Leonardo da Vinci drawings for Bristol's Museum & Art Gallery 2012

Bristol Museum & Art Gallery is among five regional museums in the UK to host a tour of ten of Leonardo da Vinci’s finest drawings from the Royal Collection. The exhibition will open in Bristol on 30 March 2012 and forms part of the celebrations of the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty The Queen in 2012.

These drawings have been selected from the unparalleled holdings of the Royal Library to reflect the whole range of Leonardo’s activities. Though he trained as a painter, Leonardo soon expanded his activities into the fields of sculpture and architecture, engineering, botany, geology, mapmaking, hydraulics, optics and anatomy. His principal tool of investigation was drawing, and through the hundreds of his sheets that survive we can piece together the life and work of the archetypal Renaissance Man.

Leonardo’s drawings were executed in a range of different media – pen and ink, red and black chalks, and metalpoint, in which a silver stylus is drawn across coated paper to produce studies of great finesse.  Included in the exhibition will be a sheet of designs of chariots geared to flailing clubs, possibly intended for a treatise on warfare, and a sketch of an enormous equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza, the father of his patron Ludovico Sforza, ruler of Milan. More peaceful are a study of the head of Leda, the mythical princess seduced by Jupiter, and – intended for the same painting of Leda – a detailed botanical study of oak leaves. Leonardo’s pioneering scientific work is exemplified by a double-sided sheet of anatomical studies, based on human dissection carried out by the artist in the medical school of the university of Pavia.

Two very different landscapes record a scheme to drain marshland to the south of Rome, and a minutely detailed view of a river taken from the window of the Villa Melzi at Vaprio d’Adda, where Leonardo was staying in 1513. In his sixties Leonardo moved to France, and a costume study of a man on horseback is evidence of his work as a festival designer for King Francis I. More personal is a sheet of studies of apocalyptic scenes, showing Leonardo’s fascination with destruction towards the end of his life; and the final drawing in the show is one of the last sheets executed by the artist, a rough study of an old, decrepit man in profile, surely capturing something of Leonardo’s own feelings about his bodily decay.

This will be a unique opportunity to see some of the most fascinating and accomplished drawings ever produced, and to engage at first hand with the one of the greatest minds of all time.

Julie Finch, Director of Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives, says: “We are delighted to exhibit this national collection in Bristol.  Working with esteemed collections, such as those held by the Royal Collection, is both a privilege and a pleasure.  The Bristol audience will appreciate the quality of work on show and the exhibition will be extremely popular drawing in visitors from across the southwest and beyond.  Bristol has gained a reputation for showing national collections and gained recognition for this.  The Leonardo da Vinci exhibition is a fantastic opportunity to showcase a major range of works during the Queen's Jubilee.''