Sforza Castle – Leonardo as never seen before

1. Why visit the exhibition?

2. Practical information

2.1 Opening hours
2.2 Ticket prices
2.3 5x Leonardo ticket
2.4 Other important information and tips

3. Sala della Asse

4. Leonardo between Nature, Art and Science

4.1 Anemone nemorosa (Francesco Melzi)
4.2 Allegory with solar mirror
4.3 Study of an ox’s heart and pulmonary artery & Caltha palustris and Anemone nemorosa
4.4 Storm over a hilly landscape
4.5 Two willow trees
4.6 Landscape with a large cloud (workshop of Leonardo)

5. Leonardo in Milan

1. Why visit the exhibition?

The Sforza Castle is part of the “Milan and Leonardo 500” programme with three itineraries to rediscover not only Lombardy’s historical ties with Leonardo and the Sforza court, but also the naturalistic suggestions that characterise the master’s great artistic and scientific work, through the eyes of the genius himself. By walking through three connected rooms, you will visit three exhibitions dedicated to the 500th anniversary of da Vinci’s death.

The first and main exhibition is called “Under the Shade of the Mulberry Tree. The Sala delle Asse” (Sotto l’ombra del Moro. La Sala delle Asse) (16th May 2019 – 12th January 2020), which is of course held in the Sala delle Asse. I remember on 23rd January 2016 I visited the room during my first visit to Milan, when most the ceiling fresco was visible to the public but the drawings on the walls including the famous Monochrome were already blocked for restoration. In the following years, I visited Milan a few more times but unfortunately the whole room was filled with scaffolding and the fresco could only be seen through the holes. This year from 16th May 2019 to 12th January 2020, the room, which has been undergoing restoration since 2013, is exceptionally reopened to the public and becomes the symbolic centre of the “Milan and Leonardo 500” programme.

The second room hosts an exhibition called “Around the Sala delle Asse. Leonardo between Nature, Art and Science” (Intorno alla Sala delle Asse. Leonardo tra Natura, Arte e Scienza) (16th May 2019 – 18th August 2019), which displays a selection of original drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance masters showing iconographic and stylistic relations to the naturalistic and landscape decoration details found under multiple layers of limes in the Sala delle Asse. Thanks the restoration, these details are visible again, which broaden the knowledge of the original composition project.

The third room hosts an exhibition called “Leonardo in Milan” (Leonardo a Milano) (16th May 2019 – 12th January 2020), in which a multimedia tour will guide visitors on a tour of Milan as Leonardo must have seen it when he lived in the city at different times between 1482 and 1512. The itinerary features a georeferenced visual map of what is still left of these places, both in the city and within local museums, churches and buildings. The virtual city tour will show again, five centuries later, not only the peculiar social fabric of these neighbourhoods, but also their sumptuous buildings, with frescos on their facades showing ancient Roman history told through bold perspective views. Visitors will then visit the extensive gardens inside these palaces, which used to host magnificent parties and knight tournaments.

2. Practical information

2.1 Opening hours

  • Castle: Monday to Sunday 7:00 – 19:30
  • Museums: Tuesday to Sunday 9:00 – 17:30
    • Exhibition 1 “Under the Shade of the Mulberry Tree. The Sala delle Asse”: 16th May 2019 – 12th January 2020
    • Exhibition 2 “Around the Sala delle Asse. Leonardo between Nature, Art and Science”: 16th May 2019 – 18th August 2019
    • Exhibition 3 “Leonardo in Milan”: 16th May 2019 – 12th January 2020
  • The last entry is at 17:00 for visitors with ticket. The ticket office closes at 4:30.
  • The museums are closed Mondays, 1st January, 1st May and 25th December.

2.2 Ticket prices

This ticket grants admission to the Castle Museums and the “Leonardo as never seen before” programme.

  • Full price: € 10,00
  • Reduced price: (18 – 25 years old and over 65 years old): € 8,00
  • Every first Sunday of the month: € 5,00
  • Free admission: children and youths under 18 years old; every first and third Tuesday of the month from 14:00
  • For more information about reduced and free admission please click here.

