Art News

Renaissance artist Leonardo Da Vinci gets celebrity billing with National Gallery show

LONDON (REUTERS).- Move over George Clooney. Lady Gaga? So yesterday. The new celebrity in town is Renaissance artist Leonardo Da Vinci, subject of a major exhibition at London’s National Gallery that has generated the hype of a Hollywood blockbuster. Critics have fallen over themselves to find superlatives to describe “Leonardo Da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan,” which gathers nine of only 15 or 16 paintings of the master’s paintings known to exist. Missing are arguably the most famous of all — the “Mona Lisa” at the Louvre in Paris and “The Last Supper” mural in Milan which cannot be moved anyway. But the National Gallery is still confident that the collection, including loans from around the world, represents “the most complete display of Leonardo’s rare surviving paintings ever held.” Curator Luke Syson, who worked for five years on the exhibition, was close to tears describing