Leonardo between Nature, Art and Science

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 sheets held at the Institut de France some authoritative scholars have identified some drawings which, for style and chronology, can be related to Leonardo’s work there. In the first of these drawings, Leonardo depicts well-lit and shaded areas along a branch under the sunshine. He does so through thin hatching, which gets gradually thicker in the less illuminated areas. In the second drawing,Leonardo investigated branching patterns in plants. In addition to these two drawings, a mulberry tree branch – a theme endlessly repeated on the ceiling of the Sala – is found in Codex Atlanticus.

The exhibition About the Sala delle Asse: Leonardo between Nature, Art and Science offers new visual suggestions about the graphic work by Leonardo, his school and other Renaissance artists in Italy and in Northern Europe, referred to the Monochrome, reinterpreted after the latest restoration works, and the recently discovered preparatory drawings. Without getting into the merit of their original sources, Leonardo’s sheets selected for this exhibition suggest several iconography and style similarities, that make the history of the greatest mural painting ever made by Leonardo and his large group of pupils even more intriguing. The sheets on display were loaned from important institutions, such as the British Royal Collection, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, the Gallerie degli Uffizi in Florence.

The exhibition also offers an important opportunity to further promote Milan’s cultural heritage. During the investigations conducted for this exhibition, a small drawing, most probably made from life, was found in the extensive holdings of Castello Sforzesco’s Cabinet of Drawings. This drawing attributed to Francesco Melzi, a pupil of Leonardo, is exhibited here for the first time.