The Organ

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

Sorry! Some pages missing from the above sequence...

[AdamSmith]

Exhibition Overview

The first comprehensive survey of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings ever presented in America, this international loan exhibition brings together nearly 120 works of extraordinary beauty by one of the great masters of all time, surveying his staggering contribution as an artist, scientist, theorist, and teacher. Gathered from private and public collections in Europe and North America, the selection of drawings includes rarely exhibited works and illustrates a great variety of drawing types—from quickly sketched primi pensieri (first thoughts) to highly finished preparatory and presentation drawings—as well as landscape, botanical, anatomical, and military engineering drawings of monumental expression, reflecting virtually every aspect of the artist's artistic and intellectual achievement.

Of special importance are the numerous studies for some of his most famous paintings—including the Virgin and Child with St. Anne, the Adoration of the Magi, The Last Supper, and the now-lost Battle of Anghiari—as well as the extraordinary loan of the Vatican Museum's St. Jerome Praying in the Wilderness, an unfinished painting that shows much of the artist's original underdrawing. Comprehensive in scope, the exhibition also features many of Leonardo's celebrated anatomical and plant studies and designs for machines. In addition, a selection of approximately twenty-five drawings by his teacher Andrea del Verrocchio and his circle, as well as by Leonardo's pupils and followers, provide a context for the great artist's legacy.

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The exhibition is made possible by Morgan Stanley.
Additional support has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
An indemnity has been granted by the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

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About the Exhibition

Even in an age celebrated for its limitless scientific discovery, technological innovation, and sublime artistic achievement, the range of Leonardo's knowledge and accomplishments was recognized as extraodinary. As the Renaissance biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote in his mid-sixteenth-century compendium of artists' lives: "Truly marvelous and celestial was Leonardo . . . so great was his genius, and such its growth, that to whatever difficulties he turned his mind, he solved them with ease."

Leonardo's achievements are all the more extraordinary, given his fairly inauspicious beginnings. Born in the small Tuscan hilltown of Vinci, Leonardo was the illegitimate son of a notary and a local peasant girl. His early school education did not prepare him for his later career as author of treatises, and he seems to have attained only a cursory knowledge of Latin, the language of most scientific texts and the "lingua franca" among the Humanists who comprised the intellectual elite of his day. As Leonardo himself explained in the preface to his treatise On Painting, "Though I may not know . . . how to cite from authors, I will cite from something far more worthy, quoting experience, mistress of their masters."

The full scope of his achievement—with its legendary emphasis on observation as the source of all knowledge—is best preserved in Leonardo's drawings and notes, for almost four thousand sheets survive. (Notwithstanding the iconic status of such works as the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, the number of extant paintings by Leonardo is actually very small—at most fifteen, including both finished and unfinished works as well as autograph and collaborative works.) For Leonardo, the medium of drawing was of crucial significance—indeed, more so than for any other figure of his time, or since—as it offered him a highly ordered language for invention, exploration, evocation, and illustration in both an artistic and scientific sense.

Installed chronologically, the exhibition enables visitors to trace Leonardo's artistic and intellectual development through each of the major phases of his career: his apprenticeship and early artistic maturity in Florence during the 1470s; the highly productive years at the Sforza court in Milan, from about 1481/3 to 1499, where he first emerged as a scientist and inventor; his return to Florence, about 1500 to 1506, where he was acclaimed and employed both as an artistic and engineering genius; the unsettled decade from about 1506 to 1516, when he moved between Florence, Milan, and Rome, seeking respite from political turmoil; and his final years in France, from 1516 until his death in 1519, where he lived as the honored guest of King François I.

The chronological installation also enables visitors to appreciate Leonardo's astonishing ability to work on different—and often widely divergent—projects at almost the same moment. For example, on the reverse side of a compositional study for his famous fresco of the Last Supper, Leonardo has drawn a series of designs and mathematical calculations for a device for hoisting weights.

