Art history? No, we're starting this month with an exhibition that we'll be tagging #artherstory on social media. Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 opens at Tate Britain in London on May 16, with the aim of charting the path of women to being recognised as professional artists over the centuries. More than 100 will be represented: relatively widely known names such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffman , Gwen John and Laura Knight , as well as the more obscure or neglected -- Levina Teerlinc, Mary Beale and Sarah Biffin . It's on till October 13, and as we've just seen a show in Germany focused on women artists over much the same timescale, we'll be keen to compare and contrast. Let's stick with a female theme. A short stroll up Millbank and across Lambeth Bridge, and you're at the Garden Museum, where from May 15 to September 29 you can see Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors . The show takes you around the gardens of Vane
It's not normally this crowded at the entrance to the Queen's Gallery in London; there are two queues outside the door, one to get tickets and a second of ticketholders waiting to actually enter the exhibition. But then, they don't normally have Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing showing.
Leonardo's pulling power is clear, as we reported earlier this year. Displays of his drawings from the Royal Collection to mark the 500th anniversary of his death attracted more than 1 million people at museums from Southampton to Glasgow. Now all those works, and more -- over 200 in all -- can be viewed together at the Queen's Gallery. It's quite a show.
Because Leonardo was the definition of the Renaissance man. He was a painter, an engineer, an inventor, a scientist, an architect, and more besides. And the Royal Collection has the largest collection of his drawings in the world, more than 550.
This is the only reliable portrait of Leonardo known to have survived, and it's by his pupil Francesco Melzi.
It was Melzi who spent decades collating Leonardo's papers, which generally weren't intended for others to see; they included notes for planned treatises, on anatomy, botany and other subjects, drafts for inventions or sketches for details in paintings. One album of drawings came into Charles II's collection in 1670, but it wasn't until around 1900 that the sheets were removed and the extent of Leonardo's researches and scientific achievements became apparent.
Now, you might be a bit concerned that an exhibition made up of 200 drawings could turn into something of a slog. In actuality, the curators have done a brilliant job. It's all clearly laid out, in a chronological and thematic order, and nicely paced, with detailed explanations of what's on show and illuminating insights into the techniques Leonardo used. And there's never too much of a feeling that you're struggling to get up close to an exhibit to see it properly.
What sort of picture do you get of Leonardo as you make your way round? A man whose mind was constantly seeking to expand his knowledge of every aspect of the physical world, for one thing. Someone who wasn't afraid to take on big projects, though he didn't very often seem to deliver them. And someone who was a perfectionist.
Here's an example of that perfectionism. In 1502, when working as a military architect for the ambitious nobleman Cesare Borgia, Leonardo created this plan of the town of Imola, near Bologna, where he was quartered with Borgia's court. It just appears so incredibly precise for a map made more than 500 years ago. Leonardo paced the streets for length and took bearings from the tower of the Palazzo Comunale in the centre, then used geometry to construct the map.
It was perhaps because he was such a perfectionist that Leonardo didn't finish many of the projects he started, though politics and war often thwarted things too. On three occasions he drew up plans for magnificent equestrian statues, first in the mid-1480s to commemorate Francesco Sforza, the late ruler of Milan, then at the end of the century for the military commander Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, and again during his final years in France, probably for King Francis I.
In each case, Leonardo began by planning a rearing horse before reverting to a pacing steed, a pose that was technically much easier to deliver. For the Sforza monument, we see detailed studies of horses with measurements of the parts of their anatomy (he always seems to have been far more interested in the horses than the riders the statues were supposed to celebrate).
A huge foundry would have been needed to cast the monument, and again the artist worked out how it could all be done. He built a clay model of the horse, well over life size, but in 1494 the 75 tons of bronze assembled for the project was requisitioned to make cannon. Five years later an invading French army destroyed the clay horse when they used it for target practice.
Nor did Leonardo finish the treatise on anatomy, work for which takes up so many pages of his notes, written in his characteristic mirror script (he was left-handed, so it was easier; when something was intended for others to read, he wrote the conventional way round). He perhaps felt there was always something more to discover. The audioguide provides testimony from medical experts on how advanced Leonardo's methods were, and how remarkably accurate much of his research into the workings of the human body was.
His earliest anatomical drawings investigated the functioning of the nerves and the brain, and in 1489 he sawed open a human skull to study its internal structure. On the left of this image different types of teeth are examined.
And here's one of the most famous of Leonardo images, a foetus in the womb. Unusually, it's in colour. And though Leonardo does appear to have dissected a woman who died in pregnancy (he dissected a total of 30 human corpses), many of the studies seen in this sheet are based on an earlier examination of the internal workings of a pregnant cow.
If you're thinking it's all science and not a lot of art in this show, you'd be wrong. Partly because, for Leonardo and the Renaissance, the boundaries between artistic ability and scientific knowledge were fluid, and partly because so many of these scientific drawings are things of beauty in their own right: botanical studies, such as an exquisite star of Bethlehem, or depictions of natural phenomena such as swirling pools of water that suggest an almost photographic ability to capture intense movement.
And then there is preparatory work for actual paintings. This is a study for Leonardo's Leda and the Swan, which was in the French royal collection until around 1700 but was destroyed because of its poor state and is known only from copies. Leda was the Queen of Sparta who was seduced by Jupiter in the form of a swan. Leonardo seems to have been more interested in the braids and curls of her hair than her face; he made a study of the hair from the back as well, something that wasn't going to be a part of the painting.