Tickets can be purchased online and on site. Online ticket purchasing allows you to choose a day and a time slot, and the ticket is only valid on the chosen day and guarantees priority access at the selected time slot. Tickets can also be purchased directly at the ticket office, but at busy times, the queue can be long and you might need to wait for up to 1 -1.5 hours. Please note, the Sforza Castle is a huge complex including many museums and galleries, and the ticket office, cloakroom, and entrance to the Sala delle Asse are located at the entrance to the Museum of Ancient Art and Armoury. I visited the castle at around 15:00 on a Saturday and waited for only 10 mins in line (outside) before getting my ticket. Please note, before entering the Sala delle Asse, you need to wait in two lines; one is for buying the ticket (if you haven’t bought it online) and the other one is for entering the room. For preservations reasons, each time (around 15 mins) only 50 people are allowed in the room to first watch a projection show on the walls and ceiling and then to take a look at the paintings and drawings. The “waiting room” can be quite hot on a summer day and when it gets crowded, make sure not to sit on, lean against or touch the exhibits. The estimated waiting time in this room can reach 15 – 30 mins.

2.3 5x Leonardo ticket

Good news! From 16th May, the day of the extraordinary reopening to the public of the Sala delle Asse at the Sforza Castle, until 12th January 2020, the closing day of the “Milan and Leonardo 500” event, visitors will be able to follow Leonardo’s footsteps through the city with just one ticket, available at a very special price. The ticket will be valid for 30 days from the date of the visit at the Last Supper Museum, and within the 30 days, the ticket holder will be able to visit all the museums involved: the Last Supper Museum, the Castello Sforzesco Museums and Sala delle Asse, the Pinacoteca di Brera, the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana and the National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci. The “5x Leonardo” ticket must be stamped at the ticket office of each museum to collect an individual entrance ticket.

Please note, purchasing of the “5xLeonardo” ticket is subject to the booking of a viewing of the Last Supper. The ticket will be available for purchase from 18th April 2019 through the call centre (+39 02 92800360) and from 16th May also directly at the Cenacolo Vinciano ticket office (ticket office of the Last Supper Museum), only for the same day.

Prices:

  • Full price: € 38,00
  • Reduced price (people between 19 – 25 years old and over 65 years old): € 25,50
  • Children and teenagers (between 5 – 18 years old): € 4,50
  • Children (up to 4 years old): free
  • For tickets purchased at the call centre, an advance booking fee of € 2,00 will be applied.

If you are a fan of Leonardo da Vinci, you can’t miss the Last Supper, one of his most renowned works. Unfortunately, due to preservation reasons, viewing of the masterpiece is very limited and normally you need to book the ticket online at least three months in advance. This year, thanks to the “Milan and Leonardo 500” event, extra viewing is allowed for holders of the “5xLeonardo” ticket. Please note, the amount of the ticket is still very limited and if you don’t wanna miss the opportunity, I recommend you to visit the ticket office early in the morning when it just opens. For me, I arrived at the ticket office at noon and there were only a couple of tickets left. It’s almost impossible to buy a normal ticket (instead of the “5xLeonardo” ticket) on site for a viewing of the same day unless you’re very lucky. If you want to know how to reserve a normal ticket, please click here to read my post particularly dedicated to the Last Supper.

2.4 Other important information and tips

  • Photography for personal use is allowed in all the exhibition spaces. However, in the second exhibition “Around the Sala delle Asse. Leonardo between Nature, Art and Science”, you can’t take photos of the two drawings from Berlin.
  • Inside the Sala delle Asse you will first watch a projection show about the commission, execution and preservation of the wall and ceiling frescoes. Afterwards you will have a few minutes to admire the originals.
  • Various guided tours related to the “Milan and Leonardo 500” event are available from May to September 2019 and if you are interested, please click here for more information.
  • The Sforza Castle is a huge complex and besides the three exhibition rooms, I recommend you to take advantage of the ticket and explore its many other museums and galleries. Don’t miss The Pietà Rondanini, the last work by Michelangelo Buonarroti which remains incomplete, Madonna in Glory with Saints John the Baptist, Gregory the Great, Benedict and Jerome by Andrea Mantegna and The Trivulzio Tapestries by Bramantino.

