Rare Leonardo da Vinci Drawings Make Debut In U.S.
The "Imagining the Future - Leonardo da Vinci: In the Mind of an Italian Genius" exhibition at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C. District of Columbia Public Library
The “Codex Atlanticus,” a massive collection of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings and written notes from 1478 to his death in 1519, is widely considered to be one of the most valuable works from the Renaissance.
And for the first time, some of the pages from the famed polymath’s collection will be on display in the United States.
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The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., will host the “Imagining the Future - Leonardo da Vinci: In the Mind of an Italian Genius” exhibition from June 21 to Aug. 20. The drawings, permanently housed at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, a historic library in Milan, Italy, were brought to the United States thanks to a partnership between libraries facilitated by the Italian trade association Confindustria. The collection has been at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana since 1637.
“For our opening, we needed to have the right ambassador. And we believe Leonardo da Vinci is the best ambassador of Italian genius,” Carlo Bonomi, president of Confindustria, told HuffPost. The collaboration “represents a bridge between our countries, between our economies, our people and our industry.”
Upon entering the exhibition on the lower level of the library, visitors will be able to see 12 drawings for a self-propelling cart, sketches for wings on flying machines, designs for hydraulic pumps and more.
Benvenuto a DC! https://t.co/swhXHxqPc8 — DC Public Library (@dcpl) June 19, 2023
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The library hopes “visitors will gain a deeper understanding of the origins of technologies we often take for granted and marvel at the remarkable mind that anticipated them centuries ago.” Several designs inside the Codex Atlanticus inspired technology seen in the modern world, such as aircraft, autonomous vehicles and underwater exploration.
No flash photography is allowed inside the dimly lighted exhibition as light can damage the art. At the exhibition’s close, the collection must be placed back in total darkness for the next three years.
There’s also “Leonardo’s Lab,” a hands-on installation that allows young visitors to learn about da Vinci through working puzzles, creating helicopters, building simple machines and more.
For D.C. Public Library Executive Director Richard Reyes-Gavilan, the partnership between the libraries didn’t quite make sense to him at first. But after several talks, it became clear that they had the rare opportunity to introduce da Vinci’s works to an audience that would likely never see them in any other venue.
“Many people consider Leonardo da Vinci not only one of the greatest minds of our history but the [greatest]. Most of his work is in these notebooks,” said Reyes-Gavilan. “It’s not the sort of thing that you can just sort of stumble upon if you’re visiting New York or Chicago or somewhere else.”
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Source: HuffPost
