파리여행ㅣ루브르 박물관 『레오나르도 다빈치 서거 500주기 특별전』

전시회명 루브르박물관 『레오나르도 다 빈치 사망 500주기 특별전』
전시장소 루브르 박물관 Musée du Louvre
전시시간 2019. 10. 24 - 2020. 02. 24
홈페이지 Musée du Louvre https://www.louvre.fr/

르네상스 시대 천재 화가 레오나르도 다 빈치(Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519)의 서거 500주기을 맞아 파리 루브르 박물관에서는 오는 10월 24일부터 2020년 2월 24일까지 레오나르도 다 빈치 특별전을 연다.

세계에 15점만이 전해지는 레오나르도 다 빈치의 그림 중 '모나리자' 등 5점(The Virgin of the Rocks, La Belle Ferronnière, the Saint John the Baptist, the Saint Anne)을 소장한 루브르는 피렌체의 우피치 갤러리, 런던의 내셔널갤러리 등지에 소장한 그의 회화와 2017년 4억5천만 달러에 팔린 '살바토르 문디' 그리고 영국 왕실 컬렉션의 드로잉 등을 대여 전시할 예정이다.

살바토르 문디는 레오나르도 다 빈치의 회화 작품이다. 1500년도경에 그려진 것으로 추측되며 2005년 발견되었다. 이 작품은 오랫동안 유실품이었으며, 2011년 전시되었다. 2017년 11월 15일 뉴욕의 크리스티스 경매에서 4억 5,030만 달러에 낙찰되어 사상 최고액을 달성했다.

레오나르도 다 빈치는 1452년 4월 15일 피렌체 인근 빈치에서 태어나 말년에는 프랑스 왕 프랑소아 1세의 요청으로 루아르 밸리의 앙브루아즈에서 3년간 살다가 1519년 5월 2일 왕의 품에서 세상을 떠났다.

한편, 영국에서도 레오나르도 500주기 특별전이 열리고 있다. 드로잉을 144점 소장하고 있는 로열 컬렉션(Royal Collection)이 기획한 동시다발 드로잉전이 영국 내 12개 갤러리에서 진행 중이다.

'Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing'를 타이틀로 한 이 전시는 각 도시 갤러리(Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Derby, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Southampton and Sunderland)에서 각각 12점의 드로잉을 소개한다.

오는 5월 24일부터는 런던 버킹햄 궁전의 퀸스 갤러리(Queen's Gallery)에서 200여점 이상의 드로잉을 전시하며, 11월엔 홀리루드하우스 궁전의 퀸스 갤러리에서 80점이 이동 전시된다.

루브르 박물관 레오나르도 다빈치展 전시작품 미리보기

Recto: The cranium sectioned. Verso: The skull sectioned: Verso: The skull sectioned ©

ULSTER MUSEUM, BELFAST

Leonardo made greater advances in his study of anatomy than in any other scientific pursuit. In April 1489 he sectioned a human skull to study the relationship between its external and internal structure.

The drawing shows the skull sawn first down the middle, then across the front of the right side. With the two halves juxtaposed, the viewer can locate the facial cavities in relation to the surface features. In the left margin Leonardo drew, described and enumerated the different types of teeth – molar, premolar, canine and incisor.

A map of the Valdichiana ©

BIRMINGHAM MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY

A number of Leonardo’s maps were made for projects in civil engineering or land management, a field in which he seems to have built up a significant reputation.

His most pictorial map centres on the long marshy lake that once occupied the Valdichiana in southern Tuscany. North is to the left, Perugia is at upper right, Arezzo at upper left and Siena lower centre. Although no scheme is shown, it was probably made in connection with a plan to drain the malarial marsh

Cats, lions, and a dragon ©

BRISTOL MUSEUM & ART GALLERY

These studies range from acutely observed drawings of domestic cats to a highly stylised coiling dragon. There are also several studies of a lioness, an animal that Leonardo would have known from the lions kept behind the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence as symbols of the city.

The brief note on the sheet – ‘Of flexion and extension. The lion is prince of this animal species because of the flexibility of its spine’ – suggests that the drawings were made in connection with Leonardo’s proposed treatise ‘on the movements of animals with four feet, among which is man, who in his infancy crawls on all fours.’

A deluge ©

NATIONAL MUSEUM CARDIFF

A cataclysmic storm overwhelming the earth was one of Leonardo’s favourite subjects during the last years of his life. It was a deeply personal expression of an artist nearing his end – an artist who had seen some of his greatest creations unfinished or destroyed, and who had a profound sense of the impermanence of all things, even of the earth itself.

A series of drawings shows a mighty storm breaking over a city, a mountain collapsing, the tempest overwhelming the landscape and sweeping away all matter. This is the most finished in the series, worked up with pen and wash. Infrared light shows that the black chalk under-drawing is much rougher and focussed on the mountain's impact, with a dense knot of energy right at the heart of the composition

The head of Leda ©

DERBY MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY

These are studies for the head of Leda in the lost painting of Leda and the Swan.