Meanwhile, these hands may have been a study for one of Leonardo's most famous works, the Lady with an Ermine, now in Krakow. They're done partly in metalpoint, an unforgiving, unerasable technique that Leonardo gave up relatively early.
This is a really absorbing exhibition, taking you at least some of the way into the mind of one of the greatest men of the Renaissance. And what about Leonardo's paintings? On to the Louvre, this autumn....
Leonardo da Vinci, A Map of Imola, 1502, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019
Leonardo da Vinci, The Skull Sectioned, 1489, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019
Leonardo da Vinci, The Foetus in the Womb, c. 1511, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019
Leonardo da Vinci, The Head of Leda, c.1505-8, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019
Leonardo da Vinci, A Study of a Woman's Hands, c. 1490, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019
Leonardo's pulling power is clear, as we reported earlier this year. Displays of his drawings from the Royal Collection to mark the 500th anniversary of his death attracted more than 1 million people at museums from Southampton to Glasgow. Now all those works, and more -- over 200 in all -- can be viewed together at the Queen's Gallery. It's quite a show.
Because Leonardo was the definition of the Renaissance man. He was a painter, an engineer, an inventor, a scientist, an architect, and more besides. And the Royal Collection has the largest collection of his drawings in the world, more than 550.
This is the only reliable portrait of Leonardo known to have survived, and it's by his pupil Francesco Melzi.
Now, you might be a bit concerned that an exhibition made up of 200 drawings could turn into something of a slog. In actuality, the curators have done a brilliant job. It's all clearly laid out, in a chronological and thematic order, and nicely paced, with detailed explanations of what's on show and illuminating insights into the techniques Leonardo used. And there's never too much of a feeling that you're struggling to get up close to an exhibit to see it properly.
What sort of picture do you get of Leonardo as you make your way round? A man whose mind was constantly seeking to expand his knowledge of every aspect of the physical world, for one thing. Someone who wasn't afraid to take on big projects, though he didn't very often seem to deliver them. And someone who was a perfectionist.
Here's an example of that perfectionism. In 1502, when working as a military architect for the ambitious nobleman Cesare Borgia, Leonardo created this plan of the town of Imola, near Bologna, where he was quartered with Borgia's court. It just appears so incredibly precise for a map made more than 500 years ago. Leonardo paced the streets for length and took bearings from the tower of the Palazzo Comunale in the centre, then used geometry to construct the map.
In each case, Leonardo began by planning a rearing horse before reverting to a pacing steed, a pose that was technically much easier to deliver. For the Sforza monument, we see detailed studies of horses with measurements of the parts of their anatomy (he always seems to have been far more interested in the horses than the riders the statues were supposed to celebrate).
A huge foundry would have been needed to cast the monument, and again the artist worked out how it could all be done. He built a clay model of the horse, well over life size, but in 1494 the 75 tons of bronze assembled for the project was requisitioned to make cannon. Five years later an invading French army destroyed the clay horse when they used it for target practice.
Nor did Leonardo finish the treatise on anatomy, work for which takes up so many pages of his notes, written in his characteristic mirror script (he was left-handed, so it was easier; when something was intended for others to read, he wrote the conventional way round). He perhaps felt there was always something more to discover. The audioguide provides testimony from medical experts on how advanced Leonardo's methods were, and how remarkably accurate much of his research into the workings of the human body was.
His earliest anatomical drawings investigated the functioning of the nerves and the brain, and in 1489 he sawed open a human skull to study its internal structure. On the left of this image different types of teeth are examined.
And then there is preparatory work for actual paintings. This is a study for Leonardo's Leda and the Swan, which was in the French royal collection until around 1700 but was destroyed because of its poor state and is known only from copies. Leda was the Queen of Sparta who was seduced by Jupiter in the form of a swan. Leonardo seems to have been more interested in the braids and curls of her hair than her face; he made a study of the hair from the back as well, something that wasn't going to be a part of the painting.
Practicalities
Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing is on until October 13 at the Queen's Gallery, right next to Buckingham Palace and less than 10 minutes' walk from Victoria Station with London Underground and main-line rail services.The gallery is open daily from 1000 to 1730, and from 0930 to 1730 when Buckingham Palace is open to the public between July 20 and September 29. Full-price tickets cost £13.50 including an audioguide. Tickets can be converted into passes giving free readmission for a year, letting you also see the next exhibition about the collection built up by George IV, which starts on November 15.
Given the popularity of the Leonardo exhibition it's highly advisable to book timed tickets in advance, which you can do online here. Indications from gallery staff are that it's a bit less busy in the afternoons, but don't leave it till too late in the day: This is a big show and you'll need a good two hours or more to see everything properly.
After the exhibition ends in London, a selection of 80 drawings will go on show at the Queen's Gallery at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh from November 22 to March 15.
Images
Attributed to Francesco Melzi, A Portrait of Leonardo, c. 1515-18, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019Leonardo da Vinci, A Map of Imola, 1502, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019
Leonardo da Vinci, The Skull Sectioned, 1489, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019
Leonardo da Vinci, The Foetus in the Womb, c. 1511, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019
Leonardo da Vinci, The Head of Leda, c.1505-8, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019
Leonardo da Vinci, A Study of a Woman's Hands, c. 1490, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019
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