Il meraviglioso mondo della natura

Catalog of the exhibition at Palazzo Reale, Milan (March 13-July 14, 2019)

Produced as part of the celebrations for the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death, the exhibition features the world of nature in its artistic representations before and after the great Renaissance genius. For Leonardo – naturalist, engineer and theorist as well as painter – the starting point of both scientific and artistic approach to reality is offered by the observation of the natural element: imagination always starts from a real datum. And Leonardo’s legacy is measured through the scope of his students who continue to work on themes of nature, from Bramantino to Bernardino Luini. Within a scenic itinerary suspended between art and science, the exhibition and catalog collect nature-themed plates, canvases and drawings-including Caravaggio’s famous Basket of Fruit-but also herbaria, illuminated manuscripts, memorabilia and taxidermied animals from the Museum of Natural History in Milan. Reconstructed inside the Sala delle Cariatidi, the impressive cycle of canvases known as the Sala del Grechetto reveals, finally, the passion for the world of animals of a still anonymous artist of Nordic extraction, in whom an interest in scientific observation is matched by a taste for the rare and the marvelous.

BY
Giovanni Agosti – Historian, art critic and curator, is professor of modern art history at the University of Milan. His studies are mainly aimed at the Renaissance in northern Italy.
Jacopo Stoppa – A scholar of seventeenth-century Lombard painting and Lombard Renaissance sculpture, he is professor of History of Modern Art at the University of Milan.