Leonardo da Vinci exhibition opens today at the National Gallery

Leonardo da Vinci exhibition opens today at the National Gallery

09 November, 2011
by: Tom Jeffreys

The biggest show of 2011 opens today. Tom Jeffreys asks whether it's worth the hype.

And it’s here! One of the hotly anticipated exhibitions of 2011 – the National Gallery’s survey of Leonardo da Vinci – finally opens to the public today. The show, as its subtitle suggests, focuses on the artist’s work as a painter in Milan court of Ludovico Maria Sforza in the 1480s and ‘90s; and with over 60 paintings and drawings by the great artist – as well as innumerable examples by his contemporaries and pupils – this is the largest ever exhibition of Leonardo’s art. It’s also the first major show to focus on his achievements as a painter, rather than as an inventor or scientist.

Back in May the National Gallery generated a degree of controversy over their decision to limit the amount of tickets to be sold to the exhibition. The decision was made in response to fears of overcrowding, and in order to enhance the visitor experience, but also, one assumes, to protect the works – which include some impressive loans from a host of private and public collections, including that of Her Majesty the Queen. In addition, the decision has helped to generate a huge amount of hype for the exhibition, tickets for which almost sold out before it has even opened.

So the key question: is Leonardo da Vinci worth this level of hype? On the surface, yes: seven of Leonardo’s fourteen known paintings are included in the show, you’ll never be able to see these works together again, and it’s probably indisputable that Leonardo is one of the great artistic figures of all time. Some of the works here – notably the luminously lovely Lady with an Ermine, but also numerous studies of drapery and a devastatingly brilliant drawing, Studies of the Human Skull – are quite stunning.

But the exhibition has many flaws, starting with the grim rooms of the Sainsbury Wing (painted an iffy shade of aubergine for this exhibition) and culminating in the more-is-more curation and the drab, thoughtless wall texts.

The sheer quantity of works on display may negate criticism of the hefty £16 entry fee, but it means visitors are likely to suffer from da Vinci overload. There is, simply, too much of the same thing, and no appreciation for the importance of contrast. We’re repeatedly told, for example, how revolutionary Leonardo was – particularly in terms of his painting of portraits face-on, his desire to observe and understand life scientifically, and his deft fusion of symbolic ideals with a revolutionary realism. But an exhibition must show as well as tell, and here we’re given very little against which to form any kind of judgement. We must simply take the curators at their word.

And this becomes problematic when they repeatedly promise things that they don’t deliver. The text at the start of the show, for example, justifies the inclusion of so many of Leonardo’s pupils by promising an exploration of the process of attribution. This is never fulfilled and a potentially fascinating terrain remains unexplored. Likewise, we’re told that Leonardo created the “visual language of the regime”, but this concept is also left floating in thin air. A further minor, but symptomatic, quibble: the notion that a pattern dating to the 1490s may be “the first surviving example of abstract art” is not only laughable but irrelevant.

For an object lesson in what might have been, the National Gallery need only have recalled its own 2010 exhibition, Venice – Canaletto and his Rivals. This was a simply brilliant show – a deft and masterful example of how to explore an era by  comparing and contrasting the different techniques and thought processes of a selection of artists. In doing so it was, impressively, both clever and accessible.

By contrast, it feels like all the energies for this Leonardo exhibition were exerted in securing important loans – Nicholas Penny, the National Gallery’s director, was quoted in the Guardian calling the show "a great triumph in diplomacy" – and that the thought needed to turn a bunch of masterpieces into a coherent and revelatory exhibition simply never took place. It’s a real shame: no doubt this exhibition will be a major crowd-pleaser, but it could have been so much more.

Leonardo da Vinci - Painter in the Court of Milan is at the National Gallery until 5th February 2012.

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Tom Jeffreys