An exhibition featuring 10 drawings from the Royal Collection has made the third stop of its UK and Ireland tour at Nottingham Castle, where the scientific and artistic drawings of the great Italian master will be displayed until October 9. The exhibition is a small selection from over 600 Da Vinci drawings owned by the Royal Collection, which have toured Britain as part of touring exhibitions (of which this is the fifth) since 2002. However, this exhibition provides a neat overview of the work of the great polymath, featuring “works [that] have been selected to show the extraordinary scope of the artist's interests, from painting and sculpture to engineering, zoology, botany, mapmaking, and anatomy, as well as his use of different media – pen and ink, red and black chalks, watercolor, and metalpoint,” according to a press release.Among the images are studies of natural subjects made for artistic or zoological reasons, such as a sheet featuring cats, lions, and Da Vinci’s imagining of a dragon. It contains notes written in the artist’s reversed handwriting, which he could famously do while simultaneously writing in a different language in the other direction.More drawings show natural studies of branches and berries, plus a treatise comparing the human heart to the growth of a seed. Most exciting, however, are Da Vinci's studies for his paintings, be they a life drawing of a male nude or the face of St. Anne for his painting “The Virgin and Child with St. Anne,” which is housed in the Louvre and believed to be the artist’s final work.For those unable to make it to Nottingham or Swansea, click through to our slideshow to see all 10 works in detail.“Leonardo da Vinci: Ten Drawings from the Royal Collection” runs through October 9 at Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, and from October 15, 2016 through January 6, 2017 at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea.
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