LONDON, ENGLAND.- The V&A’s autumn exhibition provides an unrivalled insight into the mind of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), featuring 60 superb examples of his drawings from British collections brought together for the first time. The pages will be brought to life by several large-scale models of his designs and sophisticated computer animations to illuminate his vision.

Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment and Design explores for the first time the most fundamental aspect of Leonardo’s work – how he thought on paper. The pages of Leonardo’s notebooks, teeming with multitudinous ideas, are often taken for granted, but they are unparalleled in the graphic work of any other thinker from any age. They deal with mighty inventions, great visions of the earth in age-long transformation, the mysterious governance of mathematical proportion in the design of the universe, the most detailed observations and theories of the motion of waters, meticulous reconstructions of the operation of heart valves, the arts of peace and the science of war.

The exhibition curator, Professor Martin Kemp, said: “Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts reveal to us his thought processes. They have no parallel in any period and anyone wanting to understand the workings of Leonardo's mind should turn to these notebooks. The notebooks question everything and investigate every aspect of nature. Unlike other artists of the period, Leonardo used his notebooks not as workings for finished paintings but as a vehicle to understand the world around him.”

Extraordinary pages from Leonardo’s bound notebooks, some virtually unknown, will be brought together for the first time alongside single sheets. The exhibition will display drawings lent by Her Majesty The Queen from the Royal Library, Windsor, precious pages from the British Museum and the V&A’s own Forster Codices. Notably, sheets from the British Library’s little known Arundel Codex will be exhibited for the first time separated from their binding.

Leonardo’s separate pages and bound notebooks must have looked very odd in his own day. No one used paper so prodigally, perhaps unsurprisingly since it was not the ubiquitous and cheap product that it is today. Artists had sketched on paper quite extensively before Leonardo’s day, including his master, Andrea del Verrocchio, but no one used paper as a laboratory for thinking on Leonardo’s scale. No one covered the surface of pages with such an impetuous cascade of observations, visualised thoughts, brainstormed alternatives, theories, polemics and debates, covering virtually every branch of knowledge about the visible world known in his time.

Exhibition Structure - The exhibition curators, Professor Martin Kemp and Thereza Wells, will arrange the manuscripts and pages together with the computer animations into four themed displays. The animations will enlarge the intricate diagrams describing Leonardo’s thought processes, allowing visitors to experience a new way of understanding his imagination and dynamic vision. The large-scale models of his designs, including his flying machine, tank and giant crossbow, will be displayed around the museum and outside.

The four displays will span the range of Leonardo’s thinking. The Mind’s Eye will explore Leonardo’s investigations into the relationship of the eye to the brain; the detailed proportional relationships between all various parts of the face, torso and limbs; and present a series of classic geometrical problems that Leonardo attempted to solve.

The Lesser and Greater Worlds illustrates Leonardo’s belief in the ancient idea of microcosm and macrocosm – that the human body contained within itself, in miniature, all the operations of the world and universe as a whole. It will feature detailed studies of the heart and the operation of its valves as well as compelling images of water in motion, which reminded Leonardo of the curling of hair.

Making Things will focus on the many different tasks Leonardo undertook for his court patrons – in particular spectacular theatrical designs and entertaining inventions such as his water clocks and fountains. It will also explore Leonardo’s innovative vision of architecture and will include his studies of buildings and a spiral staircase.

Force highlights Leonardo’s fascination with application of force in nature. It will display his ‘cinematographic’ images of figures in action which examine the continuity of motion in space in a way that no one had captured previously. Through his studies of flying creatures and their anatomy this section will also examine Leonardo as an engineer and the investigations he made into the possibility of man-powered flight.