Livorno, here's the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition: 15 sheets on display

Details of the exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci to be held in Livorno at the Museo della Città from December 20, 2023 to April 1, 2024, of which we anticipated a few days ago, have been released. Promoted and organized by the City of Livorno together with Metamorfosi Eventi and curated by Sara Taglialagamba, with a catalog published by Sillabe, the exhibition will showcase 15 autograph drawings by Leonardo da Vinci from the Codex Atlanticus, on loan from the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, and the Codex on the Flight of Birds from the Royal Library of Turin. Also present will be Leonardo drawings and paintings that testify to the reception and dissemination of Leonardo’s themes. In total, the exhibition consists of about 70 works. Entitled Leonardo da Vinci. Beauty and Invention, the exhibition, explains the City of Livorno, “aims to offer an opportunity to immerse oneself in the artist’s mind by delving into his relationship between drawing and painting, which he considered a natural science.”

Why an exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci in Livorno? Curator Taglialagamba explained this at the press conference, saying that Leonardo studied the area extensively, describing the Pisan port, the 14th-century lighthouse called the “fanale” and the 15th-century tower known as the Torre del Marzocco, as well as the city of Piombino, where he went twice to deal with the fortification of the city. Then there is another connection, a story that is the result of eight years of research by Massimo Signorini of Livorno, and that has to do with an autograph grotesque drawing by Leonardo, which belonged to the Livorno rabbi Ilo Giacomo Nunes, and was offered by him around 1925-1926 to the director Paul Joseph Sax of the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was on business in Italy to raise awareness of the use and employment of diagnostic analysis in works of art. The drawing was therefore purchased by Sax with the approval of the Italian state, which had been informed of the negotiations in the meantime and after considering the right of first refusal. However, Director Sax, realizing the enormous importance of the drawing and leveraging the strong relationship between the American museum and Italy, donated it to the Italian State by concession of the Fogg Art Museum on the condition that it be exhibited with the words “gift from the Fogg Art Museum of the University of Cambridge to the Italian State.”

The exhibition will also have a section devoted to contemporary art as a tribute to scholar Carlo Pedretti, an art historian and great connoisseur of Leonardo’s work, in the contemporary section of the City Museum, whose redesign will be inaugurated in January, curated by Paolo Cova, scientific director of the City Museum itself. The works in this section, which are part of the permanent collection of the City of Livorno, are intended to highlight the suggestions that Leonardo exerted on great artists such as Lucio Fontana, Piero Dorazio, and Pino Pascali. These will be joined by works belonging to the New Rossana and Carlo Pedretti Foundation, from Keith Haring, to Arnaldo Pomodoro, from Aligi Sassu, to Richard Buckminster Fuller.

The Municipal Administration has also let it be known that it intends to seek interested parties to sponsor the exhibition and, to this end, a special public notice will be published on the Municipality’s Civic Network.

“Livorno,” declares Mayor Luca Salvetti, "will spend the Christmas holidays in the company of Leonardo da Vinci. Another great exhibition for the city of Livorno, which in 2019, at the same time of year, had the honor of hosting the exhibition Modigliani and the adventure of Montparnasse, visited by 110 thousand people. To close this legislature with another major event dedicated to the master Leonardo is an excellent achievement. In between the two major exhibitions there were then no less than 13 exhibitions of very high value both in terms of appeal with visitors and cultural value. I would mention Banksy, but also Puccini, the Vespucci exhibition and the Alinari Archive exhibition. A path that has brought the City Museum back to the center of a national circuit of reference for art and culture. In 2018, that museum hosted an average of 8,000 visitors a year; in the four years since, despite the covid, we are at an average of more than 40,000 annually. The event dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci, which will open in December and run for three months, will increase this figure even more. The 70 works on display will bear witness to ’beauty and invention’ as the title of the exhibition narrates, which I am sure, will be appreciated and visited not only by the people of Livorno, but also by the many tourists who have been in our city for some time now."

“This exhibition,” concludes Culture Councillor Simone Lenzi, “is a dream that we have patiently realized in two years of work. Leonardo’s universal genius ushers in modernity and from many points of view represents the most authentic spirit of all that is projected into the future strong in its roots: Livorno is a city that, because of its own history, can treasure this great lesson because it is the daughter of this same lesson.”

“Metamorfosi is truly happy to realize an important Leonardo exhibition project in Livorno,” says MetaMorfosi Eventi President Pietro Folena. “We have been protagonists of major exhibitions on the 500th anniversary of his death, and now in Livorno, thanks to curator Sara Taglialagamba, we are proposing an unmissable event that highlights the great genius’ deep connection with this territory.”

The exhibition opens Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturdays, Sundays and holidays from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. On Dec. 24 and Dec. 31, closing time is 8 p.m. Tickets: full 15 euros, reduced 10 euros (under 18, over 65, students of all grades, groups over 20 people). Cumulative with Museo Fattori 18 euros.

Livorno, here's the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition: 15 sheets on display

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.