Original subtitles

- The exhibition explores the making of Leonardo

as a one man creative force during the 17 years

that he spent in the city of Milan.

In seven distinct rooms, each of which

we'll be visiting throughout the course of the evening.

Here in the first room, we see early studies

and we see what the curators called

a quiet revolutionary painting,

that is the Portrait of a Musician.

Into the second room, sensuality,

love and female beauty abound.

In two wonderful paintings that have never been seen

side-by-side including this one, the Lady with Ermine,

and then La belle ferronnière, both lovers of,

perhaps this is the wife of Leonardo's patron,

Ludovico Sforza.

Pictures that encourage a man to fall in love

that have been curated.

Then in the next room, we look at Leonardo's

unbelievable interest and scrutiny of the human anatomy,

made manifest in this work,

the unfinished penitent, self-realizing image of

Saint Jerome in the Wilderness.

Then perhaps the treat of treats of the exhibition

where you could say the divine is made

most obviously manifest, two versions of

the Virgin of the Rocks.

First here from the Louvre,

and then the second version that resides in the

National Gallery, and it's just been restored.

Then we go on to look at the workshop system

and Leonardo's pupils.

Then by exploring this exquisite little painting,

the Madonna Litta, we explore what makes

an authentic Leonardo, what makes an autograph worked.

Then we have a look at probably his most famous work,

certainly his greatest, the Last Supper.

But of course that's in a convent in Milan

but there's a life-size copy

made by one of Leonardo's pupils along

with his sumptuous drawings.

Then finally we look at the idea of painting itself

for the kind of divine force, a kind of miracle

in two works at the end of the exhibition.

One, the most famous drawing in the world probably.

People queued to see it in Leonardo's lifetime.

Then this, a painting that people have waited

for a long time.

In fact this is the first newly authenticated

Leonardo work for over a century.

No other artist in history seems to inspire

and fascinate more than Leonardo da Vinci.

The original Renaissance man has combined achievements

in arts, engineering, mathematics and science

remained unrivaled to this day.

But who was Leonardo?

Where did he come from?

Well his beginnings weren't particularly auspicious.

Born in 1453, Leonardo was the illegitimate son of a lawyer

and a peasant woman from the small

Tuscan hill town of Vinci.

Aged around 14, his extraordinary talent gained

in the place, in the workshop of the great painter

and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence.

Here Leonardo learned the across of painting

and collaborated on a number of works

such as The Baptism of Christ.

The story goes that he painted the angels so well

that Verrocchio gave up painting forever.

Whether or not this is true, by the age of 20,

Leonardo was an independent artist

creating highly accomplished works such

as this image of the Annunciation.

Supremely talented, a great horseman, a musician,

young Leonardo is reportedly to have been a charismatic

and extremely handsome man with long flowing ringlets

down to his chest.

But despite his early success,

Leonardo was something of an outsider.

His illegitimacy and lack of academic education

undermined his sense of position in society.

An intensely private man, he offers few clear indications

of his personal life in his own writings.

But it's now generally accepted that he was homosexual.

Illegal in Florence in 1476, where court record showed

he was once accused of sodomy.

But what he does write about in these years

betrays an increasing restless fascination with all

aspects of the world around him.

An unstoppable drive to inquire and explore.

In 1482 seeking new opportunities,

Leonardo moved north to Milan.

Perhaps surprisingly in his appeal for patronage

to Ludovico Sforza, the future Duke of Milan.

Leonardo pitched himself primarily as a military engineer

promising to share his secrets.

Only as an afterthought did he mentioned

his artistic ability.

Leonardo the great artist and polymath

that the world came to revere was about to be unleashed.

At first glance, this looks like a simple portrait

of a young man staring out from the picture

with a curious intensity.

But for those in the courts of Milan

who saw it in 1486 or perhaps 1487,

this quiet and understated image was a revelation.

At this time, portraits and particularly those of rulers

such as Ludovico Sforza,

were almost always captured in profile.

Once the likeness has been created, that was it,

no matter how many years went by.

