500 years later, the Da Vinci code is still not fully unraveled

This year marks the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, the first of the "Three Great Masters of the Renaissance", and the art world has ushered in the "Year of Leonardo da Vinci". Numerous museums, including the Louvre Museum and the Uffizi Gallery, will pay tribute to dozens of Leonardo da Vinci exhibitions. The authentic works of Leonardo da Vinci at the bottom of the pressure box around the world have been almost turned over, and they have been presented with a flowing art feast that has feasted the eyes of art lovers. Due to the collision of exhibition dates, the rental of related works has even triggered unprecedented fierce competition between museums.

In the 500 years since leonardo da Vinci left this world, people have become more and more aware of and marveled at his "treasure" attributes. It turns out that the well-known paintings such as the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper are just the tip of the iceberg of da Vinci's creativity. In addition to being a painter, he was an inventor, a medical scientist, a biologist, a geographer, a musician, a philosopher, a poet, an architectural engineer, a military engineer... For this figure who is almost like a "visitor from the sky", there are still many unsolved mysteries. This year's intensive exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci is a review of his legendary life and a rediscovery of his artistic secrets.

A tribute to this renowned master of art, museums around the world are busy rummaging through the bottom of the box

Since October 2018, with the Thales Museum in the Netherlands taking the lead in hosting the Da Vinci exhibition, the unprecedented "da Vinci fever" in the art world has gradually heated up. This is the first time in Dutch history that da Vinci's original works are reviewed, bringing together 33 original works by Leonardo da Vinci. The exhibition seems to be a preemptive, but in fact, it is a last resort - the Thales Museum itself has no collection about Leonardo da Vinci, and can only borrow from other museum dealers, and the wrong peak exhibition is obviously more conducive to borrowing exhibits.

The traveling exhibition "Leonardo da Vinci: The Life of Painting", which lasted more than a year and covered the whole country in the United Kingdom, is a big move released by the Royal Collection Foundation, and perhaps the most ingenious of many Da Vinci exhibitions. The foundation, which houses a collection of 500 years of the British Royal Family,000 will not only exhibit more than 200 of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings and manuscripts at the Queen Palace Gallery in Buckingham, London, but also 12 da Vinci manuscripts in 12 museums in 12 cities across the UK, so that more than half of britons can reach the nearest sub-exhibition area within an hour's drive.

In Italy, where Da Vinci left the most footprints, the relevant exhibitions are full of schedules. The Leonardo Museum, located in Tuscany, the birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci, plans to feature exhibitions from April to June that focuses on the connection between da Vinci's work and the local landscape. The exhibits include the earliest known surviving work by leonardo da Vinci, a 1473 depiction of the Montalbano Mountains, which is considered the earliest landscape sketch in Europe. Florence is where Leonardo da Vinci became famous, the Uffizi Gallery has just concluded an exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts, and the Galileo Museum plans to present da Vinci's idea of a perpetual motion machine in virtual reality. In the city of Milan, which witnessed leonardo da Vinci's heyday, a series of themed exhibitions entitled "Leonardo 500" lasted for a full year, the main exhibition will be unveiled on May 2, the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death, in the Sforza Castle, the Celestial Axis Hall personally painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

This year's tribute to Leonardo da Vinci will culminate in October at the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the Louvre Museum. Previously, the museum's director, Jean-Luc Martinez, declared: "This will be the most complete exhibition of Da Vinci's works ever". The louvre's collecting strength makes this bold statement emboldened. At present, there are only about 15 conclusive paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, and the Louvre accounts for one-third, and da Vinci's Mona Lisa, The Virgin of the Rocks, Portrait of the Unknown Woman, Virgin and Child and Saint Anne, and St. John the Baptist are all here. The previous agreement signed between Italy and France shows that the Louvre will also lease all da Vinci paintings and major manuscripts from Italy except "The Three Doctors Come to the Dynasty". Even if the exhibition wanted to bring together Leonardo da Vinci's "Savior", which set a record for the world's most expensive art at auction in 2017, it was not impossible that the Gulf buyers who bought the work for about 3 billion yuan at that time planned to display the work at the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

On a seemingly blank piece of paper, he used invisible ink to leave hands in various gestures

Leonardo da Vinci's surviving paintings are pitifully few, so most of the paintings that support this year's da Vinci exhibition are da Vinci's drawings or manuscripts, and he did leave behind more drawings and manuscripts than any other artist in the same period. They seem to have a full number of suspicions, but in fact hide the important Da Vinci code - da Vinci is a meticulous "obsessive-compulsive" patient, the finished product is very few, the vast majority of works in the unfinished state, but sketches and manuscripts, to the greatest extent to preserve the fire of his thinking; painting is not the embodiment of da Vinci's ultimate creativity, but only his common tool, he is extremely skillful in using this tool to depict the heavens and the earth, insight into all things, many graffiti painting is basically a visual imaginary experiment. It can be said that the sketch and the manuscript are linked together to a more three-dimensional and more cherished Leonardo da Vinci.