3. Sala della Asse

The vast and soul-stirring Sala delle Asse (“Room of the Wooden Boards”) is the most important historical space in the Sforza Castle. Its name is derived from the supposition that it was once covered with wooden planks, a theory adopted by the architectural firm B.B.P.R. during the restoration and refurbishment of the castle in the 1950s. The wooden covering was removed as part of the current cleaning campaign, the aim of which is to reveal, to the greatest degree possible, the remains of Leonardo’s painting. This work has made it possible to see traces of the mulberry tree trunks painted by Leonardo on the walls. In 1498, shortly after completing the Last Supper, Leonardo was commissioned by Ludovico il Moro to transform the large square room into a fictive pergola, where the branches of eighteen trees, tied with knotted ropes, intertwine on the ceiling of the room, holding up celebratory plaques and Sforza crests. Ludovico il Moro had a special affection for mulberry trees, as their leaves provided nourishment to the silkworms that were raised for the duke for the production of fine textiles. The idea of transforming a room in the castle into a fairy-tale-like natural setting might have been suggested to Leonardo and Ludovico il Moro by the Camera degli Sposi (Bridal Chamber), the perspectival masterpiece of scenographic illusion painted by Mantegna at the Gonzaga court in Mantua. Here it is worth noting that the Marquise of Mantua, Isabella d’Este, was the sister of il Moro’s wife Beatrice.

The current appearance of the paintings is largely the result of early 20th-century restoration work (as you can see in the 1st and 2nd pictures above), but one wall preserves large fragments of drawings by Leonardo of roots worming their way in between stones (as you can see in the 3rd picture above). It is a naturalistic detail marked by powerful energy and a dramatic demonstration of Leonardo’s passion for the natural world. The recent restoration has recovered additional portions of the drawing on other walls (as you can see in the 4th and 5th pictures above). In celebration of the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death, the Sala delle Asse is reopened to the public with a multimedia installation (as you can see in the pictures in the gallery above) which illustrates the meaning of the room in the Renaissance and the complex conservation campaign.

4. Leonardo between Nature, Art and Science

The natural environment is the prevailing theme represented in the Sala delle Asse. Here, Leonardo painted a giant arboreal pavilion. The second, laudatory theme is symbolised by the mulberry tree–Morus in Latin–alluding to the nickname of Duke Ludovico Maria Sforza, who was indeed called Moro. In Leonardo’s vast body of drawings, there are no real preparatory studies for the Sala delle Asse. However, in two sheets held at the Institut de France, authoritative scholars have identified some drawings, which, for style and chronology, could refer to Leonardo’s work in the Sala delle Asse. In the first of these drawings, Leonardo depicts well-lit and shaded areas along a branch under the sunshine. He does so through thin hatching, which gets gradually thicker in the less illuminated areas. In the second drawing, Leonardo investigated branching patterns in plants. In addition to these two drawings, a mulberry tree branch–a theme endlessly repeated on the ceiling of the room–is found in the Codex Atlanticus.

This event “Leonardo as never seen before” offers visual suggestions featuring drawings by Leonardo, his school and other contemporary masters, as well as both the wall paintings recently restored in the Sala delle Asse such as the Monochrome, and other works never seen before since they have only recently been discovered under layers of lime. Some iconography and style similarities are being presented in the second exhibition, which make the history of the greatest mural painting ever made by Leonardo and his large group of pupils even more intriguing.

4.1 Anemone nemorosa (Francesco Melzi)

During the investigations conducted for this exhibition, this small drawing, most likely made from life, was found in the extensive holdings of Castello Sforzesco’s Cabinet of Drawings. This drawing, attributed to Francesco Melzi, a pupil of Leonardo, is exhibited here for the first time. The red chalk drawing technique was first introduced by Leonardo after his arrival in Milan in the early 1580s.

4.2 Allegory with solar mirror

The allegorical scene is set in a rocky landscape. Because of its complexity, this Louvre folio has been interpreted in different ways. According to a more recent explanation, it allegedly represents Ludovico il Moro’s intention to justify his power in continuity with his predecessors, the Viscontis. Therefore, the stylized sun would symbolize Visconti’s coat of arms of a radia magna, namely the sun. Its rays make the mulberry treesymbol of Ludovico–grow in the harsh Lombard land. The animals fighting in the foreground could allude to the struggle between dynasties, where the dragon depicts King Ferdinand I of Aragon, the lion King Charles VIII of France, the wolf Pope Alexander VI, the unicorn General Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, and the wild boar the city of Milan.

Visible roots are commonplace in Leonardo’s drawings. In the Monochrome of the Castello Sforzesco, the roots demonstrate the force of nature that splits the squared rocks. The same element can also be found in the Allegory, where the roots seem to be animated by uncontrolled and sprawling vitality, while mulberry tree leaves are moved by the wind. The eroded boulders of the rocky spur in the Allegory seem to draw on the same orographic model as those depicted in the landscape painted in the Sala delle Asse.

