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Milan. One day Leonardo sat down and inscribed the top of a sheet
of paper using his idiosyncratic right-to-left mirror writing with the
words, “On the 2nd day of April 1489”, adding later... “Book entitled On the Human Figure”. As a new exhibition of his
anatomical studies at the Queen’s Gallery at the Palace of
Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh suggests, though, it would be another
two decades before he really hit his stride.
It is only a year, of course, since Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist,
a magnificent exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace
that showcased the full breadth of around 200 sheets of
anatomical studies by Leonardo in the Royal Collection.
Inevitably, the new exhibition, also curated by Martin Clayton,
feels less significant. While it sets Anatomical Manuscript A in
context by providing a handful of representative sheets from earlier
and later in Leonardo’s career, including one of the famous 1489
drawings of a sectioned skull, it does not offer a comprehensive
overview of his activities as an anatomist.
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