Da Vinci in the flesh!

Yesterday, we had the opportunity to see an exhibit of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin, at the Birmingham Museum of Art. It. Was. Amazing. I wish you could've gone.

The exhibit was 11 of his sketches: a very famous portrait known as The Face of an Angel from his Virgin of the Rocks painting; several human anatomy sketches and quite a few horse anatomy sketches as well. The most astonishing thing on display was his Codex on the Flight of Birds. This man was had a spectacular eye and mind for detail and precision; every single little bone on the birds' wing was accounted for and each feather had a math calculation. :-)
For 3 of the sketches, they had to display both sides of paper because he drew on front and back. That is what amazes me: the fact that these were just sketches and he was "doodling" on a random piece of paper, front and back. He probably had no idea that roughly 500 years later, his drawings would be known world-wide and treasured so intensely! I mean, good grief, they had thermometers on the frames and viewers weren't allowed to touch the walls because of their body heat! (Which I found out from a very gruff museum-walker-pacer-official-dude.)

Da Vinci used a variety of mediums: there were chalk, charcoal, and metalpoint drawings. Papa explained that the way metalpoint was used: they took a stylus made of silver and drew with it. The result was very, very light, you couldn't erase, and you couldn't make your strokes varying shades; it was all one shade. However, over time, the silver is oxidized over time, and the tarnish made the drawings appear darker.
Everything in the exhibit was very small and detailed. They handed out magnifying glasses at the beginning just so you could see the amazing intricacies of his work.


I have to say that my favorite piece of the whole collection was this: Face of the Angel from his Virgin of the Rocks. When you looked at it with your magnifying glass, you could see that he used white chalk to put a highlight on her eyelid and under her eye. ("It took me like three hours to finish the shading on your upper lip." Sorry. I had to insert that.) So beautiful! They were handing out large postcard type prints of it and I took 5.

What made me so excited was the fact that the drawings have never traveled outside of Italy before in a group, and they were only coming to Birmingham and San Francisco in the U.S. It made me feel very special to think that out of all the poor art lovers in America (i.e. those who can't travel outside the U.S.) I got to see the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, and I got to experience the wonders of seeing how many muscles are in the human butto..'scuse me...bottom from Da Vinci's own observations.



(p.s. That's me in the flesh. Not Da Vinci. I just felt like I needed to clarify that cause I know you were all jumping up and down thinking that Da Vinci had come back to life and was being exhibited at the Birmingham Museum of Art.)