From 13 April to 28 May, an exhibition "The Great Florentine", dedicated to the 560th anniversary of the birth of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), runs in the Visual Materials Reading Room (room 307).
There exist people who strike a century with their appearance in the world, combining all that are destined to be together, and include in its sphere of their fire a lot of things about which the humanity has never thought.
Leonardo, brilliant Italian painter, sculptor, architect, scientist, writer and artist, was a son of his time and his brilliant pupil. He considered himself to be an inventor of scenic effects, new sculptural forms, machines, buildings, allegories, festivals and costumes – everything that relates to the field of art, hand-made forms. But in addition he tried to invent ways to control the forces of nature. He believed that everything in the world obeys the laws of the proportions of statics and dynamics. As an expert of the secrets of geometry this medieval Faust penetrated into the secrets of nature, and the essential foundations of a variety of miracles and effects. He was one of the first who realized the significance of an experiment, but he didn’t become a blind slave of this conception. However, practice without the support of science this maestro compared with a sailor without a compass. He said: "Science is a commander, practice is a soldier".
With a philosophical turn of mind the artist was at the same time a brilliant gentleman in a society, he wrote funny stories and clever riddles, parables. Leonardo was a good singer and musician, improvising lyrics and music, and he even invented musical instruments. It is known his silver lute in the form of a horse’s head, a lyre with a head of a dragon, a programmable drum.
The exhibition includes numerous publications and editions dedicated to the art and life of Leonardo da Vinci. They include The mysterious Mona Lisa (2009) A.I. Pechenkin, Vies des peintres (1999) G. Vasari, Leonardo da Vinci. Flight of Mind (2006) Charles Nicholl and etc. The exposition contains a wide range of reproductions of famous masterpieces The Mona Lisa (La Gioconda), The Madonna Litta, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, The Virgin of the Rocks, The Virgin at the Spinning-wheel, The Adoration of the Magi. Visitors will have an opportunity to see famous frescos The Last Supper and The Battle of Anghiari, and a series of magical portraits of Florentine ladies Ginevra de’ Benci and Cecilia Gallerani.
The exhibition demonstrates over 120 documents.
Contact phone number: (+375-17) 293-27-58.
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