Leonardo 500. Leonardo's atelier and the Salvator Mundi open at the Sforzesco Castle
Milan, January 23 2020 – From 24 January to 19 April 2020, the Sala dei Ducali of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan hosts the exhibition “Leonardo's atelier and the Salvator Mundi”.
Since last May 16, more than 300 thousand visitors have already taken part in the initiatives linked to the "Leonardo never seen" program at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, which today reserves a new discovery. Recently, following a study, a sheet kept in the Cabinet of Drawings of the Sforzesco Castle and never presented to the public was attributed with certainty to Leonardo's workshop.
“A small but original and stimulating exhibition – states Pietro C. Marani, curator of the exhibition – which highlights the elaboration of the Salvator Mundi within Leonardo's atelier around 1510-13 and the methods of copying his anatomical drawings from part of the students. This exhibition will add new elements to the sixteenth-century fortune of the Salvator Mundi in the Lombardy area thanks to the presence of some unpublished sheets from the collections of the Castello Sforzesco".
“With Leonardo's atelier and the Salvator Mundi – declares the councilor for Culture Filippo Del Corno – the schedule for the celebrations of the five hundredth anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death is enriched with a new opportunity to learn about and appreciate the extraordinary nature of the work of the da Vinci genius and his circle. We are proud of the enormous work of research and valorisation of the Milanese heritage of Leonardo's works that we are carrying out and of the public response that these celebrations are receiving".
The exhibition, curated by Pietro C. Marani and Alessia Alberti, presents the rediscovered sheet to the public, placing it alongside other works from the Cabinet of Drawings of the Sforzesco Castle and important loans from the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana.
The drawing object of the exhibition, which is presented here in a display case so as to allow it to be viewed from both sides and after a restoration carried out by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure of Florence, entered the civic collections in 1924 through an important purchase from the Milanese sanctuary of Santa Maria presso San Celso.
On the front of the sheet are drawn figures copied from Leonardo's anatomical studies dating back to different eras and chronologies, from around 1487 to 1510-13. The attribution of the sheet demonstrates how the Master's originals were still all in the workshop and could be copied in various ways by the students. Not only that, but a couple of these anatomical drawings, those finished in pen and ink, are of good quality and were traced following an underlying drawing in red pencil, which could suggest an initial vague tracing by Leonardo.
On the reverse of the sheet, however, a writing in black pencil or charcoal refers to one of Leonardo's most debated paintings: "SALVTOR MUNDI". Perhaps it is a first draft for an epigraph or an explanatory writing to be included in the painting of "Salvator Mundi" on which Leonardo was working around 1510-13. This is the era to which some of the replicas of the "Salvator Mundi" can therefore date back, including the partial one signed by Gian Giacomo Caprotti known as Salaì, dated 1511, now kept in the Ambrosiana Library.
The studies of figures and the anatomical details represented together with the type of paper, ancient but unfortunately without watermark, allow us to place its creation in the context of Leonardo da Vinci's atelier and to fix the time of execution towards the beginning of the second century. decade of the sixteenth century, at a time when the master and his workshop were evidently developing the iconographic motif of the Salvator Mundi. Proof of this is the inscription on the back of the sheet, perhaps drawn in an attempt to develop an epigraph or cartouche in Roman characters to identify the subject of the painting.
Around the drawing, with reference to the subjects developed on the recto, sixteenth-century anatomical studies are displayed, while for the subject to which the writing on the reverse refers, the proposed comparison is with the variant of the Salvator Mundi painted in 1511 by the pupil of Leonardo Gian Giacomo Caprotti known as Salaì and today preserved in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana.
Located next to the Sala delle Asse, the exhibition aims to allow the public to immerse themselves in the organization of the work and the construction site which also created the decoration of the large Hall, where some of the Maestro's best students were certainly at work.
“Leonardo's atelier and the Salvator Mundi” is part of the “Milano Leonardo 500” program, promoted by the Municipality of Milan | Culture on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, and is part of the Leonardo never seen programme, which includes all the initiatives carried out at the Castello Sforzesco, created with the support of the Cariplo Foundation, Intesa Sanpaolo, Huawei and the Lombardy Region in close connection with the territorial Committee “Milan and the legacy of Leonardo 1519 – 2019” and in connection with the National Committee for the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, and is produced by Civita Mostre e Musei.
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Updated: 24/01/2020