The Mcmanus: Dundee’s Art Gallery and Museum August 31 - November 4

LEONARDO DA VINCI is perhaps one of the most famous names in the history of art and today 10 of the Italian Old Master’s finest drawings go on show in Dundee. The delicate, centuries-old works have been touring the UK as part of a Diamond Jubilee exhibition of pieces from the famous Royal Collection, belonging to the British monarchy.

The collection has been shaped over the last 500 years by the tastes of kings and queens and includes paintings, drawings, watercolours, sculpture, furniture, ceramics, silver, armour, jewellery, books, manuscripts, prints and photographs; all of which are held in trust by The Queen for her successors and the nation.

The McManus is the only Scottish gallery to host the drawings, which have been selected by Martin Clayton, senior curator of prints and drawings at the Royal Collection, to reflect Leonardo’s use of different media and the extraordinary range of his activities: painting and sculpture, engineering, botany, map-making, hydraulics and anatomy.

Martin explained: “I think this might be the first time a Leonardo has ever been to Dundee, which is quite exciting. It’s certainly the first time there has been a proper exhibition of Leonardo’s work in the city.

“Although virtually everybody has heard of Leonardo, people often have a distorted idea of him. They know about the Mona Lisa and they have heard about the flying machine and the submarine and that becomes a fairly one-dimensional view.

“What you can get through his drawings is an immediate engagement with his mind. Everybody who has lived has made drawings or sketches and these are ten snapshots of his different interests, ideas about the world or things he wanted to make as well as drawings he made for his own pleasure. Visitors will be able to see him as a real person and get to grips with him.”

Leonardo was born in 1452 near the town of Vinci in central Italy. By the age of 20 he was working as a painter in nearby Florence, probably in the studio ofAndrea delVerrocchio. Ten years later, he settled in Milan and soon entered the service of Duke Ludovico Sforza as a painter, architect and engineer.

He painted his famous work the Last Supper for Ludovico and during the 1480s Leonardo also began exploring the scientific subjects which were to occupy him for the rest of his life.

Though Leonardo was famous as an artist, few of his contemporaries were aware of his interest in scientific research. He wrote copious notes and intended to publish several treatises, but, like many of his artistic projects, these were never finished. Accomplished in painting, sculpture, architecture, music, anatomy, engineering, cartography, geology and botany, it is thanks to the survival of his drawings that we have access to his inquiring mind and the exhibition presents examples of his finest studies.

The collection includes designs for chariots fitted with flailing clubs, an intricate study of the head of Leda, a drawing of oak leaves, a double-sided sheet of anatomical sketches, a design for a scheme to drain marshland, a view of a river from a window, a costume study of a man on horseback, drawings of apocalyptic scenes and a rough study of an old man in profile, one of the last drawings made by the artist.

Martin continued: “He didn’t divide his activity into art and science, they were all the fuse of one great goal, which was truth and knowledge and the desire to pass this knowledge on to other people.

“He managed to fit an enormous amount into his life, living to the age of 67. In 50 years of activity, what he achieved was remarkable. We have more surviving from Leonardo’s hand – more papers and work – than any other figure in any field of the Renaissance.”

Martin said the reason so much of his work survived was partly due to care and also down to luck. The Royal Collection has over 500 Leonardo drawings, which were preserved following the artist’s death in France in 1519.

He left his notebooks and thousands of drawings to his favourite pupil Francesco Melzi. After Melzi’s death around 1570, this collection was bought by the sculptor Pompeo Leoni, who mounted Leonardo’s drawings in several large albums.

One of these albums, containing 600 drawings, was brought to England in the early 17th century, entering the collection of the Earl ofArundel. By 1690 the album was in the possession of the Royal Collection.

Martin added: “It’s a sobering thought that if the drawings hadn’t survived we would maybe know 10% of what we know about Leonardo now. So much of his activity is preserved only in his drawings, so they are a remarkably important resource.”

McManus curator Anna Robertson said the process of bringing the Diamond Jubilee exhibition to the Dundee gallery had taken around two years.

“The great thing for us is that Leonardo did these drawings. Often, when you are looking at a painting – and certainly one of the Old Masters – there were assistants involved. With a drawing, it is only the hand of the master and so you are seeing Leonardo’s mind working and that coming out through the medium of drawing, which is an incredibly powerful thing.”

She added that the exhibition is likely to be extremely popular as it has proved so at previous venues. A queuing system may be in place during peak times and weekdays are expected to be less busy.

Martin Kemp, one of the world’s leading authorities on Leonardo da Vinci, will give a public lecture at the University of Dundee tomorrow to mark the arrival of the exhibition.

The Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford will explore the way in which both Leonardo’s art and science can be understood and demonstrate how connections can be drawn between seemingly unrelated works such as the Mona Lisa and the flying machine.

The public lecture takes place at 6pm in the Dalhousie Building, Old Hawkhill and free tickets for the event are available from

/ / Tower Building Reception at the university, or by calling

Entry to The McManus exhibition is free of charge. For more information, visit

/ telephone: or follow on Facebook and Twitter.