Against this comes Leonardo's quietly radical

but typically unfinished portrait.

In history course of view to get a sense of an inner life,

an emotional depth, here's an emerging naturalism,

a desire to show the sitter as he was.

It was the format that came to be copied by many of

Leonardo's followers in the decades to come.

But it's the sheath of paper that he holds

that's the key to the painting.

Previously it had been thought that it was an image

of Ludovico Sforza himself.

But in 1905, restoration work revealed

that there was music on the page.

A crucial detail which had previously been over-painted.

After that, there could be no doubt that this

was an image of a musician, someone most likely

well-known to Leonardo.

Scholars now believe the most obvious candidate

to be Atlante Melioroti, who had actually

been taught music by Leonardo himself.

And here is the Portrait of a Musician,

and with me, scrutinizing it already is a musician,

the conductor Paul Daniel.

Paul, what are your first impressions of this picture?

- Well it's completely enigmatic to me.

Without the music there, you wouldn't know

he was a musician at all.

It's true that this music was only uncovered

about a hundred years ago, wasn't it?

- It was, it was painted over.

You can hardly tell what the music--

You don't see this as a performance,

someone who has just finished or is about to sing.

- Of course it could be.

But there's nothing else about the picture

that tells you that.

For me, what's fantastic about this

is the way Leonardo's looking into his character,

into his soul, into his personality.

In a way that none of those more formal portraits ever do.

Yeah, it was a profile once and then suddenly--

- It feels like there's a whole new world

opening up in this court of Milan.

It's a bit like with the music as well

because you know in Italy, all of these different courts

were bringing, sucking in musicians from the low countries,

from France, from all over the world,

coming to make new music and invent new ways to make music.

So it must have been an incredibly fertile environment,

a culture of work--

- Yeah, Leonardo's art and therefore by extension

history of painting in transition.

You're quite right, there's an ambivalence

that's discovering it is music changes it.

But I do have the joy.

I don't want to fight that.

Leonardo said that because this is about

the primacy of sight,

and it's about paintings' ability to memorialize

those new work is transient.

- For me, that's a wonderful thing to know about,

this picture actually because there's this

picture which is actually a court in movement.

You know if you just looking at the eyes,

these irises of his dries out and different.

One is more open than the other which suggests

that he's only just moved.

So the painting is already in movement,

and it's the idea of music there,

which of course is always been renewed as a musician.

My job is to actually take this piece of music

and make them again

which was a completely foreign concept, I guess,

to composers of the time

because you wrote a piece of music and throw it away.

Leonardo always in the painting would always rule music

even though he was a great musician

because the painting was there forever

and the musician's music had gone, ain't it.

- That was kind of very tactful.

You're backing the painting but you're also standing up

for music at the same time.

- Well okay, okay painting freezes a moment

in time, doesn't it?

- It does.

- But music actually disperses into any time.

- It does indeed.

I now understand it, dispersing into time.

Paul Daniel, thank you.

- Thank you very much.

- Leonardo da Vinci arrived in Milan in 1482 as an unknown

Tuscan artist with a good deal to prove.

He'd emerged 17 years later as the greatest artist

of his generation and indeed any other.

Soon after his arrival, Leonardo began working

for one of the most powerful man in Europe,

the future Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza.

Ludovico is also born in 1452,

making him the same age as Leonardo.

But the two men were very different.

Ludovico was the ruthlessly ambitious strong man,

a Milanese in some respects culturally closer to

Northern Europe than Florence,

and yet he was an intelligent man

who came to recognize that his patronage of a genius

like Leonardo could further elevate his status

as a great prince.

Nevertheless the relationship between artist and patron

were at times rather rocky.

The Duke often failed to pay his salary.

While at the same time, Leonardo was getting a reputation

for not finishing projects,

not least the giant equestrian statue of Ludovico's father,

which he never delivered.

But for Leonardo, his time at court in Milan

proved critical to the evolution of his art.

Rather in the constant insecurity of jumping

from one commission to the next, with a salary,

he was able to think, experiment, and research.

