LEONARDO DA VINCI: PAINTER AT THE COURT OF MILAN
National Gallery, 9 November 2011–5 February 2012
The exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan fully booked at the National Gallery, reveals how much Leonardo believed in the importance of sight in the workings of the human mind.
In cross sections, the exhibition shows how the eye is attached to three ventricles, or chambers, in the brain. The first chamber gathers data, the middle one contains the senso comune (common sense) which processes data and houses the human soul, imagination and intellect. The third chamber stores memories. We can see diagrams of the head as if Leonardo had conducted an anatomical dissection but we know these largely depended on received opinion and his own imagination.
At the same time he sets out the measurements for the ideal proportions of the human head and intended his anatomical studies to form part of a treatise which he later hoped to write. Gazing at these two simple sketches your eyes are opened to the notes in the artist's characteristic left-handed mirror writing which refer to the layers of the scalp and are compared to an onion.
The most shocking emotion I experienced at the exhibition was when I entered room 4 and could see simultaneously for the first and the last time in my life both the paintings of the divine The Virgin of the Rocks (on loan from The Louvre and housed at The National Gallery): together they are outstanding and every other painting in the room and the crowd itself … seem like nothing in comparison.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) The Virgin of the Rocks, 1483 – about 1485 Oil on wood transferred to canvas. 199 × 122 cm Musée du Louvre, Paris, Département des Peintures (777)
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) The Virgin of the Rocks, about 1491/2–99 and 1506–8 Oil on poplar, thinned and cradled. 189.5 × 120 cm