Leonardo da Vinci may be best known for painting the world’s most enigmatic smile, but a new exhibition at Buckingham Palace explores the Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, inventor and scientist’s breathtaking anatomical studies of the human body.
Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist, which runs from May 4th to October 7th, features 87 anatomical drawings by Leonardo, the largest such collection to go on show. It includes a detailed portrayal in red chalk of a child in the breech position and pencil drawings of the human skull.
The body of work, which was never published in the artist’s lifetime, would have made Leonardo one of greatest Renaissance scientists to this day, said Martin Clayton, exhibition curator at the Queen’s Gallery. Leonardo’s desire to be “true to nature” led to the artist dissecting 30 corpses and compiling hundreds of sheets of drawings of the body. But his research stayed among his private papers until 1900, when they were finally published and understood by the scientific world. – (Reuters)