It was also in Milan, that Leonardo

setup his own workshop.

Here he developed the talents of a number of young artists

including Marco d'Oggiono and Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio

as well as the notorious Giacomo Caprotti,

nicknamed Salai, the little devil.

Salai stayed with Leonardo for 25 years,

and may have been his lover.

Despite the master making exhausted

list of his many misdemeanors.

In one occasions, he described him as thief,

liar, stubborn and greedy.

During this period, Leonardo's ambitions for his art

changed from a desire to mirror the world

he saw around him to one that set out to create

images more perfect than nature itself.

The creation of the ideal in arts with its foundations

in both observation and imagination

set the benchmark not just for Leonardo's pupils

but for much of the history of art to follow.

Leonardo's time in Milan came to an abrupt end

in the invasion of French troops in 1499.

Ludovico is forced to flee, and Leonardo left soon after.

His fame by now such that he was wooed by

all the great courts of Europe.

Let's hear a little more about how curator

look-size him for exhibition together.

- Well, what we're doing today is pushing out some pieces

of paper cut to the exact size of each of the exhibits.

Laying them out in the room so that we can work out

precisely where everything is going to go once it arrives.

The reason we do that is of course because things arrive

at different moments, which means you can't actually

lay it all out on the wall at one time

so you have to work this out in advance.

We talk before the paper hang,

and it's the beginning stage of any installation.

There's probably never been an exhibition quite

like this one before.

Leonardo painted extraordinarily little,

something around 15 pictures,

and we've got half of them coming here.

There's probably more Leonardo's in London now

than there ever have been anywhere before.

Now that's not just an end in itself

because of course by doing that, we're going to be able to

follow that journey, that sense of where Leonardo began

as a painter and where he took the art of painting.

This is a show like none this is ever been before

that's not even English but it's true.

We've been incredibly lucky in what we've been

able to gather here in London.

But I have to say that's being result of years of hard work,

of long conversations with all the individual lenders.

That's right in a way that each of them should be persuaded

not just that their works are going to travel safely

and will be looked after properly

while they're here in London

but that by lending them, people will actually learn

by seeing those pictures normally in Paris, London,

in France or in Italy with other works by Leonardo.

That we'll actually see something more

by seeing those pictures together

than we would if we, even if we saw them in quite quick

succession by traveling across Europe as fast as we could.

Everything starts arriving properly tomorrow

so there's a little time that are actually very excited.

This is the beginning of the countdown

to the beginning of the end of this incredibly long journey.

- This room at the exhibition is entitled Beauty and Love.

At its heart is two portraits painted

around five years apart.

They're both of women loved by Leonardo's patron,

Duke Ludovico, yet they tell us something very different

about how Leonardo developed his approach

to portraying feminine beauty.

Both paintings have traveled to be here.

The Lady with Ermine has come from Poland,

and La belle ferronnière has made

the journey from the Louvre.

The great joy of an exhibition like this is the

ability to see works side by side

that are normally exhibited miles apart.

But before we compare them, here's a story

of these two great beauties and how they fit into

Leonardo's philosophy of painting.

By the time he arrived in Milan,

Leonardo's artistic ambition was to create a truly

naturalistic form of painting.

He wanted to depict the world around him as he saw it

and the portraiture was the real test of his skill.

Not only could the likeness be compared directly

with the sitter but in the portrait

he could aim to capture something of the true

character of the person.

Leonardo looked for model so beautiful

the her image could represent the beauty of all things.

He found his perfect subject in Cecilia Gallerani,

mistress to Ludovico Sforza.

Notice the Lady with an Ermine,

the resulting portrait is one of

Leonardo's great achievements.

Scholars have known for a long time that Leonardo

painted Gallerani but it was only in the last century

that it was identified as this painting

when it was realized that her surname matched

the Greek for ermine and that Ludovico was known to many

as the white ermine.

Leonardo's other great image of female beauty

has a similar identity crisis.

The past 300 years, she's been misidentified as

La belle ferronnière, mistress of King Francois I of France.

