Review: For the first time ever in the United States, 12 pages from Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus are on view in Washington.
Leonardo painted more pictures than the Mona Lisa and “The Last Supper,” but not many are known to exist. Including the National Gallery of Art’s “Ginevra de’ Benci,” the only Leonardo on exhibit in the Americas, fewer than 20 are widely accepted as his work, and some of those are collaborations with other artists.
But there are several collections of Leonardo’s many manuscripts, the most voluminous of which is the 1,119-leaf Atlanticus. It compiles drawings, diagrams and notes made between 1478 and the artist’s 1519 death. Currently on view in sealed display windows in a darkened room in the library’s basement, the delicate pages mostly contain drawings and writings made with pen and ink. Some employ black chalk, black or red pencil, watercolor, or drypoint printmaking.
The pictures of mechanisms, natural phenomena and geometric concepts are not primarily works of art, although a few of them are beautifully rendered. Most exquisite are two detailed depictions of digging machines designed by Leonardo to automate canal excavation. While many of the other drawings are quick sketches, these are realized with skill and depth that recall Leonardo’s paintings.
Alongside renderings of devices that really existed — or at least appear plausible — are illustrations of more fanciful notions. There are two mechanical wings for possible human flight and a perpetual motion machine designed to be powered by water. Sometimes the practical and the fantastic appear on the same sheet of paper, like the one that holds drawings of water pumps as well as an underwater breathing device.
Supplementing the 12 drawings is a kid-oriented interactive show, “Leonardo’s Lab,” on the library’s second floor. In addition to a two-sided panel with head cutouts so visitors can be photographed as either Leonardo or the Mona Lisa, the lab contains four tables with puzzles and building projects.“The Ideal City” offers wooden blocks, arches and columns that can used to build a Leonardo-inspired metropolis.
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