According to The Times on Friday, 18th November 2011, the online dealer Viagogo has reported that £16 tickets for the below show are now being sold for £165 ... !

Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan

Da Vinci is the kind of artist people use loud voices to talk about. So the quiet simplicity of the National Gallery’s recently opened exhibition, Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, is refreshing. The true success of the show lies in its collation of so many insanely beautiful works from the artist’s œuvre here in London. It is disarming to be face to face with these paintings. To behold painted individuals, sacred and profane, so mesmerizingly life like is an experience one is rarely gifted, so take stock.

Yes, the story familiar to spectators of any ‘blockbuster show’ is true here. Crowds crowd to see the minute details of an animated pen and ink study for The Last Supper (the painting of which was, as well we know, the subject of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code) and a veritable bouchon of gormless admirers form a horseshoe around The Belle Ferronière. But what a treat. Would it be blasphemous to equate the experience to being in a mosh pit? Yes. But don’t worry, just get involved with the visual binge. The National Gallery has the exhibition guide online to download at your leisure so save the reading up for another time...

Familiar with da Vinci’s paintings from books I had anticipated that only the infamous anatomical drawings, rare fodder for those keen to bridge the chasm between art and science, would be to my personal taste. How short sighted I am, how easily my memory fades and now I hear my tutor's creed resonate again: we must always see the real thing to judge. Seeing these paintings in the flesh couldn’t be further from the easy satiation provided by glossy reproductions on paper or the imagined pictures of novelistic colouring.  I’m tempted to say it was like nectar for the eye and soul but that would be too easy. Gnawingly hollow cheeks, protruding collar bones, fully embodied draperies and the flicker of fine ermine hair make a fool of your senses. As you look away you will begin to second guess what it is you are looking at.

Da Vinci is part of the ‘canon’ of art history, a world of masters, masterpieces and genius, an inheritance some academics have tried hard to shrug off but one that the commercial art world clinks glasses to. There is no overbearing narrative of either kind to greet you at this exhibition, it is more elliptical and there is, you might quip, something for everyone (there is a room devoted to the artist’s workshop as well as Romantic quotes floating at picture rail - level in each room). It is a curating coup. But to those trying to deconstruct any hierarchies, don’t bother going, you will not find a happy bed fellow here: the display of works by this artistic genius serve to uphold his cult status. Da Vinci’s name is not shy of celebrity and for once we have the chance to see rather than to read, hear or be told why.

Margarita note:
Les Deux Salons, 40 - 42 William IV Street, London, WC2N 4DD