From April 15, 2015, during the EXPO year, the largest exhibition dedicated to Leonardo ever organized in Italy will open at the Palazzo Reale. Pietro C. Marani and Maria Teresa Fiorio, among the most important art historians who have studied the inventor of the Renaissance, are curating the exhibition.
The twelve sections of the exhibition provide a cross-section of the whole of the master’s work as artist and scientist while tracing some central themes in Leonardo’s work: the art of drawing; his relationship with ancient art and philosophy; new ideas about physiognomy and the emotions; the comparison of drawing, painting and sculpture; utopian projects; automation and mechanics.
Included are more than 100 of Leonardo’s original drawings, pictorial masterpieces – such as his St. Jerome from the Pinacoteca Vaticana – and some of his original codices, as well as three of his working models and a series of detailed thematic studies in various locations throughout the city.
Around this central nucleus of his original works – paintings, drawings and manuscripts by the master himself – are also some works by his predecessors that will help visitors to contextualize Leonardo’s work and to understand not only the innovation introduced by his genius, but also the influence that his works had on art and science in later centuries.