Two "blank paintings" by Leonardo da Vinci, which had never been exposed, will appear in this year's exhibition by the Royal Collection Foundation. The two works were painted in invisible ink, and over time, there was almost no trace of it to the naked eye. They were discovered by the Italian sculptor Pompei Leni around 1590, when he thought they were two blank sheets of paper left behind by Leonardo da Vinci. After several turns, the two pieces of paper fell into the hands of the British royal family, until modern scientists scanned them with ultraviolet light and found that they contained amazing discoveries. It turned out that the paper was full of hands in various gestures. Experts speculate that they may have been a manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci's pilgrimage to the Three Doctors, which painted more than 30 figures in total, and for this monumental work, da Vinci did draw several sketches to explore the different gestures, body twists and expressions of the characters to convey different emotions.

The da Vinci manuscripts scattered everywhere and even hidden for a long time have also made it possible to show their faces and even reunite this year, creating a rare opportunity for researchers around the world. In the summer, for example, the British Museum will facilitate "an extraordinary gathering of three of Da Vinci's most famous manuscripts," including not only the Arundel Manuscripts in the British Museum and the Foster Manuscripts in the Victoria and Albert Museum, but also the Leicester Manuscripts that Bill Gates bought in 1994 for more than $30 million. At the Ambrochia Library and Gallery in Milan, the "Town Hall Treasure" The Atlantic Codex will be available again, after its last appearance was in 1998. It is the largest in the collection of leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts, with a total of 1,119 pages, including several notebooks he used from 1478 until his death.

Many unsolved mysteries about leonardo da Vinci are hidden in these manuscripts. The 18-page Leicester Manuscript alone is an astonishing amount of information, involving exploration of water and rocks, as well as light and celestial bodies, and how submarines helped people stay underwater longer and their potential military applications. Among them, the manuscript is particularly in-depth in its exploration of "water", describing a total of 57 observations of water flow and different water depths.

Cracking da Vinci's manuscript is extremely difficult. He often uses an original mirror-image writing style, and the handwriting needs to be reflected through a mirror to be able to see the normal text rendering. He also often stacks seemingly random content from different fields, sometimes flipping back to the blanks of previous notes to write or adding content to notes that have already been completed. And the more one explores these manuscripts, the more one becomes convinced of the greatness of leonardo da Vinci—in his mind, there is a cosmic consciousness that wanders freely and with great interest between art and science, feeling the connection of everything in the universe—a consciousness that 500 years later, is what today's artists strive for.

Who is in the collection of Leonardo da Vinci

◆ Louvre Museum (Paris, France)

Mona Lisa, Virgin of the Rocks, Portrait of an Unknown Woman (aka Madame Philonier), Virgin and Child and Saint Anne, St. John the Baptist

The Louvre Museum has the largest collection of Leonardo da Vinci.

The Mona Lisa is not only a masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, but also probably the most well-known work in the history of world art, and the mysterious smile of the person in the painting still arouses a steady stream of speculation. Two paintings by Leonardo da Vinci in The Virgin of the Rocks can be described as his masterpieces from the Milanese period, the one now in the Louvre was created earlier, and the other is now in the National Gallery of Art. Portrait of an Unknown Woman is to some extent considered a precursor to the Mona Lisa. The Virgin and Child and St. Anne is a common biblical work in which da Vinci focuses on st. Anne's facial expressions. St. John the Baptist da Vinci, completed shortly before his death, depicts men and women indistinguishable, holding a cross in one hand and pointing to the sky with a sly and mysterious smile on their faces.

◆Uffizi Gallery (Florence, Italy)

The Coming of the Three Doctors (unfinished), The Nativity (aka The Virgin's Herald) The Confession of Christ (Frescoes)

The Uffizi Gallery almost deserves to be said to have the best collection of Renaissance paintings in the world, and da Vinci's work is naturally not absent.