The mythical Leda was seduced by Jupiter in the form of a swan. Leonardo worked on two compositions of the subject, finally executing a painting that was destroyed in the eighteenth century. In the four surviving studies of Leda's head, Leonardo expended little effort on her expression, simply adopting the usual downward glance; in the central two drawings he may even have left the face blank, for the faces there are of poor quality and may have been 'filled in' by a pupil.

Instead Leonardo devoted all his attention to the most complicated of hairstyles, with dense whorls and woven plaits, even studying the head from the back - quite unnecessarily for a painted image.

Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum), wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa) and sun spurge (Euphorbia helioscopia) ©

KELVINGROVE ART GALLERY AND MUSEUM

Leonardo’s finest botanical drawings were studies for his destroyed painting of Leda and the Swan, which had a verdant setting echoing the fertility inherent in the myth.

The focus of this drawing is a clump of star-of-Bethlehem, flanked by wood anemone. Although the swirling leaves of the star-of-Bethlehem are elegantly stylised, the blades of grass growing untidily among the anemones suggest that Leonardo observed these plants in the wild. Below is a study of sun spurge with details of its seed heads

A design for an equestrian monument (RCIN 912357) ©

LEEDS ART GALLERY

During the 1480s the ruler of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, commissioned Leonardo to execute a bronze equestrian monument, well over life size, to his father Francesco.

This early sketch for the monument shows Francesco, nude and wielding a baton, on a horse rearing over a fallen foe. Such a complex pose was too ambitious to realise as a colossal bronze, so Leonardo switched to a more conventional walking horse. For four years he laboured on the clay model and mould to cast the monument, but in 1494 the bronze he had assembled was requisitioned to make cannon, and the monument was never cast. Five years later invading French forces used Leonardo’s full-size model for target practice and destroyed it

The head of Leda ©

WALKER ART GALLERY, LIVERPOOL

The mythical princess Leda was seduced by Jupiter in the form of a swan and bore two eggs, from which came two pairs of twins. This is a study for a painting that was executed by Leonardo during his last decade. It was still in his studio at his death and was the most highly valued item in his estate.

In the drawing Leonardo expended little effort on Leda’s demure downward glance, devoting his attention instead to the most complicated of hairstyles, with parallel plaits running over the top of her head and a pattern of interlacing at the temples.

MANCHESTER ART GALLERY

Two male types recur throughout Leonardo’s career – an adolescent with a straight nose, lightly rounded chin and open expression, and an older man with an aquiline nose, prominent chin and beetling brow, both derived from ancient Roman prototypes. In his later years Leonardo produced a number of independent drawings of such heads, exercises in form and draughtsmanship simply for his own satisfaction.

Here the use of red chalk on red prepared paper limits the tonal contrasts in the face, giving the smoothly rounded surface a layer of juvenile fat, while the black chalk of the hair mingles with the red in a dense pattern of corkscrew curls.

Recto: Studies of flowing water, with notes. Verso: Studies of flowing water, with notes: Verso: Studies of flowing water, with notes ©

MILLENNIUM GALLERY, SHEFFIELD

This is the most masterly of Leonardo’s drawings of the movement of water, a recurring theme in his work. Here he studies the patterns produced by the flow of water past an obstacle, and the eddies and bubbles resulting from water falling from a sluice into a pool. The drawings exemplify Leonardo’s ability to fix a momentary impression in his mind and capture it on paper.

While the final pen drawing is a dense layering of water currents and bubbles, the under-drawing, seen for the first time in infrared light, is much simpler. It can now be understood how Leonardo built up his final image in stages. Here, he started with an underlying structure of currents in sweeping whorls, and then added the little rosettes of bubbles on the surface.

SOUTHAMPTON CITY ART GALLERY

Leonardo trained in Florence as a painter, but when he moved to Milan in the 1480s his interest in science and technology blossomed. He made many drawings of fanciful weapons – chariots, enormous catapults and crossbows, and guns, cannon and mortars that exploited the recent introduction of gunpowder.

Here he studies mortars discharging an incendiary substance known as ‘Greek fire’ to burn the rigging and sails of an enemy ship, and a number of finely engineered gun-barrels. One has two barrels mounted on a rotating cradle so that a barrel could be loaded while the other was fired.

SUNDERLAND MUSEUM AND WINTER GARDEN

This formal drawing deals with tactics rather than the design of a particular project. It shows how a fortress wall may be breached and the bailey within subdued. Four mortars outside the walls rain stones into the fortress, which has long covered galleries with gun emplacements. A section of wall has been undermined and has fallen into the inner ditch. Cannon placed on earthworks either side of the breach direct their fire into the fortress, protected from assault by debris from the collapsed wall.