Milan, a never-before-seen study for a Salvator Mundi by Leonardo is on display at Castello Sforzesco

Milan’s Castello Sforzesco enriches its Leonardo mai visto program with the exhibition L’Atelier di Leonardo e il Salvator Mundi, open from Jan. 24 to April 19.

Curated by Pietro C. Marani and Alessia Alberti, the small exhibition focuses on the recent discovery of a drawing kept in the Castello Sforzesco’s Drawings Cabinet and never exhibited before.

The sheet entered the civic collections in 1924 through a major purchase from the Milanese shrine of Santa Maria presso San Celso.

On the recto are drawn copies of anatomical studies by Leonardo from different periods and chronologies (c. 1490 - 1510/1513); on the verso are the inscription “SALV<A>TOR MVNDI” and a drapery study, probably the detail of a sleeve.

The figure studies and anatomical details depicted together with the type of paper, which is old but unfortunately without a watermark, make it possible to place it in the sphere of Leonardo da Vinci ’s atelier and to fix the time of its execution around the beginning of the second decade of the 16th century, at a time when the master and his workshop were evidently elaborating the iconographic motif of the Salvator Mundi. Evidence of this is the inscription on the back of the sheet, drawn perhaps in an attempt to fine-tune an epigraph or cartouche in Roman characters, for the identification of the painting’s subject.

Displayed around the drawing, with reference to the subjects developed on the recto, are sixteenth-century studies of anatomy, while for the subject to which the inscription on the verso refers, the proposed juxtaposition is with the variant of the Salvator Mundi painted in 1511 by Leonardo ’s pupil Gian Giacomo Caprotti known as Salaì and now preserved at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana.

For all information you can visit the official website of the Castello Sforzesco.

Milan, a never-before-seen study for a Salvator Mundi by Leonardo is on display at Castello Sforzesco

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.