Among the first highlights encountered in the exhibition is a comparative presentation of the large finished studies of young women's heads by Leonardo's teacher, the Florentine master Andrea del Verrocchio (ca. 1435–1488), whose style and techniques the young Leonardo closely imitated. These drawings—known since the sixteenth century as teste divine (divine heads) for their exquisite drawing technique and elegiac beauty of form—transcend their original function as exercises in draftsmanship. Drawings by the young Leonardo include several drapery studies, remarkable for their subtle explorations of light, shadow, and texture, and a group of charming silverpoint studies of cats, dogs, dogs' paws, and a bear.

The exhibition brings together some twelve compositional and figure studies believed to be related to Leonardo's altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi (Uffizi, Florence), one of his first independent commissions, begun in 1481, and left unfinished when he departed for Milan, around 1482/83. Also from the artist's early maturity comes one of the exhibition's most important objects—the panel painting of St. Jerome Praying in the Wilderness (Vatican, Vatican City). Left unfinished, like the Uffizi Adoration, it provides visitors with an extraordinary glimpse into Leonardo's creative process, as he moved from underdrawing to the realization of forms in paint. (The painting also preserves, in the upper left, the imprint of the artist's fingers.)

Works from the years Leonardo spent at the Sforza court in Milan (from ca. 1481/83 to 1499) include his design for a proposed colossal equestrian statue of the Duke Francesco Sforza. This wonderfully spirited study of a rearing horse (Royal Library, Windsor Castle) is exhibited together for the first time with Antonio del Pollaiuolo's working modello for the same project, probably prepared in competition. A luminous metalpoint drawing of the head of an elderly bearded man (Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna) has been identified as a study for figure of St. Peter in Leonardo's celebrated Last Supper, painted for Milan's Santa Maria delle Grazie.

Leonardo's dramatic red chalk study of the head of a shouting soldier (Szépm¸vészeti Museum, Budapest), probably drawn from the life, is among the group of ten sheets related to his now-lost Battle of Anghiari, a monumental wall-painting commissioned in 1503 for the Great Council Hall of the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence. The original appearance of the mural—one of Leonardo's largest and most complex paintings—is best preserved in a large-scale drawing that was reworked by Peter Paul Rubens of the central section, on loan from the Louvre, showing a frenzied tangle of men and horses.

Other drawings from Leonardo's second Florentine period include recently discovered sketches intended for an unexecuted sculpture of Hercules that may have been meant to compete with Michelangelo's David; studies for the lost Leda and the Swan; and a presentation drawing of Neptune with Seahorses (Royal Library, Windsor).

The exhibition also brings together a group of drawings for the beloved painting Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (Paris, Musée du Louvre), offering an opportunity to redefine the chronology and evolution of this complex late project. The magical study for the head of the Virgin also provides insight into the development of Leonardo's innovative graphic techniques—most particularly his use of sfumato, an art-historical term created to describe his seamless blending of tone in the manner of smoke.

Also on view is a number of Leonardo's whimsical allegories, caricatures, and penetrating studies of grotesque physiognomies.

Quite surprisingly, many of Leonardo's drawings for his nonartistic projects have often been viewed more as illustrations of intellectual content than as aesthetic objects in and of themselves. As the exhibition demonstrates, Leonardo brought the same clarity and elegance seen in his studies for paintings and sculpture to his scientific and technological drawings. In his Star-of-Bethlehem (Royal Library, Windsor Castle), one of Leonardo's most famous botanical illustrations, the ribbon-like leaves of the plant are rendered in flowing, rhythmic lines, beautifully evocative of vitality and growth.

His pioneering anatomical researches are documented in a double-sided sheet of studies of the human skull (Royal Library, Windsor Castle), based on direct observation and rendered in exquisitely fine parallel hatchings, and a drawing, inscribed "Tree of Veins" (also from Windsor Castle), illustrating the main organs relating to the blood vessels.

Although Leonardo abhorred war, he prided himself on his designs for weaponry ("I can make cannon, mortars, and light ordnance of very beautiful and useful shapes, quite different from those in common use," he once declared). The exhibition features a number of his ingenious drawings of various types of assault machines, crossbows, shields, and incendiary devices.

