The exhibit features many of Leonardo’s early drawings from the late 15th and early 16th centuries, including a few that he would later develop into famous works, like the figures in action he sketched for The Battle of Anghiari and the preparatory sketch for the Madonna of the Rock. And don’t miss the Codex on the Flight of Birds, an 18-page manuscript detailing Leonardo’s fascination with birds while he tried to build a flying machine.
In the early 1500s, Florentine officials commissioned several artists to decorate the walls of the Palazzo Vecchio’s main hall with scenes from famous Florentine battles. Michelangelo got the Battle of Cascina; Leonardo, the Battle of Anghiari. Neither artist completed the work, though their unfinished frescos remained on the walls until Cosimo de’ Medici had the hall redecorated a few decades later. Art conservationist Maurizio Seracini believes Leonardo’s fresco may still be intact underneath the newer decorations; he posits that a wall was built between the Renaissance master’s work and the new wall painting. You can read about his quest to uncover the long-thought-lost painting here, and about the technology he’s using to try to excavate it here.
