Monday July 6, 2009

Works from the master’s hand

Stories by ALLAN KOAY

The Da Vinci – The Genius exhibition has travelled the world, giving a rare glimpse of a man hundreds of years ahead of his time.

VISITORS to the Louvre will tell you that, at best, you can only get a glimpse of Leonardo da Vinci’s 500-year-old masterpiece, the Mona Lisa. You don’t really have the luxury of time to soak in that famous infectious smile because of the always-crowded gallery and lines of people waiting to lay their eyes on what is arguably the most famous painting in the world.

Even after 2005, when the Mona Lisa was moved to its own wall in the museum’s Salle des Etats, visitors still had to stand a metre or more away from the painting and look at it through a non-reflective, bulletproof glass.

But now you can see a 360° display of the painting, including the back of it. No, it’s not at the Louvre, and no, it’s not the real Mona Lisa. But it’s as close to the authentic one as is possible.

This reproduction of the Mona Lisa is part of a huge exhibition of da Vinci’s inventions and artworks called Da Vinci – The Genius.

Known as the world’s most extensive travelling exhibition on da Vinci, and jointly developed by the Anthropos Association of Italy and Grande Exhibitions, the exhibition recently made its debut in South-East Asia at the Singapore Science Centre, and will be showcased there until Aug 16.

Early prototype: A made-to-scale model of Leonardo da Vinci’s concept of a military tank.

Renaissance Man

More than 500 years ago, da Vinci had already been thinking about gliders, parachutes, helicopters, tanks, bicycles and submarines, among other things. Two adjoining exhibition halls at the Singapore Science Centre had to be used to house nearly 200 exhibits, including more than 70 full-scale machine inventions which were crafted by Italian artisans specially for the exhibition.

The machines were created from da Vinci’s codices, or notebooks, and he is believed to have written over 24,000 pages of codices, of which only about 6,000 have survived till today. Reproductions of pages from these codices are also on display at the exhibition, and they include da Vinci’s detailed anatomical studies and mechanical designs.

If he was already world-famous for generations, the great Leonardo da Vinci has now become even more famous and popular than ever before. This is interestingly due to pop culture more than anything else (note the immense popularity of Dan Brown’s bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, and the subsequent movie adaptation starring Tom Hanks).

It can be construed as both fortunate and unfortunate, depending on how you look at the situation.

In 2004, the International Herald Tribune published a story on the phenomenon of Brown’s book, revealing that even the Louvre had decided to ride on the wave of the book’s success.

According to the report, the “most staid of French cultural institutions” used the novel as a marketing tool, taking potential American donors on a tour of all areas of the museum described in the book.

It was also reported elsewhere that da Vinci’s other paintings in the Louvre, such as Madonna of the Rocks, aka Virgin of the Rocks, which is also one of the clues deciphered by “symbologist” Dr Robert Langdon in The Da Vinci Code, have been getting more admirers than usual.

So, are da Vinci’s paintings, especially The Last Supper, coded?

Well, obviously not, since the book is a work of fiction and the claims in it have been debunked many times over.

Probably part of what makes the book’s claims believable to some is that da Vinci was a man hundreds of years ahead of his time. He was a mathematician, botanist, architect, inventor, scientist, engineer, sculptor, painter, musician and writer all rolled into one. It would seem that there was nothing the man couldn’t do. Maybe he couldn’t juggle, but then who knows? He was also prone to writing backwards, apparently part of his strategy to prevent his ideas and notes from being plagiarised. All this contributes to the mysterious aura surrounding the man.

And as Bruce Peterson, founder of Grande Exhibitions, pointed out, there are still 19,000 pages of da Vinci’s notes missing today, meaning there is so much more to discover about the genius many call a true Renaissance Man. Who knows what were in those pages?

Ahead of his time: Leonardo da Vinci even comceptualised the bicycle back in the 15th century.

Labour of love

According to Peterson, Da Vinci – The Genius took 15 years to come to fruition, with close collaboration with the Italian artisans to bring to life, for the very first time, many of da Vinci’s concepts.

“There are no original da Vinci-made machine inventions in existence – we have to create them, all after deciphering his codices and trying to unlock his mind to produce faithfully as if they were prototypes from his studio back in late 1400s and early 1500s,” said Peterson in an e-mail interview.

He said he had wanted to create a complete da Vinci exhibition and display it “under one roof for young and old, individuals and families, academics and artists, educators and students, and so forth, to enjoy and appreciate.” There have been other da Vinci exhibitions, he said, but they mostly focused on one or two areas of his genius.

“Few know da Vinci as a leader in engineering, mechanics, physics, anatomy, geology, music, philosophy and mathematics,” said Peterson.

Peterson met with the artisans who created the life-size inventions, and even lived with them for a year to understand their work, and to encourage and finance them to build more of da Vinci’s concepts.