The selection of folios from The Codex Leicester (Seattle, Washington, Private Collection), one of his latest extant notebooks, includes drawings, diagrams, sketches, and written observations (in the left-handed artist's distinctive mirror script) on subjects ranging from the reflective properties of celestial bodies, to the nature of gravity, to hydrodynamics.

Leonardo's fascination with the properties and power of water is also revealed in the series of so-called Deluge drawings. Executed towards the end of his life, about 1515–17, these are terrifying apocalyptic visions in which giant waves furiously rebound over the diminutive forms of man and nature. Although classified as works of the poetic imagination, they are nevertheless realized with a keen understanding of the scientific principles governing the behavior of water.

The exhibition concludes with a small selection of drawings by Leonardo's Milanese pupils—Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio (his earliest pupil), Francesco Melzi (his companion and artistic heir), Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Agostino da Lodi, and others.

https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2003/leonardo-da-vinci

[MsAnn]

For years...a treasured possession that sadly was lost in a move.

[MsAnn]

On a side note, what are the posting rules for the forum "The Organ"?

[AdamSmith]

12 minutes ago, MsAnn said:

On a side note, what are the posting rules for the forum "The Organ"?

Content may only originate from one or more of the following sources:

Oh, and also, when Nature absolutely requires...

 

 

[AdamSmith]

5 minutes ago, AdamSmith said:

[Guest Larstrup]

[MsAnn]

Thank you...But for the record, I might on occasion violate the TOS of this forum. 

[MsAnn]

1 minute ago, Larstrup said:

Gotta love the roller skates. 

[AdamSmith]

3 minutes ago, MsAnn said:

Thank you...But for the record, I might on occasion violate the TOS of this forum. 

[MsAnn]

19 minutes ago, AdamSmith said:

[MsAnn]

 

[MsAnn]

Nobody does it better...

[MsAnn]

 

[MsAnn]

Saved my life when a life was in need of saving...

[AdamSmith]

 

[MsAnn]

Posting what makes me happy this morning...

 

 

[AdamSmith]

 

[MsAnn]

https://www.catersnews.com/stories/latest-news/home-previously-owned-by-pablo-picasso-goes-up-for-auction/

Home previously owned by Pablo Picasso goes up for auction 

The mansion previously owned by Pablo Picasso has gone up for auction this month

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[AdamSmith]

This is very sad. Please infer no irony or anything in this tragic post.

David Cassidy, 'Partridge Family' superstar, in critical condition

(CNN) David Cassidy, the wildly popular '70s heartthrob who shot to fame when he starred and sang in TV's "The Partridge Family," is in critical condition with organ failure.

Cassidy is being treated at a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, area hospital, longtime publicist Jo-Ann Geffen told CNN on Saturday.

 

 

David Cassidy in 1971

 

"He is conscious and surrounded by family and friends, nothing is imminent and we are taking it day by day," Geffen said.

She did not say what caused the organ failure.

 

Cassidy, 67, told People magazine earlier this year he was battling dementia.

A '70s superstar

"The Partridge Family," a sitcom about a mother and five children who formed a rock 'n' roll band, gave Cassidy a national audience for his music. Cassidy, who played Keith Partridge on the show, captured the spirit of 1970s youth.

David Cassidy in 2009.

 

His wispy voice and wholesome persona broke out from the small screen. At the time, his fan club reportedly was bigger than those of Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

 

The singer toured the world singing his hit songs, such as "I Think I Love You," filling concert halls with screaming teenage girls.

Cassidy has spoken publicly in recent years about his struggles with alcohol. He was arrested for driving under the influence on three separate occasions during a four-year span between 2010 and 2014.

 

Cassidy, in an interview with CNN in 2014, said his trouble with alcohol was "very humbling and it's also humiliating."

CNN's Steve Almasy contributed to this report

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/18/entertainment/david-cassidy-hospitalized/index.html

[MsAnn]

2 hours ago, AdamSmith said:

This is very sad. Please infer no irony or anything in this tragic post.

