Birmingham Museum of Art to display Rare da Vinci Drawings

Monday, 29 September 2008 20:10

Birmingham, AL - The Birmingham Museum of Art announced that one of the most significant groups of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci will be loaned to a U.S. museum for the first time by the Biblioteca Reale (Royal Library) in Turin, Italy.  Organized by the Birmingham Museum of Art, the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Drawings from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin, will open September 28 and run through November 9, 2008 in Birmingham. The works encompass one of Leonardo’s most celebrated notebooks, the Codex on the Flight of Birds, and 11 important drawings, including one described by Bernard Berenson as the “most beautiful drawing in the world.” The drawings have never before traveled as a group nor in their entirety been made available outside of Italy.
 
This exhibition provides a rare glimpse into the mind of the greatest draftsman of all time, whose designs still fascinate and challenge us today. Often called “the universal genius,” Leonardo is recognized for his restless, inventive mind, and the drawings in Turin illustrate in microcosm the extensive range of his interests.
 
“It is a tremendous honor to be the first museum to present these drawings as a group to the United States,” says Gail Andrews, director of the Birmingham Museum of Art. “We are deeply grateful to the Biblioteca Reale and to the Foundation for Italian Art and Culture for facilitating this initiative. The Birmingham Museum of Art is committed to bringing to our community objects of global significance that broaden appreciation for artistic endeavor, our understanding of the world and ourselves. These drawings by Leonardo da Vinci offer an unparalleled opportunity for careful observation and insight into the mind of a master.”
 
The drawings are acute observations, fantastical explorations, anatomical studies, and utilitarian working drawings; one sheet includes a fragment of a poem. They are executed in a variety of media, including red chalk, black chalk, metal point, and pen and ink—some on red, blue, and green prepared paper. Dating from about 1480 to 1510, the works traverse the most fertile period of Leonardo’s career.
 
Exhibition Highlights:  “Most Beautiful Drawing in the World”

Among the most celebrated of the Turin sheets is the preparatory sketch of the angel for the first version of the Madonna of the Rocks  (ca. 1483), originally intended for a chapel altarpiece in the church of San Francesco Grande in Milan. Its powerful and expressive silverpoint parallel hatching led art critic and connoisseur Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) to describe it as the “most beautiful drawing in the world.” Rarely displayed to the public, the Madonna of the Rocks  made international news in 2003 when it was displayed for two hours outside of its protective case.
 
A sheet from ca.1505/06 is associated with several of Leonardo’s projects, above all, the Battle of Anghiari. Leonardo’s most celebrated commission, his unfinished mural painting for the assembly room of the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, was pitted in competition with Michelangelo’s battle scene on the opposite wall. The sheet in Turin is one of several made in preparation for the painting. In addition to two figures seen from the back, with carefully delineated musculature outlined and hatched in pen and ink, brief musings of hastily scrawled figures in action flit across the page. Other figures, unrelated to the Battle of Anghiari, also are sketched in. The Turin sheet reveals the variety of projects Leonardo would consider on a single page, and is a prime example of his “thinking on paper” so often remarked upon.
 
The Biblioteca Reale

The Biblioteca Reale was established during the reign of Carlo Alberto of Savoy (r. 1831-1849). The House of Savoy, one of the Europe’s oldest dynasties, had long collected the rare manuscripts, illuminated books, and exceptional book bindings that make up some of the library’s 200,000 volumes today. Carlo Alberto not only ordered the construction of the Library to house the collection, but he also acquired a group of more than 2,000 drawings, including important examples by Michelangelo, Raphael, Poussin, Rembrandt, and Tiepolo. The Leonardo drawings, however, are undeniably the jewels of the prestigious collection. This nucleus of Leonardo drawings was enhanced in 1893, when a Russian collector donated the Codex on the Flight of Birds  to King Umberto I of Savoy.  

“Italians consider the Biblioteca Reale’s Leonardo drawings among their most important cultural patrimony, yet access to the drawings in the library is extremely limited,” O’Grody says.
 
Exhibition Catalogue

The Birmingham Museum of Art will publish the catalogue for this exhibition. Individual entries on the 11 drawings—three are double-sided—will situate each within the greater framework of Leonardo’s graphic oeuvre. The entries will incorporate discussions of the purpose of the drawing, medium, date, and context for which it was made. The catalogue will include full-scale color illustrations of each sheet and several essays. The Codex on the Flight of Birds will be given a page-by-page description and analysis, and essays will cover Leonardo’s drawings, his quest for flight, and the reasons Leonardo still fascinates us today.  
 
After the exhibition closes in Birmingham, it will travel to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, November 16 through December 28, 2008.
 
Birmingham Museum of Art

Founded in 1951, the Birmingham Museum of Art today has one of the finest collections in the Southeast. Its collection of more than 17,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and decorative arts represents a rich panorama of cultures, including Asian, European, American, African, Pre-Columbian, and Native American. Among other highlights, the Museum’s collection of Asian art is considered the finest and most comprehensive in the Southeast, and its collection of Vietnamese ceramics one of the finest in the world. The Museum also is home to a remarkable Kress collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts from the late 13^th century to c.1750, and its collection of 18^th-century European decorative arts includes superior examples of English ceramics and French furniture.

The Birmingham Museum of Art is located in the heart of the City’s cultural district. Erected in 1959, the present building was designed by architects Warren, Knight and Davis of Birmingham, with a major renovation and expansion by Edward Larrabee Barnes of New York completed in 1993. The facility encompasses 180,000 square feet, including a splendid outdoor sculpture garden.
 
ADMISSION to the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Drawings from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin and to the Museum’s permanent collection is FREE.  MUSEUM HOURS:  Tues—Sat, 10 am to 5 pm; Sun, Noon—5 pm; closed major holidays

Go to www.artsbma.org  or call 205.254.2565.