Leonardo at the National Gallery

January 15, 2012, Sunday

Time spent waiting in line:  More than 2.5 hours
Time spent at the exhibition:  Less than 2.5 hours
Number of Leonardo paintings seen:  9*

The Lady with an Ermine, courtesy of the National Gallery, London

The Leonardo ticket was the hottest in town.  Advance tickets were sold out shortly after the exhibition opened in November.  And sadly I arrived too late.  Though the people at the end of the queue and other "latecomers" and I (7 am was considered late; people started queuing at 5:30 or earlier, apparently) were told repeatedly that there were no more tickets that day and it'd be a waste of time to wait, I stayed anyway.

Some have queued more than three times, oh my god.... courtesy of audreyamarillo and YouTube

I was hoping for my moment of serendipity.  When traveling, one is especially dependent on the kindness of strangers.  I once made it into a sold out Bruckner 8 concert at the Concertgebouw.  I've been especially lucky in Paris, where I'd gotten back cash (and even a passport!) that I'd accidentally dropped.  I had to wait for two hours for this moment to arrive.  About 20 minutes before the museum opened, a woman was looking to sell an extra ticket, and someone connected the dots and remembered the guy who had flown all the way from New York to see the show.  So I ended up inside the museum when it opened.

Was the Leonardo show hyped and not worth the trouble?  I found it remarkable that I was able to get so close to his art because of the strict crowd control policies at the museum.  As I was in the first group that was let in, I was able to take a quick look at all the paintings before others got to them, and I looked at the drawings later.

It was a treat to have two versions of Virgin of the Rocks at opposite ends of the room.  The London version is later than the Louvre version, and Leonardo's palette had become more restrained.  Leonardo also added halos in the London version.  The Entente Cordiale might have been signed nearly a century ago, but different art tastes in the two countries have led to a very public clash in the restoration of Leonardo's celebrated The Virgin and Child with St Anne, over which two French art experts resigned in protest.

The face of the exhibition was Lady with an Ermine.  This painting came from Poland and reports were that it would not be lent to another show for at least ten years.  I found myself being fascinated by the ermine, which recalled other exquisite art on animals, such as Durer's famous hare.

Pairing paintings and related drawings made for a particularly enjoyable and educational experience.  The curators seemed to be making a case for Boltraffio's significant hand in Madonna Litta from the Hermitage through drawings by Boltraffio, one of Leonardo's most talented students.  Drapery drawings by Leonardo supported the attribution of Salvator Mundi to the master.  There someone else had his moment of serendipity, or, put more simply, hit the jackpot.  The Lenoardo attribution meant that a painting that was worth 45 pounds about fifty years ago was now worth more than 120 million pounds.

The final part of the exhibition took place in the Sunley room in the main building.  The Last Supper obviously could not travel, but the curators gathered the drawings related to the badly damaged fresco in this room.   Also shown was the earliest known full-scale copy of the fresco by Giampietrino (Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli), now at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, from about 1520.  It includes details now irretrievably lost in Leonardo's fresco, such as Christ's feet.

Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, courtesy of Credit Suisse and YouTube

A special HD presentation of the show can be seen in movie theatres around the world over the next few weeks.

 *Leonardo paintings in the show, in the order seen

The Musician (c. 1486-7), Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan
The Lady with an Ermine (c. 1489-90), on deposit at National Museum, Crakow
La Belle Ferronnière (c. 1493-4), Louvre
Saint Jerome (c. 1488-90), Vatican Museums
The Virgin of the Rocks (1483-c. 1485), Louvre
The Virgin of the Rocks (c. 1491/2-9, 1506-8), National Gallery, London
The Madonna Litta (c. 1491-5), Hermitage
Christ as Salvator Mundi (c. 1499 onwards), Private collection
The Madonna of the Yarnwinder (c. 1499 onwards),  The 10th Duke of Buccleuch and the Trustees of the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust (this painting was attributed to Leonardo and unknown 16th century painter)