Leonardo between Nature, Art and Science

The exhibition About the Sala delle Asse: Leonardo between Nature, Art and Science offers new visual suggestions about the graphic work by Leonardo.

Release time : 2019-07-03 15:02:24

source : Milan Tourism Bureau

In 1982, the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci. Nature studies from the Royal Library in Windsor Castle was held in the Sala delle Asse at the Castello Sforzesco on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's arrival in Milan. The exhibition, coordinated by Mercedes Garberi and Maria Teresa Fiorio, was backed up by a scientific committee composed of Kenneth Clark, Robin Mackworth-Young, Carlo Pedretti, and Jane Roberts. The exhibition focused on the theme of nature, looked at with a scientific eye and in all its various facets. Leonardo’s fifty drawings on display, generously loaned by Her Majesty The Queen from the Royal Collection comprised landscape views, including the series of Floods, studies of botany, orography and hydraulics.

Thirty-seven years later, on the occasion of the fifth centenary of Leonardo da Vinci's death, another exhibition of drawings is being set up in the Sala dei Ducali at the Castello Sforzesco, this time designed around the Sala delle Asse and the restoration works still in progress. On this occasion, the nature depicted by Leonardo in Ludovico il Moro’s stateroom is being focused upon, with its more recent iconographic interpretation resulting from the latest restoration works begun in 2013. Since then, diagnostic investigations, new studies, conservative restoration works on the Monochrome and, above all, the discovery of amazing, until now unknown, preparatory drawings have made it possible to look at the pictorial decoration in a new light. The exhibition therefore covers the room iconography starting from the eighteen mulberry trees, their intricate roots, as well as the recently discovered traces of preparatory drawings found on the walls of the room and hidden for centuries under layers of lime: shady trunks, shoots, leafy branches, sketches of understory, and a landscape.

In Leonardo's vast body of drawings, there are no real preparatory studies for the Sala delle Asse. However, in two