Art News

The National Gallery in London Shows a Major Exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci

artwork: Leonardo da Vinci - "Madonna of the Rocks" (detail shown before and after restoration), circa 1508 - Oil on panel - 189.5 x 120 cm. Collection of the National Gallery, London. On view in "Leonardo Da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan" until February 5th 2012.


London.- What is undoubtedly the most eagerly awaited blockbuster exhibition of the 21st century opened earlier this week at the National Gallery in London. “Leonardo Da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan”, will remain on view through February 5th 2012 and is truly a landmar exhibition. Concentrating on his career as a court painter in Milan, working for the city’s ruler Ludovico Maria Sforza, il Moro (‘the Moor’) in the 1480s and 1490s, the exhibition brings together the largest ever number of Leonardo’s rare surviving paintings, it will include international loans never before seen in the UK. Private and institutional lenders have proved exceptionally generous, taking full and proper account of the serious scholarly ambition of this project.

artwork: Leonardo da Vinci - "Lady With Ermine", 1489-1490 Oil on wood panel - 54 x 39 cm. Collection of the Czartoryski Museum, Kraków. - At the National Gallery, London until Feb. 5th 2012.While numerous exhibitions have looked at Leonardo da Vinci as an inventor, scientist or draughtsman, this is the first exhibition to be dedicated to his aims and ambitions as a painter. ‘Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan’ will display more than 60 paintings and drawings by the great artist, as well as pictures by some of his closest collaborators. Nearly every surviving picture that he painted in Milan during this period will be exhibited. These include the ‘Portrait of a Musician’ (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan), the ‘Saint Jerome’ (Vatican, Rome), ‘The Lady with an Ermine’ (Czartoryski Foundation, Cracow), the ‘Belle Ferronnière’ (Musée du Louvre, Paris) and the National Gallery’s own recently restored Virgin of the Rocks.

Leonardo, a musician himself, worked closely with other musicians, designing musical instruments and devising settings for courtly entertainments. It was during this time that he painted his only portrait of a man – ‘The Portrait of a Musician’. The highly idealised ‘Belle Ferronnière’ may be a portrait of Ludovico il Moro’s duchess or of one of his mistresses. But the most justly celebrated of the three is the exquisite portrait of Il Moro’s mistress Cecilia Gallerani, ‘The Lady with an Ermine’, arguably his greatest masterpiece of these years. The exhibition also oncludes “Savator Mundi”, a painting once sold for £45 at auction, but which has nowbeen identified as a work by Leonardo Da Vinci and is estimated to be worth a world record £120million. “Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World”, depicts Christ with his right hand raised in blessing and his left hand holding a globe. It was previously attributed to a pupil of Da Vinci. But now an international group of experts has established that it was by the master himself.

artwork: Leonardo da Vinci - "Portrait of a Musician", 1485 Oil on panel - 31 x 43 cm. Collection of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan. On view at the National Gallery, LondonThe portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, painted in 1488–90 has been acclaimed as the first truly modern portrait. The sitter’s twisting pose and nuanced expression convey her inner life, mind, soul – and what we would now call psychology. Cecilia was renowned for her beauty, wit, scholarship, and poetry. Still in her teens in 1489 when she became Ludovico’s mistress, the painting of her portrait allowed Leonardo to demonstrate how a painter could capture a beauty that time would destroy. He portrayed Cecilia holding a white ermine, an enigmatic feature that has multiple meanings. It may be a visual pun on her surname since the Greek for ermine or weasel is ‘galay’. It could also stand for her lover, Ludovico Sforza, since he had been awarded the order of the ermine by the King of Naples and was known as ‘l’Ermellino’ as a result. The ermine was also written about by Leonardo as a traditional symbol of purity and honour. More than 50 drawings relating to the paintings will be exhibited for the first time. Highlights include 33 sketches and studies from the Royal Collection. The many Leonardo drawings owned by Her Majesty the Queen were probably purchased during the reign of Charles II but were rediscovered by chance only in 1778, when writer, Charles Rogers wrote: ‘Mr Dalton fortunately discovered the album of drawings at the bottom of a chest at the beginning of the reign of his present Majesty [George III]’. UK collections are rich in drawings by Leonardo – and other graphic masterpieces will be lent by the British Museum, the Courtauld Gallery, the Fitzwillam and Ashmolean Museums and the National Galleries of Scotland. From further afield come drawings from Paris, Florence, Venice and New York.