But scholars are still unable totally to confirm

the true identity of the sitter

believing to be either Lucrezia Crivelli,

another mistress of Ludovico

or indeed the Duke's wife, Beatrice d'Este.

It was subject that indeed Beatrice,

not known for her natural beauty

that Leonardo would certainly have to abandon

his rigorous naturalism.

By this point, he felt that art should in fact

idealize the image of those he painted

if not reflecting universal notion of female beauty.

Outward beauty would seen as reflecting inner virtue.

So an idealized portrait could be seen to reflect

the sitter's true character.

Idealized she maybe but there's no doubt that Leonardo

convincingly brings her to life.

This extraordinary image of the aging

but muscular Saint Jerome shows Leonardo

caught between his twin ambitions and obsessions,

mainly the difference between nature and the ideal

between a cute observation of the anatomical body

and the passion of the human imagination.

Saint Jerome was one of the great scholars of the Church.

He translated the Bible from Greek to Latin,

and was often depicted in the Syrian dessert,

where he spent time as a penitent hermit.

The lion is a common feature in imagery of Saint Jerome

as he was believed to have befriended one

after removing a thorn from its paw.

Here Leonardo shows the saint in a moment of

spiritual turmoil and physical agony.

Gazing on a vision of the crucified Christ

whilst attempting to banish his earthly desires

by beating his chest with a rock.

But beyond the powerful religious message of the painting,

this is a profound study of the human body movement,

an image in which every muscle and tendon comes alive.

Never again would Leonardo depict a nude

or semi-nude figure with such drama.

The painting is exhibited alongside an array

of Leonardo's anatomical studies.

From precise descriptions of muscles in the neck

to a remarkable rendering of the human skull.

All these remind us of Leonardo's contribution to science.

Few if any figure before him had come close

to this level of understanding of the workings

of the human body.

All must also remember that Leonardo didn't differentiate

between art and science.

All of Leonardo's study of the human body had a single aim,

better to depict the human body in his art.

He wanted to go beyond that with appearances,

to get under the skin and wrestle with the flesh

and bones of his subject.

In doing so, he created a visceral depth to his art

like no other artists had done before.

One of the most exciting aspects of this exhibition

is the bringing together of the two versions

of the Virgin of the Rocks

for the very first time in history.

Even Leonardo himself would never

have seen them side by side

but here at the National Gallery, before our eyes,

we have the unprecedented privilege to explore

one of the great sagas of art history.

In 1483, the newly formed

Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in Milan

commissioned to sculpt an altarpiece

in which a painting of the Virgin and child

with angels was to be included.

It was a full 25 years later, after numerous legal wrangles

that an altarpiece was finally delivered.

During that time, Leonardo, the man

who rarely finished any piece of work

completed two versions of his famous painting.

The first was begun immediately following the commission.

Nothing quite like it had ever been painted before.

It isn't immediately apparent how it fulfilled the

Confraternity's desire for a depiction

of the Immaculate Conception.

Perhaps pictured among the primeval rocks of creation,

the Virgin represents both the origin of Christ

and the origin of the world itself conflated into one.

At some point during the early 1490s,

the series of delays caused by lack of funding

and perhaps disagreement over Leonardo's radical vision

meant that this first version of the Virgin of the Rocks

was sold to another buyer.

Little is known of its history from this point on

but it surfaces again in 17th century France,

and from there, had its home in the Louvre.

For sometime, a debate is raised as to whether

the second version of the painting is merely a copy

made by Leonardo in his workshop to fulfill

his contract with the Confraternity

or indeed a second original.

But the recent extensive restoration of the painting

shows that Leonardo wrestled with the design as he worked.

Something that he actually would do.

Leonardo's own spirituality is hard to determine

for he wrote very little on the subject.

His dedication to the pursuit of scientific knowledge

had sometimes seen him cast a-prost or atheist.

In the decades after his death,

he gained a marvel of heretical reputation.

For Leonardo, there was no contradiction

in his investigation of the natural world

and a belief in a supreme being.

