Perhaps the most important item in this wonderful exhibition is the least remarkable: the worn book binding that held some 550 sheets by Leonardo da Vinci safe and sound for three-and-a-half centuries. The drawings in this leather ark remained more or less as he collected them. Two hundred of the finest from the Royal Collection are here, showing us, as the title has it, A Life in Drawing.
It’s the biggest exhibition since the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s birth, in 1952. Most of the technical drawings ended up in Milan; this collection shows Leonardo as artist as well as engineer, cartoonist, botanist, anatomist, topographer, ballistics expert, costume designer, architect: pretty well everything implied in the term Renaissance man.
His biographer Vasari observed that in Leonardo “there was such a power of intellect that whatever he turned his mind to he made himself master of with ease”, with the drawback that he was “variable and unstable. For he set himself to learn many things, and when he had begun them gave them up.”
Well, the drawings show the subjects that his playful and curious mind ranged over — sometimes in a single sheet of paper and frequently of variable quality — and also the extent of his mastery of them. His studies, expressed in drawings, never satisfied this restless perfectionist but often — as with his anatomical or equestrian drawings (horses fascinated him since he was a boy) — they’ve never been surpassed.
The exhibition is arranged chronologically and, within that, thematically. Usefully, it begins with examples of the work of his contemporaries, including his master, Andrea del Verrocchio, who gave up painting in pique when he found that the angel Leonardo added to his Baptism of Christ was better than anything else in it.What they show is that Leonardo was representative of his age but, as contemporaries saw, remarkable even within it.
It begins and ends with pictures of Leonardo in old age (he was always beautiful to look at), a chalk portrait worthy of the man himself by one of his pupils, and a newly discovered little sketch of great charm by another. Scattered throughout are useful displays of the materials he used, from the cloth paper to the metal stylus that he favoured at the beginning of his career (a tricky instrument) and the goose quills he used later. Some of the loveliest drawings here are in silverpoint: like the early portrait of a woman in profile, where it’s used to masterly effect, and the study of hands, shown here.
There is more fascination to be had in this show than in any exhibition of his paintings. For one thing, as the art historian Kenneth Clark pointed out, his preparatory drawings often lost some of their vivacity and charm when they took final, serene form in painting. And plainly, the paintings themselves are sometimes so ravaged by restorers or time that the studies are a better guide to his intentions. The beardless faces of the apostles here, preparatory studies for his Last Supper, are as Leonardo intended; in the fresco in Milan they are a shadow of themselves.
As for his Leda and the Swan, it survived only as a copy, but here we have lovely studies of the head of Leda (including close inspection of her elaborate hairdo) and a sketch apparently for a more anguished girl. Some of his botanical studies were made for this painting, including a stylised Star of Bethlehem. These plant drawings show a tender feeling for nature as well as the eye of an analytical botanist.
His grotesque sketches, a counterpoint to his ideal heads, like his ugly old women, show a mordant humour, while his drawing of a self-important public man pickpocketed by gypsies was very much of the moment: social satire, then.
The drawings which leave modern viewers unmoved are to do with war and topography, the subject of his nine months in the employment of the scariest man in Italy, Cesare Borgia. But it’s worth remembering that when he sent his CV to the Duke of Milan, it was his credentials as a military engineer that he put first with painting much further down the list. The wars between the city states and with the French are the backdrop to his career. His work was often practical: his religious paintings were for guilds or monastic communities; his costume studies were for pageants; his horse sketches for equestrian statues or battle scenes.
His sketches are the product of a mind in motion, often with a scientific end, or to fix things in his memory. His studies of water look way too solid to us but they work as illustrations of his treatises.
There’s a poignant aspect to many of these drawings, not just the terrible studies of the deluge from his final years. Many were for projects that were never completed — such as the wonderful equestrian statue that took years of his life, the model for which was used by French troops as target practices. Vasari wrote that “his mind, being so surpassingly great, was often brought to a stand because it was too adventuresome, and the cause of his leaving so many things imperfect was his search for excellence after excellence, and perfection after perfection”. That restless mind was caught at least on paper — thank God this much has survived for us to marvel at.
From tomorrow until Oct 13 (rct.uk)