These pictures show how Leonardo, benefiting from his salaried position, used his artistic freedom to find new ways of perceiving and recording the natural world – focusing especially on the human anatomy, soul and emotions. These investigations could take on their own life, but they also fed into the meanings and evolution of his paintings. Leonardo da Vinci’s time in Milan was the making of him – both as an artist and as a public figure. It was in Milan that Leonardo executed his two profoundly different versions of the mysterious ‘Virgin of the Rocks’, as well as the almost uncannily perfect wall-painting of ‘The Last Supper’. This work will be represented in the exhibition by a near contemporary, full-scale copy by his pupil Giampietrino (1500–1550), lent by the Royal Academy. Leonardo also painted a trio of portraits that were to revolutionalise the genre – pictures that will be seen together in London for the first time.

artwork: Giampietrino - "The Last Supper", circa 1515 - Oil on canvas - 302 x 785 cm. - Collection of the Royal Academy of Arts, London. On view at the National Gallery, London in "Leonardo Da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan" until February 5th 2012.

The exhibition will include all the surviving drawings which are connected to the ‘Last Supper’ and the ‘Madonna Litta’, which will be lent by the State Hermitage, St Petersburg. Leonardo was born in or near Vinci in Tuscany and was trained in Florence by the sculptor-painter Andrea del Verrocchio. In about 1482-3 he moved to Milan, slightly later finding work as a court artist for the ruling Sforza family. He remained there until just after the city was invaded by the French in 1499. He may have visited Venice before returning to Florence in 1500. A second period in Milan lasted from 1506 until 1513, and it was then that he finished the London ‘Virgin of the Rocks’; this was followed by three years based in Rome. In 1517, at the invitation of the French king, Leonardo moved to the Château de Cloux, near Amboise in France, where he died in 1519.

The first paintings in the National Gallery collection came from the banker and collector John Julius Angerstein. They consisted of Italian works, including a large altarpiece by Sebastiano del Piombo, “The Raising of Lazarus”, and fine examples of the Dutch, Flemish and English Schools. In 1823 the landscape painter and art collector, Sir George Beaumont (1753 – 1827), promised his collection of pictures to the nation, on the condition that suitable accommodation could be provided for their display and conservation. The gift of the pictures was made in 1826. They went on display alongside Angerstein’s pictures in Pall Mall until the whole collection was moved to Trafalgar Square in 1838. Initially, the Gallery had no formal collection policy, and new pictures were acquired according to the personal tastes of the Trustees. By the 1850s the Trustees were being criticised for neglecting to purchase works of the earlier Italian Schools, then known as the Primitives. Following the reform of Gallery administration in 1855, the new Director travelled throughout Europe to purchase works for the Gallery. In the 10 years that he was Director, Sir Charles Eastlake ensured that the Gallery’s collection of Italian painting expanded and widened in scope to become one of the best in the world. Eastlake’s purchases included Botticelli’s “Adoration of the Kings” and Uccello’s, “The Battle of San Romano”. In 1871 the Gallery’s collection was broadened yet further, when 77 paintings were bought from the collection of the late Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel. These consisted mainly of Dutch and Flemish paintings, and included Hobbema’s “The Avenue at Middleharnis”. From the very beginning, the National Gallery’s collection had included works by British artists. By the mid-1840s, the rooms of the National Gallery had become overcrowded. When Robert Vernon presented a large gift of British works to the Gallery in 1847, they had to be displayed elsewhere: first at Vernon’s private house, and later at Marlborough House. Not long afterwards, the artist Joseph Mallord William Turner bequeathed over 1000 paintings, drawings and watercolours. When they came into the collection in 1856, they had to be displayed at South Kensington, along with the Vernon collection, which was moved from Marlborough House. In 1876 the National Gallery was enlarged, and the paintings were returned to Trafalgar Square. Following the completion of the Sainsbury Wing in 1991, the Gallery has a total floor area of 46,396 metres squared – equivalent to around six football pitches. It would be big enough to hold over 2,000 London double-decker buses. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk