Leonardo da Vinci’s Drawings at the Morgan Library and Museum

This month brings a colossal surprise for art lovers living in New York. Thanks to La Fondazione “Friends of the Italian Cultural Institute of New York” Foundation, and its collaboration with multiple institutions and sponsors, a one of a kind exhibit will be on view at the Morgan Library starting October 25. The exhibit will include Leonardo da Vinci’s extraordinary Codex on the Flight of Birds, together with one of his most celebrated drawings, Head of a Young Woman, in addition to a selection of other works on paper by the Renaissance artist and his followers, also joined by the Morgan’s Codex Huygens, an important Renaissance manuscript recording da Vinci’s ideas from his lost treatise on painting.

Da Vinci’s work is a particular synthesis of the many disciplines he undertook: sculpture, painting and architecture. The Renaissance Man used drawing as an instrument for conducting and chronicling scientific investigations and research across different fields of study, always with the same maniacal meticulousness. Drawing was a practice tied closely to his learning process, an inexhaustible approach consisting of research, experimentation, and inventions, which always reflected his mind’s creative meandering. Da Vinci, never satisfied with the results he attained, spent his whole life on a quest for new discoveries. He was a tireless designer, which is intensely demonstrated in the quality of his work. He was able to faithfully reproduce every detail of reality with an unequaled vitality and vibrancy. The drawing techniques he used gave, albeit in monochrome, a sense of color, conveying a feeling of depth and three-dimensionality. From landscapes to anatomy, from war machines to portraits, da Vinci’s drawings can easily be regarded as possessing the same lyricism that characterizes poetry. And now, a joint scientific commission from Biblioteca Reale of Turin and the curators of the Department of Drawings of the Morgan Library and Museum are bringing these masterpieces to New York for the first time. Expect to be in awe: these drawings are more eloquent than words, ones that unshackle the imagination. In short, they are the embodiment of universal beauty.

The prestigious exhibit will be celebrated with a gala benefit on November 4th: La Notte 2013, held in The Gilbert Court, the museum’s newest wing, recently designed by architect Renzo Piano. During the Gala, four prominent Italian or internationally renowned personalities—whose professional path has been shaped by the riches of Italian heritage and tradition—will receive awards. All proceeds from the Gala will be used to fund grants and awards for young Italian artists and emerging talents, giving each an opportunity to work in New York, as well as for the promotion of cultural initiatives in 2014.

Benefiting from the funds raised are projects such as the Gotham Prize for Visual Art, which gives Italian artists a chance to hold an exhibition in New York, the Michelangelo Antonioni Prize for Cinema, offering emerging film directors the opportunity to become known by the American public and meet the field’s professionals on this side of the Atlantic, and the Top Young Italian Industrial Designers Prize, established by Riccardo Viale, the director of the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, and curated by the renowned designer Massimo Vignelli, president of La Fondazione.