“We have now collectively created over 130 different machine inventions of Leonardo’s and are called on by the world’s museums to replicate those for them,” he added.

But the centrepiece of the exhibition is really Secrets of Mona Lisa Revealed, a unique “art and history meets cutting edge technology” experience.

What most people are unaware of is that the Mona Lisa was not painted on canvas. Da Vinci reportedly never used canvas for his paintings. Instead, the Mona Lisa was created on a piece of poplar board. And on the back of the board are various inscriptions and markings, some of which are from the times when the painting was moved, while others remain a mystery, such as the stylised letter H. At the Da Vinci – The Genius exhibition, visitors will get to see all these, as the reproduction of the painting is hung from the ceiling, and one can walk around it.

Fruitful endeavour: A highly accurate reproduction of the Mona Lisa, done using engineer Pascal Cotte’s 240-megapixel Multi-spectral Imaging Camera, and complete with poplar board, gives a unique 360° view of the masterpiece at the Da Vinci – The Genius exhibition.

Secrets revealed

“If you visit the Louvre, the Mona Lisa is so far away from the eye. Combined with being behind bulletproof glass and her natural ageing and fading, visitors can be left a little underwhelmed by the great masterpiece,” said Peterson.

And the painting measures only 53cm x 76cm, a portable size which makes sense because apparently da Vinci, the procrastinator that he was, had lugged the painting around and worked and reworked it every now and then.

But the exhibition goes a step further. With the help of French engineer Pascal Cotte and his invention, the state-of-the-art 240-megapixel Multi-spectral Imaging Camera, more than 20 “secrets” of the Mona Lisa are exposed for the first time. Visitors to the exhibition get to see a reproduction of the Mona Lisa in her original, full-colour glory and will understand that the centuries have not been kind to her, and that no, da Vinci did not paint the sky green.

They will also have the opportunity to see the layers of overpainting and adjustments and alterations that da Vinci did. For instance, the position of her hands was originally different, and an extra finger on one of the hands indicates that. Also, da Vinci did give her eyebrows and there is lace in her dress.

All these, presented in supersize, high resolution prints, were only possible with the infrared technology and intense illumination of Cotte’s special camera.

Normal cameras use the principle of combining the three primary colours – red, blue and green – to capture the colour spectrum. The multi-spectral camera uses 13 wavelengths, which means it is able to make colour combinations that are a billion times more precise, explained Cotte in an e-mail interview.

“More than that, the camera can see the invisible, thanks to the infrared light which has the physical and optical properties to penetrate the apparent surface of things,” said Cotte. “For paintings, it’s perfect; it allows us to see under the pictorial layer, how the painter had corrected, and how he had built his work of art.”

Peterson said his personal fascination with da Vinci is more with the genius’s innovative spirit and his ability to find solutions to difficult problems.

“He was not only a true innovator and genius, but a great leader of his time who had left the world with an enormous legacy,” he added.

The Da Vinci – The Genius exhibition has travelled to a number of major cities such as Rome, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow and Melbourne. Peterson said it receives huge crowds at every city.

“Governments and education bodies often announce that this is a must-see exhibition for every child,” he said. “They, like us, hope to inspire a child or adult to do something extraordinary in their lives, just like da Vinci did 500 years ago.”

The Da Vinci – The Genius exhibition is on at the Singapore Science Centre from now till Aug 16, Tuesdays to Sundays, 10am to 6pm. For enquiries, call 02-6425 2500. The exhibition is scheduled to come to Malaysia at the end of the year.

At a glance

> LEONARDO di ser Piero da Vinci was born April 15, 1452, and died May 2, 1519.

> He was born in the Tuscan town of Vinci, to a Florentine notary and a peasant woman.

> When he was a child, he discovered a cave which both terrified and fascinated him; he was scared of monsters in the cave yet wished to explore it.

> At 14, da Vinci became an apprentice of Andrea del Verrocchio, and studied painting and sculpting.

> There is a famous rumour about how da Vinci, in collaborating with Verrocchio on his Baptism of Christ, painted a kneeling angel so perfectly that Verrocchio gave up painting altogether.

> In his now-famous letter to Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, da Vinci wrote that he could build cannons, catapults, armoured vehicles, ships, portable bridges, sculpt and also paint.

> Da Vinci was one of the first masters of the sfumato and chiaroscuro techniques, and one of the pioneers of atmospheric perspective.

> Unfortunately, many of his artistic concepts and projects were never realised and his scientific treatises were never finished.

> His notebooks were mostly written in what is known as “mirror script”; basically he wrote backwards. As such, many of his findings were not widely known in his lifetime, otherwise, as many believe, they would have revolutionised the 16th century.

> Way ahead of his time, da Vinci was already studying how the continents moved, lunar effects on tides, the nature of fossils, and blood circulation.

> He was one of the pioneers of hydraulics, and even created early concepts of a diving suit, a helicopter, a tank and a calculator.

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