Savoy, one of Europe’s oldest dynasties, had long collected the rare manuscripts, illuminated books, and exceptional book bindings that make up some of the library’s 200,000 volumes today. Carlo Alberto not only ordered the construction of the Library to house the collection, but he also acquired a group of more than 2,000 drawings, including important examples by Michelangelo, Raphael, Poussin, Rembrandt, and Tiepolo. The Leonardo drawings, however, are undeniably the jewels of the prestigious collection. This nucleus of Leonardo drawings was enhanced in 1893, when a Russian collector donated the Codex on the Flight of Birds to King Umberto I of Savoy. “Italians consider the Biblioteca Reale’s Leonardo drawings among their most important cultural patrimony, yet access to the drawings in the library is extremely limited,” O’Grody says. The Foundation for Italian Art & Culture This exhibition was made possible by the Foundation for Italian Art & Culture (FIAC), an organization that seeks to promote knowledge of Italian cultural and artistic traditions in the United States. FIAC works closely with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and major Italian cultural institutions in order to expand appreciation of Italian art in the United States. "The Foundation principals have been extremely gracious throughout the planning of this important project, which would not have been possible without them," O'Grody says. Exhibition Catalogue The Birmingham Museum of Art will publish an exhibition catalogue, which will include entries by leading scholars, as well as 50 color and 20 black-and-white images. An essay by Carmen C. Bambach, Curator of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will provide an overview of the exhibition and the fascinating history of inheritance, donation, and theft of the Leonardo drawings in Turin. Professor Martin Kemp, Professor of the History of Art, University of Oxford, will study the pagination, composition, and paleography of the Codex on the Flight of Birds and situate the notebook within the broader context of Leonardo’s flying machine. Professor 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 compared to what we know today. Jeannine A. O’Grody, Curator of European Art, Birmingham Museum of Art and curator of the Leonardo exhibition, will contribute entries on each drawing in the exhibition, placing them within the greater framework of Leonardo’s graphic oeuvre. Full-scale color illustrations of each sheet will also be included in this 96-page exhibition catalogue. Exhibition Programming and Partnerships In conjunction with the exhibition, the Birmingham Museum of Art will present programs relating to Leonardo’s life and his contributions to the fields of art and science, and more broadly to the town of Turin, Italy, where this exhibition originated. These include a Symposium of Leonardo scholars examining Leonardo as the ultimate Renaissance man; an Art of Flight Family Day for kids and their families to learn about the mechanisms of flight with the help of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center; exhibition lectures by the Museum’s Curator of European Art Jeannine O’Grody; a concert by the Alabama Symphony Orchestra that will include music by Italian masters such as Antonio Vivaldi; and a student exhibition of Leonardo-inspired designs. (Please refer to the Programs, Partnerships, and Events document for more details.) This exhibition and catalogue are presented by Regions, with additional support provided by the Joseph S. Bruno Charitable Foundation, The Robert Lehman Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities, the Members of the Birmingham Museum of Art, EBSCO Industries, Inc., the City of Birmingham, and the Friends of Leonardo This exhibition was made possible by the Foundation for Italian Art & Culture. Special thanks to Maurizio Fallace, Director General of Cultural Patrimony, and Liliana Pittarello, Regional Director of Cultural Patrimony, of the Italian Ministry of Culture. After the exhibition closes in Birmingham, it will travel to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, November 16, 2008 through January 4, 2009. Birmingham Museum of Art Founded in 1951, the Birmingham Museum of Art today has one of the finest collections in the Southeast, with more than 17,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and decorative arts representing a rich panorama of cultures, including Asian, European, American, African, Pre-Columbian, and Native American. Among other highlights, the Museum's collection of Asian art is considered the finest and most comprehensive in the Southeast, and its Vietnamese ceramics one of the finest in the world. The Museum also is home to a remarkable Kress collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts from the late 13th century to c.1750, and the 18th-century European decorative arts include superior examples of English ceramics and French furniture. The Birmingham Museum of Art is owned by the City of Birmingham and encompasses 3.9 acres in the heart of the city's cultural district. Erected in 1959, the present building was designed by architects Warren, Knight and Davis, and a major renovation and expansion by Edward Larrabee Barnes of New York was completed in 1993. The facility encompasses 180,000 square feet, including a splendid outdoor sculpture garden. ADMISSION to the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Drawings from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin and to the Museum’s permanent collection is FREE. MUSEUM HOURS: Tues—Sat, 10 am to 5 pm; Sun, Noon—5 pm; closed major holidays For images, please click here. All images provided by the Collection of the Biblioteca Reale, Turin, and used with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. Photographs by Fabrizio Fenucci/Y. Press srl Contacts Birmingham Museum of Art: Melanie Parker
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Julie Mann
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Resnicow Schroeder Associates: Julia Kirchhausen
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Geetha Natarajan
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