To celebrate the five hundred years since the death of Leonardo da Vinci (1519-2019), the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice presents the exhibition “Leonardo da Vinci. Man model of the world ”.
The Venetian museum has twenty-five autographed sheets of Leonardo , drawings that offer an extremely interesting excursus on the artist's production and document, throughout his activity, his scientific research with studies of the proportion of the human body, botany, optics. , physics, mechanics, weapons, and with preparatory studies for some paintings such as the famous Battle of Anghiari and the Sant'Anna with the Virgin and Child.
Among all, the Vitruvian Man excels, risen as a symbol of classical perfection of body and mind, of a microcosm on a human scale that is the reflection of the entire cosmos.
The review, curated by Annalisa Perissa Torrini and Valeria Poletto, offers seventy works, including thirty-five autographs by the Tuscan genius.
Alongside the Venetian drawings, other important sheets by Leonardo will be exhibited, exceptional loans
from the Royal Collection of Windsor Castle, from the National Gallery of Washington, from Fitzwilliam
Cambridge Museum.
The exhibition, promoted by the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, in collaboration with the Metamorfosi Association of Rome, will retrace, through the graphic examples of the master and his students or followers, the essential stages of his existence, starting with two Studies for an Adoration of the shepherds referable to the juvenile period up to the Three dancing female figures attributable to the French experience, the extreme moment of the artist's life which ended in Amboise on May 2, 1519. A special section will be dedicated to the study of proportions and anatomy which will see the fulcrum of the 'Vitruvian Man compared, in addition to important Windsor sheets, to some pages of the Huygens codex from The Morgan Library & Museum in New York.
The Huygens codex is a Renaissance manuscript attributed to Carlo Urbino da Crema which it reproduces
Leonardo's reflections on the movement of bodies, noting a thought underlying the famous sheet of the Gallerie dell'Accademia and, perhaps, the volume to which the drawing was intended.
In-depth study will also be dedicated to the sources and reflections of Leonardo's studies of proportions and anatomy with the exhibition of ancient editions of Vitruvius's De architectura, Luca Pacioli's Divina proportione, Euclid's Preclarissimus liber elementorum, De Humani corporis Fabrica by Andrea Vesalio.