Art in Review Da Vinci: The Genius

“Amazing.” “Remarkable.” “Extraordinary.” When just one wall panel in a museum exhibit is so prone to heightened adjectives, you know you’re not viewing a modest show. It is one of grandeur, of extravagant scale. at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque, is a blockbuster of an exhibit, peppered with sponsor signage and featuring huge blow-up reproductions of once-intimate artistic details, like the faint smile. A massive parachute soars overhead; a bridge extends across a length of floor, tempting the viewer to study it from all angles; and an eight-sided mirrored room provides infinite perspectives. The exhibit’s objects spill out into the hallway of the museum’s second floor, as though they simply cannot be contained.

The effect of it all is genuine amazement, at the Renaissance artist and inventor’s remarkable genius. Hyperbole is sometimes merited.

The touring exhibit is by Grande Exhibitions, whose interactive shows are, fittingly, all about grandiosity, with titles that should be read in a deep movie-trailer voice: Extreme Forces of Nature, Van Gogh Alive: The Experience. What makes the extremeness in Da Vinci: The Genius not only tolerable but advantageous is the man at its center. Leonardo’s sketches have been meticulously recreated as physical objects by Italian artisans; the objects’ new dimensionality and size allow visitors to scrutinize, with incomparable opportunity, his truly astonishing mind.

The works span disciplines — among them are mechanisms exploring flight, optics, warfare, hydraulics, anatomy, music, and physics. They range dramatically from costumes Leonardo designed for Duke Ludovico Sforza’s extravagant Milanese parties to imposing battlefield weapons, including a giant crossbow and a conical tank lined with cannons. Many of the models are recognizable from their present-day iterations. A diving suit loosely resembles a modern scuba suit, and a car structure is not only current-looking but perhaps even futuristic. According to the accompanying text, the car may have been used as a stage prop, and it would not have needed anyone to push it. Leonardo may have anticipated that one day, we would be debating the repercussions of autonomous vehicles.

There are moments of poignant smallness in the exhibit. Several facsimiles of codices, into which Leonardo’s notebook pages were collated after his death, are included. Their minuteness creates a useful