The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci to be displayed in Edinburgh
He was the ultimate genius, and just his name itself is guaranteed to sell tickets.
Now 80 drawings by the Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci are coming to Scotland next month – many for the first time.
The exhibition is to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of da Vinci.
And the Renaissance master’s greatest drawings will go on display at the Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, in the largest exhibition of the artist’s work ever to be seen in Scotland.
The Queen has one of the greatest collections of his drawings.
Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing explores the full range of his interests – painting, sculpture, architecture, anatomy, engineering, cartography, geology and botany – providing a comprehensive survey of the great artist’s life and a unique insight into the workings of his mind.
Revered in his day as a painter, he completed only around 20 paintings.
He was respected as a sculptor and architect, but no sculpture or buildings by him survive.
He was a military and civil engineer who plotted with Machiavelli to divert the river Arno, but the scheme was never executed.
He was also an anatomist and dissected 30 human corpses, but his ground-breaking anatomical work was never published – and he planned treatises on painting, water, mechanics, the growth of plants and many other subjects, but none was ever finished.
“As so much of his life’s work was unrealised or destroyed, Leonardo’s greatest achievements survive only in his drawings and manuscripts,” say the Royal Collection Trust.
“The drawings by Leonardo in the Royal Collection have been together as a group since the artist’s death in 1519, and entered the collection during the reign of Charles II, around 1670.”
The exhibition in Edinburgh is the culmination of a yearlong nationwide event, which has given the widest-ever UK audience the opportunity to see the work of this unparalleled artist.
In February, 144 of his drawings from the Royal Collection went on display in 12 simultaneous exhibitions at museums and galleries across the UK, attracting more than one million visitors.