4.3 Study of an ox’s heart and pulmonary artery & Caltha palustris and Anemone nemorosa

By examining the anatomy of an ox heart, Leonardo investigated the pulmonary artery as it divides into two main vessels branching out into ever thinner vessels. It is no coincidence that the drawing is chronologically close to the study of willows from the English Royal Collection also on display (which you can see in section 4.6). Also sketched on the same sheet are the trachea, the right bronchus, and a sketch of the lungs and an opened up heart ventricle.

The accuracy with which Leonardo defines the arteries which, coming out of the heart, branch out into thinner vessels, reminds of the way he painted the secondary branches of the Monochrome springing from the main trunk. The process of branching was quite common in Leonardo’s Studies on Nature. It was also investigated by his pupils, as demonstrated by Cesare da Sesto’s drawing, where knotty and shady shoots, suckers and leaves evoke many parts of the drawing recently discovered in the Sala delle Asse.

The study from life of a marsh marigold (Caltha palustris) and a wood anemone is one of Leonardo’s drawings for the rich vegetation portrayed in the lost Leda and the Swan. In Castello Sforzesco’s Monochrome, there is an Arum maculatum in fruit and a domestic iris, spontaneously growing among the and rocks, although they are not easy to identify. In addition to the lost Leda, the lush flora is also depicted in two versions of the famous Virgin of the Rock, where all plants and flowers are outlined with the same scrupulous care. Thanks to this representation of two morphologically similar plants belonging to the same Ranunculaceae family, we can best appreciate Leonardo’s special attention to botanical varieties.

4.4 Storm over a hilly landscape

A stormy wind is the real protagonist of this drawing: it blows on the hills, rocks and man-made architecture, which fits in and integrates with the natural environment. Leonardo was so interested in rock formations that he investigated into the causes of erosion, identifying water as its main agent. The wonderful bird’s eye view allows for yet another comparison with the steep rocks of the small hilly landscape painted in the Sala delle Asse, as well as with the boulders drawn in perspective to the northwest of the Monochrome, which are similar to those that support the elevated road to the castle.

4.5 Two willow trees

Experts have different opinions as to whether the trees depicted in the drawing are actually willows. Some scholars have claimed they are alders or poplars. Similarly, according to some, the river landscape portrays the Adda river valley, while others believe it is the valley of the Arno river. For sure they all agree on comparing this drawing to the one in the Royal Collection of Windsor Castle and also on display here, depicting blood vessels branching off the heart. The strength of the root that splits the rocks in Castello Sforzesco’s Monochrome resembles that of the willow roots that seem to rebel against a still and placid river landscape, clashing against the lively and vibrant leaves moved by the wind.

4.6 Landscape with a large cloud (workshop of Leonardo)

This drawing shows a quickly sketched undulating landscape dotted with trees, rocky hills, and spired buildings, and above it an enormous cumulus cloud. A low horizon line makes room for the sky. The hilly landscape disclosed on the southwest wall of the Sala delle Asse is most probably the work of Leonardo’s workshop, and this drawing, also by Leonardo’s workshop, is displayed here for comparison.

Also displayed in the second exhibition room are a drawing by Albrecht Dürer and one by Piero di Cosimo (unfortunately its forbidden to take pictures of them), which are evidence of the depiction of trees and rocks in German and Florentine painting. The similarities between the cliffs drawn by Dürer and the rocks in the Monochrome are striking. The layout of the cave can be easily compared to the perspective of sedimented rocks in the centre of the Monochrome, which would originally frame a fireplace. These clear similarities suggest probably mutual influences, thus demonstrating the keen interest of both artists in their rendering of squared boulders as part of a natural landscape. In Tuscany, Piero di Cosimo applied Leonardo’s lesson to his naturalistic rendering of natural elements, with rocks and trees with branches cut at the base that are very similar to those found in the Monochrome.

5. Leonardo in Milan

In the third exhibition room, a multimedia show will take visitors on a tour of Milan as Leonardo must have seen it when he lived in the city at different times between 1482 and 1512. It features a georeferenced visual map of what is still left of the places, both in the city and within local museums, churches and buildings. Though the main characters–Leonardo and his student–talk in Italian, English translation of the conversation is  shown simultaneously on a screen. For me, this show enriched my knowledge of the time Leonardo spent in Milan and his everlasting connection with the Sforza court and the city.

Sforza Castle – Leonardo as never seen before was last modified: November 27th, 2019 by Dong

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