It was the last weekend of the Leonardo da Vinci's exhibition at the National Gallery and I decided to take a shot at it. A truly renaissance figure Leonardo, had in his painting, art, expression, geometry, proportions, emotions, errors, in-completion, ruin to name a few. It was my quest to find out why his art are truly a symbol of debate that cuts across the art community. It was a lifetime opportunity for me to witness his paintings, 7of the odd 20 paintings he made in his life time. The paintings were of the time he was the court painter in Milan for Ludovico.
I kept alarm at 4:30 and and started from Oxford at 5:15, with temperature being -8 at that time. I knew the queue was going to be long so did not want to take any chance. When I reached Trafalgar Square, the queue was already 400 people long, and every day they have limited tickets of 500, Then I heard that today they will keep it open till midnight (as it is the last weekend ) and will allow more people inside. It was cold in London with the Trafalgar square fountain frozen, but the queue had more than enough enthusiasm to beat the cold. The queue, essentially a British one, with people exchanges pleasantries, coffee and cigarettes. We finally got the tickets at 1:30PM after a good 7 hours wait and were eager to enter the show. Finally I got the tickets for 6:30PM and prepared myself with some reading on his work in the meantime.
So at 5 I reached the National Gallery and was waiting for the turn. It was like they were telling the most complete exhibition ever of Leonardo's work. The exhibition spanned the time he was in Milan as the court painter. It was not about only his paintings, but about his style and the evolution of his paintings. He was a mathematician and more of a philosopher. Using proportions of geometry, the facial expression were brought to life in his sketches. There was 7 room with each had a painting of focus and all the related work/sketches with that. Like the left hatchings and the curls , a sketch of a baby looking in all the direction, a sketch of a girl suddenly distracted by some thing. Each of his work portrayed a very natural setting, there were never any extra emotion/pain but all very natural. IN the painting 'Lady with ermine' or 'Belle Ferronniere', it was of a girl with sublime expression, beutiful but not overly smiling, a very contended picture.. Similarly on the painting of 'Madonna litta', a virgin breast feeding her child (mary and christ), the virgin looks at her son with bliss and the child sucking with eager to satisfy the hunger. In this painting there were many sketches that led to this painting and in all the sketches he was trying different emotions, In all, they were the most natural paintings that u can see. there were sketches ok only the clothes, only the baby arn, and so on. This exhibition was good as u never find all the existing sketches, related to the painting, at one place. So they had the sketches and painting for these paintings from Louvre, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, Prague, Windsor, London and on, the reason it was claimed this as the most complete one. And finally the exhibition last room, which was the Leonardo's 'Last supper'. It was the eight meter wide live scale copy of the 1520 work. The seriously master-piece of its own and for the time to come. The painting is about Christ having his supper with his 12 apostles and he declares one of them will betray him leading to his death. Christ's statement created a flutter, Few enraged, few scared, few denying, Judas. who betrays him, clutches the bag of money... For all of theme he made various sketches to make it clear, vivid and full of life. e took inspiration from beauty, disgust, wickedness pain to create all the emotions. However the mural(as it stands in Milan today), was ruined in 20 years. So his disciple create a copy which had been displayed here. It was a fitting end to the long arduous day. already 3 hours gone, headed back to Oxford with heavy Snowfall and pictures of the sketches, vivid, full of life..
His painting were a class, very masculine, the girls had very masculine hand, full of geometric proportions, very natural and erratic at times. More than the painting his sketches reveal him more, but they make sense only with those paintings. A truly most complete exhibition, truly worth the effort of 7 hours wait.