David Cassidy, 'Partridge Family' superstar, in critical condition

(CNN) David Cassidy, the wildly popular '70s heartthrob who shot to fame when he starred and sang in TV's "The Partridge Family," is in critical condition with organ failure.

Cassidy is being treated at a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, area hospital, longtime publicist Jo-Ann Geffen told CNN on Saturday.

 

 

David Cassidy in 1971

 

"He is conscious and surrounded by family and friends, nothing is imminent and we are taking it day by day," Geffen said.

She did not say what caused the organ failure.

 

Cassidy, 67, told People magazine earlier this year he was battling dementia.

A '70s superstar

"The Partridge Family," a sitcom about a mother and five children who formed a rock 'n' roll band, gave Cassidy a national audience for his music. Cassidy, who played Keith Partridge on the show, captured the spirit of 1970s youth.

David Cassidy in 2009.

 

His wispy voice and wholesome persona broke out from the small screen. At the time, his fan club reportedly was bigger than those of Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

 

The singer toured the world singing his hit songs, such as "I Think I Love You," filling concert halls with screaming teenage girls.

Cassidy has spoken publicly in recent years about his struggles with alcohol. He was arrested for driving under the influence on three separate occasions during a four-year span between 2010 and 2014.

 

Cassidy, in an interview with CNN in 2014, said his trouble with alcohol was "very humbling and it's also humiliating."

CNN's Steve Almasy contributed to this report

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/18/entertainment/david-cassidy-hospitalized/index.html

He lives/lived very close to me in FTL. Sadly he's had a rough go of it the last part of his life. There were very public bankruptcy's, the auctioning off of some of his possessions, struggles with alcohol, rehab and some memory loss. Life marches on...

[AdamSmith]

On 11/16/2017 at 11:38 AM, MsAnn said:

 

I have ridden around Germany on ze Autobahn, the driver an engineering software technologist and executive of very high competence, und ze fact of our going merrily along at somewhat rather more than 140mph did not worry at all.

When ze prozpect of President Trump first appeared, some joked about moving to Canada.

On reflection, I think Angela's realm is the only really safe, and sane, one today available.

How history inflects.

[Guest Larstrup]

14 hours ago, AdamSmith said:

This is very sad. Please infer no irony or anything in this tragic post.

David Cassidy, 'Partridge Family' superstar, in critical condition

(CNN) David Cassidy, the wildly popular '70s heartthrob who shot to fame when he starred and sang in TV's "The Partridge Family," is in critical condition with organ failure.

Cassidy is being treated at a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, area hospital, longtime publicist Jo-Ann Geffen told CNN on Saturday.

 

 

David Cassidy in 1971

 

"He is conscious and surrounded by family and friends, nothing is imminent and we are taking it day by day," Geffen said.

She did not say what caused the organ failure.

 

Cassidy, 67, told People magazine earlier this year he was battling dementia.

A '70s superstar

"The Partridge Family," a sitcom about a mother and five children who formed a rock 'n' roll band, gave Cassidy a national audience for his music. Cassidy, who played Keith Partridge on the show, captured the spirit of 1970s youth.

David Cassidy in 2009.

 

His wispy voice and wholesome persona broke out from the small screen. At the time, his fan club reportedly was bigger than those of Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

 

The singer toured the world singing his hit songs, such as "I Think I Love You," filling concert halls with screaming teenage girls.

Cassidy has spoken publicly in recent years about his struggles with alcohol. He was arrested for driving under the influence on three separate occasions during a four-year span between 2010 and 2014.

 

Cassidy, in an interview with CNN in 2014, said his trouble with alcohol was "very humbling and it's also humiliating."

CNN's Steve Almasy contributed to this report

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/18/entertainment/david-cassidy-hospitalized/index.html

UPDATE: 11:03 p.m. ― Spokeswoman JoAnn Geffen confirmed to the Associated Press late Saturday night that David Cassidy experienced kidney and liver failure, but added there was nothing “imminent” about his condition. 

Cassidy’s doctors want to “keep him as well as they can until they can find another liver,” Geffen told AP.