MILAN.- The extraordinary exhibition is the biggest and most important Leonardo show ever to be held in Italy. It is on view to the public at Palazzo Reale.

The result of more than five years of hard work, the exhibition is curated by Pietro C. Marani and Maria Teresa Fiorio, two of the most important art historians specializing in the study of this Renaissance genius. It brings together over two hundred artworks from around one hundred museums and institutions throughout the world which, given the exceptional nature of the exhibition, have loaned some of their greatest treasures for the occasion, such as the three paintings by Leonardo from the Louvre and thirty autograph drawings from the collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

The Pinacoteca Ambrosiana – considered Leonardo's “home” in Milan – which is lending the famous Portrait of a Musician and thirty-eight drawings from the Codex Atlanticus, is also a key contributor to the exhibition.

“A project born from a network of relationships enthusiastically and painstakingly created over a long period with the world’s leading cultural institutions, who wanted to contribute to this great event by loaning some 'jewels' from their collections. A superbly curated exhibition, which is the most important and prestigious devoted to Leonardo’s genius during the semester of Expo Milano 2015, the main attraction of the programme ExpoInCittà,” commented Filippo Del Corno, Councillor for Culture.

The anthology paints a picture of Leonardo that is neither mythographical, rhetorical nor celebratory. Instead it embraces all the work of this multifaceted figure, considered both as an artist and scientist, through a number of key themes identified by the curators: drawing, a fundamental part of Leonardo’s work; the ongoing dialogue of the arts: drawing, painting and sculpture; the dialogue with antiquity; the absolute innovation of the motions of the mind; his tendency towards utopian designs and dreams, such as the ability to fly or walk on water, which features in a specific section of the exhibition; mechanical automation and so on. These themes made him a standard bearer for the unity of knowledge, through the continuous interweaving of science and the arts in his work.

The twelve sections of this extraordinary exhibition illustrate the central themes of Leonardo’s long artistic and scientific career, embracing not only the period of his training in Florence, but also his two stays in Milan, and even his move to France, thus emphasizing certain constants in his artistic and scientific vision. The exhibition narrative also conveys his vocation for interdisciplinarity and his constantly intertwining interests by adopting an analogical approach to the study of the phenomena and their graphic portrayal, summed up and culminating in his later paintings.

The various sections of the show feature Leonardo’s autograph paintings, drawings and manuscripts, introduced by works of the painters, sculptors, technicians and theorists who preceded him. These provide additional context to the master’s contribution to the history of art, science and technique, while painting a picture of Leonardo as an artist and scientist of his time, eschewing the mythological and the banal. However, the two final sections also illustrate Leonardo’s influence as a painter and theorist on modern art and the formation of the legend that surrounds him, centred on the Mona Lisa.

The exhibition features seven great pictorial masterpieces by Leonardo: the St Jerome from the Pinacoteca Vaticana, the Dreyfus Madonna from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Head of a Woman from the Galleria Nazionale di Parma, the Portrait of a Musician from the Ambrosiana and three iconic works from the Louvre: the Belle Ferronière, the small Annunciation and St John the Baptist.

Some of Leonardo’s original codices also are on display, together with at least one hundred autograph drawings: the Codex Trivulzianus 2162 – his autograph notebook – held by the Biblioteca Trivulziana of Castello Sforzesco, which can be “virtually” looked through on a touch-screen station; thirty-eight drawings from the Codex Atlanticus, on loan from the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, which has supplied the largest number of works for the exhibition; thirty drawings from The Royal Collection / HM Queen Elizabeth II, six of which can be viewed on the recto and verso; five from the British Museum; four from the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe at the Uffizi; five from the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and five from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin. There are also a number of other drawings from the Morgan Library in New York and the Fondation Custodia in Paris. Some of these museums are lending other important works by painters active at the same time as Leonardo.

What is more, the exhibition includes a considerable number of artworks – paintings, drawings, manuscripts, sculptures, codices, incunabula and sixteenth-century books – from the world’s most important museums and libraries and from private collections, including works by Antonello da Messina, Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, Paolo Uccello, Ghirlandaio, Verrocchio, Lorenzo di Credi, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Bonaccorso Ghiberti, Bramante and other anonymous treatise writers from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The diffusion and fortune of Leonardo’s art and models is illustrated in the exhibition by splendid works by Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Marco d’Oggiono, Francesco Napoletano, Solario, Francesco Melzi, Giampietrino, Cesare da Sesto, Girolamo and Giovanni Ambrogio Figino and other important artists.

The Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia, which is named after the great master, is also lending two historic models of machines – the self-propelled cart and the gold-beating machine – constructed on the basis of Leonardo’s drawings.