The exhibition - Leonardo da Vinci Los rostros del genio

LEONARDO DA VINCI, FACES OF THE GENIUS

Audiovisual installations, realistic reconstructions, mixed and augmented reality applications, infographics, children’s workshop, all the facsimiles of Leonardo’s manuscripts and surprising technological applications will accompany visitors on their way to an original work that visits Spain for the first time in history: the ‘Tavola Lucana’, the portrait discovered by the historian Nicola Barbatelli in 2009 and which experts consider to be the only work that meets all the conditions (historical, literary, artistic and scientific) to represent the Florentine master.

A MAN OF THE RENAISSANCE

“I propose to imagine a man whose activities are so diverse that if I postulate a unifying idea behind them all, there could be none more universal”
Paul Valery in Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci.

This aspiration of Paul Valéry, together with the intimate desire to know what the figures we admire look like, serves as a guide for an exhibition that observes the life and work of the genius from portraits of those who accompanied him in life. These faces set in time allow us to imagine the virtues or miseries of the subjects. It is logical to cherish the idea that they are real, as it is to have doubts.

THE MANUSCRIPTS: A UNIVERSAL LEGACY

“The manuscripts are a map of Leonardo’s mind”
Charles Nicholl in Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind

Francesco Melzi, friend, confidant, executor and arranger of the compilation and order of the thousands of annotated pages and sketches left by Leonardo at his death, accompanies us on the visit to the first floor gallery in a tour of the Codices and manuscripts that have endured to this day. Visitors will see facsimiles of all the manuscripts left by Leonardo together with physical and virtual reconstructions of some of the devices and machines created or conceived by the master, many of them centuries ahead of their time, including flying machines, the parachute, as well as those considered precursors to the tank, the car and the machine gun, among others.

THE LAST SUPPER

“Truly, I say to you, one of you shall betray me.”
Gospel according to Saint Matthew 26, 14-25.

The Last Supper is one of the most important pictorial works in history. Visitors will find a space dedicated exclusively to the painting, with an audiovisual installation whose music will be interpreted by a well-known international pianist. Sensitivity and emotion for a room that will reveal the story behind the mastery of this creation.

THE MIRROR OF THE SOUL

“A good painter has two chief objects to paint: man and the intention of his soul”
Leonardo da Vinci in A Treatise on Painting

In this suggestive space, visitors will find a large part of Leonardo’s work on the proportions of the human being that he ended up using in many of his creations, including in his representation of Vitruvian Man, alongside the extensive and meticulous study of the anatomy carried out for artistic and scientific purposes. At the back of the room, visitors will be able to take part in a surprising augmented reality installation.

LEONARDO DA VINCI: FACE TO FACE

“He was so exceptional and universal that one might say that nature produced a miracle, not only in the well-known beauty of his person, but in the many gifts with which she endowed him and which he fully mastered.”
Anónimo Gaddiano

In the last room, Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci awaits. Who he was and who he is not. Is it significant that hundreds of thousands of people have imagined the magnitude of his genius in the face of a stranger, in the portrait of someone who in the absence of such an error would be little more than the work of an artist, little more than a nobody? Is this important? The possible faces of Leonardo accompany us throughout this space. Finally, having remained hidden from us up to this moment, the long-awaited Tavola Lucana is revealed.

LEGO TEACHING AREA

Room prepared so that children can enjoy Leonardo da Vinci in a way designed exclusively for them. This workshop space will allow parents to visit the exhibition while the children carry out activities immersed in a changing world created by LEGO.

CODICES MADRID I AND II

This venue of the exhibition LEONARDO DA VINCI, FACES OF THE GENIUS, with free entry, will showcase the Codices Madrid I and Madrid II as never seen before, using both augmented reality techniques to enable us to take a look at some of Leonardo’s inventions as well as real reproductions of the machines he conceived.

LIBRARY ENTRANCE HALL

Opened for the first time to the public as an exhibition space, the large entrance hall of the Biblioteca Nacional will display reconstructions of the machines included in these 500-year-old manuscripts as well as one of the largest projects undertaken by Leonardo: the enormous horse designed for Ludovico Sforza.

THE CODICES ROOM

In this room curated by Elisa Ruiz, professor of Paleography and Diplomacy at Madrid’s Complutense University and expert in Leonardo da Vinci’s Madrid codices, visitors will be taken on a tour of the life of the master, as well as the two original manuscripts in which the Renaissance genius covered many of the subjects that he came to master: engineering, mechanics, hydraulics, art … Alongside the manuscripts, visitors will see some of Leonardo’s inventions come to life and materialise in Mixed Reality.

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Realidad Virtual Mixta

Observa los inventos de Leonardo como nunca han sido vistos