At the Gallerie dell’Accademia, in Venice, visiting “Leonardo, l’uomo universale” to discover the conceptual side of the genius
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- Leonardo da Vinci, Study of human body proportions, Venezia, Gallerie dell’Accademia,Gabinetto dei disegni,
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- Leonardo da Vinci , Bust of a man in profile with a pattern of proportion, studies of horse and riders, 1489-90, Venezia, Gallerie dell’Accademia,Gabinetto dei disegni,
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- Leonardo da Vinci , Bust of a man in profile with a pattern of proportion, studies of horse and riders, 1489-90, Venezia, Gallerie dell’Accademia,Gabinetto dei disegni,
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- Leonardo da Vinci, Studies of figures, mechanical devices and for flight, Firenze, Uffizi, Gabinetto dei disegni e delle stampe
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- Leonardo da Vinci, Studies of the proportion of the face and eye with notes, 1489-90, Torino, Biblioteca Reale
For the first time after 30 years you can see all at once the most important graphic works created by Leonardo Da Vinci: the entire collection of 25 handwritten pages, kept in the vaults of the Academy (where they will return at the end of the show, and for many years , due to the rules of conservation) and 27 other drawings gathered from Turin, Florence, Parma, from the collections of the Royal Windsor Castle, the British Museum, the Louvre, the Ashmolean in Oxford.
The exhibition is a rare opportunity to realise that drawing for Leonardo was not only a means for description, but also an instrument of thought, a tool for reflecting on reality, an integration of form and idea. It follows that many drawings, rather than being considered as simple sketches, preparatory studies or pure projects, could now be viewed as works of art tout court.
While examining how Leonardo was primarily interested in the representation of mental processes in relation to the natural ones (for example, in investigating the mechanisms of perspective, proportions, shadows, movement), the works on display in Venice can therefore be seen finally as a synthesis of form, language, idea, abstraction, thought and science.
From this perspective, visitors will not escape the many links between these works of Leonardo and the ambition of many conceptual artists from the 1970s to the present day.
January 23, 2020
