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Nov. 12, 1996
Seattle, get set for Leonardo fever in '97
Gates' decision to show Codex at SAM is coup for museum
Background and Related Stories
by Robin Updike
Seattle Times art critic
By this time next year, Seattle will likely be transformed into Leonardo Land.
With yesterday's announcement that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is bringing his $30.8 million Leonardo da Vinci manuscript to the Seattle Art Museum for an exhibit beginning in October, it's a good bet there'll be banners, tote bags, T-shirts and coffee mugs all over Seattle bearing images associated with Leonardo.
The showing of the Codex Leicester, as the 18-page, double-sided manuscript is called, will be the closest thing to a museum block buster that Seattle has hosted in many years.
A genius who was the personification of the term "Renaissance man," Leonardo was a scientist, engineer, architect and artist. His many interests included botany, geology, physiology, aeronautics, sculpture and drawing.
Nearly everyone knows that he painted the world's most famous portrait, "Mona Lisa," and the equally famous "The Last Supper." Most people also have seen reproductions of his drawings, such as his scientifically detailed work of an embryo in the womb or his "Vitruvian man," a naked man with his limbs outstretched like the points on a compass.
Chiyo Ishikawa, SAM's curator of European art and one of the organizers of SAM's Leonardo show, said the museum's exhibit will attempt to show how Leonardo's scientific interests related to his art and his influential role in the cultural history of the Western world. Though the Codex is currently on show at the American Museum of Natural History in New York primarily as a science exhibit, Ishikawa said SAM's show will be different.
"We want to show the Codex in an art-historical context," said Ishikawa. "When he's writing about how blue the sky is in the Codex and why, it's a discussion of atmospheric perspective, which related to his art work."
Ishikawa and SAM Director Mimi Gardner Gates said the museum is just beginning to hammer out details. Some parts of the New York show may be brought here, said Ishikawa.
What is certain is the SAM show will have three parts. There will be a small group of drawings and paintings by contemporaries of Leonardo's, including work by such little-known artists as Bernardino Luini and Andrea Solario. Virtually all of these works will be borrowed from American collectors, said Ishikawa.
Since there are only 12 paintings in the world attributed to Leonardo, they are very valuable. Ishikawa doubts the museum will be able to borrow one.
The second part of the show will be the Codex. The document, written between 1506 and 1510 in Leonardo's trademark backward script, contains his thoughts and experiments on the movement of water, how tides affect the Earth and sky, and the physics of bridges. It has 360 pen-and-ink drawings.
Because it is nearly 500 years old and written on paper, it must be exhibited under extremely controlled circumstances.
At the American Museum of Natural History, the pages are shown in special cases, lights are low and only a certain number of people are allowed in the gallery at one time.
SAM likely will do something similar, said Ishikawa.
Trevor Fairbrother, SAM's assistant director and curator of contemporary art, will organize a display of 20th-century art influenced by Leonardo's work. Included will be images by Jasper Johns, Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol.
In addition, Ishikawa said SAM is talking with other institutions in Seattle, such as the Museum of Flight and the Pacific Science Center, to coordinate complementary exhibits and programs.
When Bill Gates bought the Codex at auction two years ago, he said his interest in it was as a scientific, philosophical document, the ruminations of a great mind contemplating the world. The Codex previously had been owned by the late California oil tycoon Armand Hammer.
In the preface to the catalog that accompanies the New York show, Gates wrote, "I have been fascinated by Leonardo all my life. As an artist, scientist, inventor, engineer, and theorist, this genius of the Italian Renaissance exemplifies the limitless creative potential of the human mind.
". . . His writings demonstrate that creativity drives discovery, and that art and science - often seen as opposites - can in fact inform and influence each other."
Since Gardner Gates this fall married Bill Gates Jr., father of the Microsoft co-founder, many have wondered if her new family connections would result in a local exhibition of the Codex.
Gardner Gates said her status as a family member did not influence Gates' decision.
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