For the Louvre of Leo: Italy is livid over loan

Nationalists angry France will host exhibit on artist

ROME — So versatile were Leonardo da Vinci’s talents in art and science and so boundless his visionary imagination, he is known to the world as the universal genius.

But not to Italy’s nationalist-tilting government, which is livid about plans by the Louvre museum in Paris for a blockbuster exhibit next year with as many as possible Leonardo masterpieces loaned from Italian museums to mark the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance artist’s death.

“It’s unfair, a mistaken deal,” Italian Culture Ministry Undersecretary Lucia Borgonzoni said of a 2017 agreement between a previous government and the Louvre. “Leonardo is an Italian genius,” she told The Associated Press this week.

Borgonzoni is a senator from the League, the “Italians-first” sovereignty-championing party in the nearly six-month-old populist government.

She was elaborating on comments earlier this month, in Italian daily Corriere della Sera, in which she said of Leonardo: “In France, all he did was die.”

Leonardo was born in 1452 in the Tuscan town of Vinci, Italy, and died in Amboise, France, in 1519.

Borgonzoni criticized how as part of the 2017 arrangement, Italy also pledged to program its own exhibits so they won’t compete with the Louvre mega-show.

The Louvre declined to comment on Italy’s objections, nor say which artworks it requested from Italy, noting it’s nearly a year before the four-months-long exhibit opens on Oct. 24, 2019.

Exhibit curator, Vincent Delieuvin, part of the Louvre’s staff, also serves on the Italian Culture Ministry’s committee which evaluated proposals from museums worldwide for the celebrations. He didn’t reply to an emailed request for comment.

“While respecting the autonomy of museums, national interests can’t be put in second place,” Borgonzoni told Corriere. “The French can’t have everything.”

And it appears they won’t get all they want.

The Uffizi Galleries in Florence is considering loaning the Louvre several Leonardo drawings. But director Eike D. Schmidt said his museum is nixing the Louvre’s request for its stellar trio of Leonardo paintings because “simply, these works are so extremely fragile. No museum in the world would ever lend them.”

Anniversary committee head Paolo Galluzzi, who directs the Galileo Museum in Florence, insisted that nationalism wasn’t a factor in evaluating anniversary proposals.

“Many could claim him. He was born in Vinci, trained in Florence, and developed in Milan,” Galluzzi said by telephone. “Politicians have different optics,” but in the “world of culture and science we don’t bother with these things.”

Ultimately, he said, what is being celebrated next year is a “universal genius.”