Leonardo Blog
A few months ago I booked a couple of tickets for the Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery. Between booking them and going to see the exhibition the other weekend the tickets had turned to gold. Huge queues snake out into Trafalgar Square hoping for the few tickets left. We felt very fortunate.
And so we ended up standing in front of a handful of the world’s great pictures. There is something unique about standing an arm’s length away from a masterpiece. At that moment you occupy the same relative space that the painter occupied. You stand where Leonardo Da Vinci stood and you look. Because many of the artist’s preparatory sketches are displayed I know that I cannot possibly see as he saw – but I can be aware of the privilege of standing where he stood, just for a moment.
Some people have described the exhibition as a spiritual experience. I agree, but not because of the religious themes of some of the works. They are wonderful, but for me the spiritual power was in the quest of a remarkable man to bring perfection to his art and in the beautiful results; but perhaps most of all the spiritual impact was in the way that the exhibition revealed a creature, made in the image of his creator, sharing in the work of creation.
A random, purposeless universe is no place for Leonardo Da Vinci. His home is a place where beauty and creativity are the business of life. Its our home too.