A painter, builder and tinkerer with an interesting horses’ feet, crabs, military equipment, diving gear and mechanical wings, Leonardo da Vinci knew no boundaries. He was a jack of all trades for mankind, a universal genius.
But the universality of the Renaissance artist, inventor, musician and philosopher has been called into question by two countries laying claim to his cultural heritage. Ahead of the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death on May 2, Italy says it is not about to permit “its genius” be taken away - and certainly not by France.
Relations between Paris and Rome have turned frosty in recent months,with French President Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s rightist government quarrelling over migration and EU budget policy. Just a few days ago,Italian Deputy Premier Luigi Di Maio, the head of the populist Five-Star Movement, exacerbated tensions when he accused France of keeping colonies in Africa and profiting from the poverty there.
New controversy is being stirred by the matter of Leonardo, who was born in Italy but died in France. He lies buried beneath the chapel of the Loire castle of Amboise, where he spent the last three years of his life. Today, the magnificent edifice is a museum where visitors can see Leonardo’s studio and models of his designs and inventions. France will stage more than 500 events about Leonardo, including one large-scale exhibition in the Louvre in Paris. The museum aims to gather nearly all of the master’s paintings. An agreement was reached between Paris and Rome that the Louvre would be loaned paintings from Italian museums. But now Lucia Borgonzoni,of the rightist Lega party and undersecretary of state for cultural heritage, wants to renegotiate the agreement. Borgonzoni has argued that Leonardo was an Italian who “only died” in France.
“I would really like to understand why a minister of the Italian republic decided to hand over the name of Leonardo to France,”Borgonzoni said. Important works such as the “Uomo vitruviano”(Vitruvian Man), now in the care of the Galleria dell’Accademia in Venice, should be kept at home, she said.
The Louvre says it has, in addition to 22 drawings, nearly one-third of Leonardo’s paintings, including the Mona Lisa. Leonardo sold the painting to French King Francis I (1494-1547) for whom he had worked for three years.
The conditions that Paris worked out for the loans from Italy were made with Rome’s previous Social Democratic government. In return for the Leonardo works, France is to help out with loans to the Quirinale Museum in Rome for an exhibition in 2020 marking the 500thanniversary of the death of Italian Renaissance painter Raphael.
According to the French daily Le Monde, the Louvre intentionally scheduled its Leonardo exhibition for the fall so that Italy could be the first with its events surrounding the May 2 date. Louvre director Jean-Luc Martinez has remained silent since the dispute with Rome erupted.
Italy is marking the Leonardo anniversary year with work exhibitions in Turin, Milan, Florence and the tiny Tuscan village of Vinci, his place of birth. The Uffizi Gallery in Florence will kick things off with a major exhibition on the Codex Leicester, a collection of Leonardo’s scientific writings and regarded as the most expensive manuscript in the world. Microsoft founder Bill Gates acquired the collection for 30.8 million dollars at an auction in 1994.
Italian Culture Minister Alberto Bonisoli is now trying to calm the situation, saying that the previous agreement had never proceeded tothe concrete phase of carrying it out. He said Rome was working with France to find a solution. A meeting has been planned with French Culture Minister Franck Riester in Milan on February 28.
“There are always battles when it’s about major exhibitions surrounding an anniversary,” Cecilie Hollberg, director of the Galleria dell’ Accademia of Florence said. The current row should not be overrated, she said.
French media see things differently, arguing that such an event should be decided not only between museum directors, but also between states. With political relations between Italy and France at their lowest point in years, however, diplomatic consensus on the matter is unlikely. — dpa
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