"The Three Doctors Come to the Dynasty" is based on the story of the Bible, but the painter no longer simply lists the characters from a narrative perspective, but shows artistic innovation with fiercely contrasting compositions and image expressions. Although it was an unfinished work, it marked the maturity of leonardo da Vinci's artistic style and heralded the arrival of the Renaissance. "The Birthright" is an early masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, although the composition is not innovative, and the depiction of the background landscape has noticed the expression of the air atmosphere, making people feel the artist's efforts in exploring objective reality. "The Gift of Christ" was completed by Da Vinci in collaboration with his teacher Verrocchio, in this painting, he only painted one of the two cherubs on the left, but the angel in this side image is much more vivid than the other figures painted by the teacher in terms of the shape of the character and the expression of the face.

◆ Convent of Santa Maria (Milan, Italy)

The Last Supper (frescoes)

Between 1495 and 1497, leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper on the north wall of the hall of the Convent of Santa Maria in Milan. It took him at least 20 years to draft, and it took only 3 years to complete the actual painting. The Last Supper is the best of the entire architectural community, with a length of 8.85 meters and a height of 4.97 meters, with three semi-circular skylights above, and the largest skylight in the middle decorated by the royal emblem of Ludovico, because he commissioned da Vinci to paint the painting. The Last Supper depicts the biblical story of Jesus' last supper with the twelve apostles. The horror, anger, doubt, dissection and other expressions of the characters in the painting, as well as the gestures, eyes and behaviors, da Vinci are all depicted in detail and exquisitely, and his work is the most famous of all the works created on this subject.

◆ Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia)

Our Lady of Benois (aka The Virgin of the Flowers) The Virgin of Nursing (aka Our Lady of The Virgin)

Together with the Palace Museum in Beijing, the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Hermitage Museum is called the "World's Top Five Museums". It is also one of the few museums that houses more than one painting by Leonardo da Vinci.

The Virgin of Benonova is an early work by leonardo da Vinci, and is likely the first work he completed independently. The work disappeared for centuries until 1909, when the architect Leon Benois exhibited it in St. Petersburg, causing a sensation, and in 1914 Benois finally sold it to the Hermitage Museum. The Lactation Mother is an example of da Vinci's early portraiture, a period when he was preoccupied with the scientific study of human depictions.

◆Czartoreski Museum (Krakow, Poland)

"The Sable Girl" (aka "The Woman Holding the Silver Mouse")

The Sable Girl is another outstanding portrait by Leonardo da Vinci in addition to the Mona Lisa. The treatment of light and shade is the most striking feature of this portrait, the light and shadow set off the elegant head and soft face of the woman in the painting, and the silver rat with a smooth and aggressive coat is also infused with vitality by the painter. Records of the painting were not discovered until the second half of the 18th century, and it is believed that da Vinci painted it for cecilia Gallerani, the mistress of his patron Ludovico Sforza during his time in Milan. The Sable Girl has long belonged to the private collection of the Czartoreski family, one of the oldest art collectors in Europe. In 1801, the family's collection administrator, Princess Isabella Czartoresky, established the Czartoresky Museum in Krakow, which included the Sable Girl.

◆ Ambrogia Library and Gallery (Milan, Italy)

Portrait of a Musician (unfinished)

Portrait of a Musician is one of leonardo da Vinci's few portraits of men. The musician in the painting is a young musician serving at the court of Ludvico, with beautiful curly hair, a serious look, and a sheet music in his hand. Since da Vinci did not complete the portrait, he did not sign it.

◆ Old Painting Gallery (Munich, Germany)

The Virgin of Carnations

The Virgin of carnations is a work by leonardo da Vinci and Verrocchio during his apprenticeship. The Virgin mary is characteristic of Verrocchio's workshop — pale, Nordic face, blond curls, eyes looking down; the most emblematic feature of leonardo da Vinci is the landscape behind the virgin through the veranda, a row of rugged, canine-toothed peaks.

◆National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C., USA)

"Ginevela Banchi"

Geneviera Banchi is the only leonardo da Vinci work seen in the public domain outside of Europe, and the National Gallery bought it for $5 million in 1967. It was the only portrait of Leonardo da Vinci during the Florentine period. At that time, when young girls got married, they used to commemorate with a portrait. Unfortunately, the bottom of the portrait was cut due to damage, and that part may be the girl's arm, which may be like the Mona Lisa 30 years later. At the end of the 19th century, art historians began to designate it as a posthumous work by Leonardo da Vinci.

(Fan Xin)