Leonardo in the Limelight
Saturday March 17, 2007
Italian Renaissance Master in the News
By Stan Parchin
Agence-France Presse reported on January 20, 2007 that Guiseppe Pallanti, author of Mona Lisa Revealed: The True Identity of Leonardo's Model (Skira, 2006), discovered records that reveal the date of death and burial place of Lisa Gherardini. She was the supposed second wife of wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo and subject of the enigmatic Mona Lisa (ca. 1505-05) by Italian High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Pallanti's evidence suggests that Gherardini died on July 15, 1542 at age 63 and was interred in Florence's Sant'Orsola convent. Carlo Pedretti, UCLA's sage and cautious dean of Leonardo experts, immediately recommended a thorough search for the woman's remains to help validate the writer's unproven conclusions.
Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft, purchased Leonardo's Codex Leiceister from the Armand Hammer Collection in 1994 for a reported $30 million (US). In the Winter of 1996-97, he exhibited a number of the volume's light-sensitive pages in Leonardo da Vinci: Codex Leicester (A Masterpiece of Science) at New York's American Museum of Natural History. Some were subsequently shown in the final gallery of Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Now Mr. Gates and the British Library, keeper of Leonardo's Codex Arundel, have collaborated in the digitizing of both notebooks' pages. High-resolution images of the manuscripts' contents for scholars and students of Art History to examine online, along with necessary viewing software downloads, are available through the Library's "Turning the Page" section.
On March 2, 2007, Reuters News Service published the decision by His Excellency Francesco Rutelli, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture of the Italian Republic to lend Leonardo's Annunciation (ca. 1472-75) from Florence's Galleria degli Uffizi to the Tokyo National Museum for a two-and-one-half-month special exhibition. It encountered significant unfavorable opposition by Antonio Natali, the gallery's director, and other high-profile Italians, among them Franco Zeffirelli, the veteran film director. The precious painting, insured for $132 million (US), was cleared for travel beginning March 12 by Cristina Acidini, overseer of Florence's museums. As the tempera on wood painting was being specially packed for transport that day, with humidity-, seismic- and temperature-sensitive devices (necessarily disabled during its flight from Rome to Tokyo), protests erupted outside the museum. Passionate Italian Senator Paolo Amato had himself chained to a pillar, like the martyr St. Sebastian, near the museum's entrance as a sign of opposition to letting this fragile Renaissance masterpiece leave Italy. The work has been transported to Japan and safely uncrated, and will appear as part of Italian Spring, an enterprise designed to promote commerce between the two countries.
Leonardo's Workshop: From The Mysterious Robots to the Flying Machine opens at the Palazzo della Ragione in Milan, Italy on March 29 and runs through September 30, 2007. Groundbreaking three-dimensional animation allows Leonardo's design for a flying machine to come alive. The innovative exhibition explores the Italian Renaissance genius' drawings for a mechanical soldier and automated cart. One of the show's highlights is the first digitized version of Leonardo's Codex Atlanticus.
Image credits:
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Self-portrait, ca. 1512
Red chalk on paper
33.3 x 21.3 cm (13 1/8 x 8 3/8 in.)
© Biblioteca Reale, Turin
Leonardo da Vinci (Italian, 1452-1519)
Annunciation, ca. 1472-75
Tempera on wood
98 x 217 cm (38 1/2 x 85 3/8 in.)
© Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
By Stan Parchin
Agence-France Presse reported on January 20, 2007 that Guiseppe Pallanti, author of Mona Lisa Revealed: The True Identity of Leonardo's Model (Skira, 2006), discovered records that reveal the date of death and burial place of Lisa Gherardini. She was the supposed second wife of wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo and subject of the enigmatic Mona Lisa (ca. 1505-05) by Italian High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Pallanti's evidence suggests that Gherardini died on July 15, 1542 at age 63 and was interred in Florence's Sant'Orsola convent. Carlo Pedretti, UCLA's sage and cautious dean of Leonardo experts, immediately recommended a thorough search for the woman's remains to help validate the writer's unproven conclusions.
Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft, purchased Leonardo's Codex Leiceister from the Armand Hammer Collection in 1994 for a reported $30 million (US). In the Winter of 1996-97, he exhibited a number of the volume's light-sensitive pages in Leonardo da Vinci: Codex Leicester (A Masterpiece of Science) at New York's American Museum of Natural History. Some were subsequently shown in the final gallery of Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Now Mr. Gates and the British Library, keeper of Leonardo's Codex Arundel, have collaborated in the digitizing of both notebooks' pages. High-resolution images of the manuscripts' contents for scholars and students of Art History to examine online, along with necessary viewing software downloads, are available through the Library's "Turning the Page" section.
On March 2, 2007, Reuters News Service published the decision by His Excellency Francesco Rutelli, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture of the Italian Republic to lend Leonardo's Annunciation (ca. 1472-75) from Florence's Galleria degli Uffizi to the Tokyo National Museum for a two-and-one-half-month special exhibition. It encountered significant unfavorable opposition by Antonio Natali, the gallery's director, and other high-profile Italians, among them Franco Zeffirelli, the veteran film director. The precious painting, insured for $132 million (US), was cleared for travel beginning March 12 by Cristina Acidini, overseer of Florence's museums. As the tempera on wood painting was being specially packed for transport that day, with humidity-, seismic- and temperature-sensitive devices (necessarily disabled during its flight from Rome to Tokyo), protests erupted outside the museum. Passionate Italian Senator Paolo Amato had himself chained to a pillar, like the martyr St. Sebastian, near the museum's entrance as a sign of opposition to letting this fragile Renaissance masterpiece leave Italy. The work has been transported to Japan and safely uncrated, and will appear as part of Italian Spring, an enterprise designed to promote commerce between the two countries.
Leonardo's Workshop: From The Mysterious Robots to the Flying Machine opens at the Palazzo della Ragione in Milan, Italy on March 29 and runs through September 30, 2007. Groundbreaking three-dimensional animation allows Leonardo's design for a flying machine to come alive. The innovative exhibition explores the Italian Renaissance genius' drawings for a mechanical soldier and automated cart. One of the show's highlights is the first digitized version of Leonardo's Codex Atlanticus.
Image credits:
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Self-portrait, ca. 1512
Red chalk on paper
33.3 x 21.3 cm (13 1/8 x 8 3/8 in.)
© Biblioteca Reale, Turin
Leonardo da Vinci (Italian, 1452-1519)
Annunciation, ca. 1472-75
Tempera on wood
98 x 217 cm (38 1/2 x 85 3/8 in.)
© Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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