He understood very well the role of art

in religious devotion, and the Virgin of the Rocks

is a supreme example.

The Virgin of the Rocks recently underwent a major

restoration under the management of

the National Gallery's Larry Keith.

- When the Virgin of the Rocks was acquired by the gallery

in the 1880, it had some tunnel work done.

In 1948 and 49, there was a more comprehensive restoration

but unfortunately the varnish that was selected

and used at the time degraded quite markedly

that the oil a great deal

and a surface coating on top of the varnish

which contains a lot of wax imbibed quite a lot of dirt,

which meant the whole thing got quite foggy.

That means it's quite hard to read the darker tones.

For someone like Leonardo whose painting is based on

really quite careful manipulation of tones,

in other words the values from light to dark,

at least a bunch of color.

When you're missing a lot of the darker range,

that really wreaked havoc with the kind of fundamental

intention of the painting.

Well I think one of the really remarkable things

about the restoration and the result of the restoration

is to allow you to understand the evidence you can see

of the long campaign of work on the painting,

and how he changed his style,

and his level of finish,

and the way he'd gone about painting.

There's some very interesting evidence,

circumstantial and technical evidence that suggest

that part of the picture may have even been finished

while it was in the frame.

For example, the way that this ultramarine paint layer,

which is the more expensive blue used to finish

the sky was applied and touched away

that seems to follow the line that would have

been covered by the original framing.

In fact it's filled in in some areas here

and stops in a rather fairly abrupt way

compared here where it's very carefully pulled down

and merged with the lighter colors closer to the horizon.

The actual treatment itself had to do with reducing

and thinning these varnishes mostly

from the 1948-49 treatments.

We removed enough of the varnish, not all of it,

but enough to get the aesthetic goals that we wished

from the picture.

In this case, as I said, largely to do with

reestablishing the tonal range,

and seeing the paint that's there,

and letting it function properly.

I think the most exciting single episode

to do with the study in restoration of the picture

was the initial investigation with infrared,

where we found a completely different composition

underneath the one you see now.

What you see now is essentially a kind of reprise

of the Paris picture.

There's some important changes but beneath that

has a wholly different image.

I think the discovery of that image confirmed

the dating of our picture,

and helped a lot of pieces fall into place

about the chronology and the history of our picture

and Leonardo in other works as well.

- Larry, you spent a lot of time restoring this.

Very briefly, what did you do and why did it need doing?

- Well, we decided if we work on this picture

after studying a lot of the pictures in the collection

of finest people whom he associates

starting in the mid 1990s.

In restoring those paintings,

we learned a great deal about techniques,

and materials, and intent.

After doing that, it became very obvious

that the discoloration of the varnish

on the Virgin of the Rocks is really standing

in between the viewer and Leonardo's intent.

So the decision was made to do the work.

- When you're working on a work like this,

I mean I know there's a lot of over romantic projection

about Leonardo's kind of genius,

and the divine nature of what he does,

a lot of which I find very powerful,

but do you feel that you're getting closer to Leonardo

or is yours a much more detached and scientific viewpoint.

- Well, what I expect.

Well, that's true, I think there's enough of both of those

things in doing a restoration.

I think by using the work that the gallery undertakes

in the scientific department and their research we curated,

and our experience with other paintings,

we learned about the material changes the varnish made

that we're jostling about.

The process of doing the restoration then reveals

Leonardo's own intent, and that's

where the mythical component comes in, I think.

- Is there a Leonardo's brushstroke

that you can now recognize under microscope.

- Oh, I don't think it's quite like that.

I think the quality of this picture in particular

has to do with the way they've essentially orchestrated

across the whole thing.

It survived an intent and understanding of technique

and material used to express a certain idea

about how life works and how people see.

- Now you're going to be very diplomatic

but you have revealed this beautifully,

and the problem is that now in contrast

with the Louvre's picture,

it makes that looks slightly grimy.

Tell me, you wanna get your mitt on the Louvre's painting,

and start restoring that.

- I'm very sure that the people in the Louvre

are very, very capable of deciding what to do

with their picture.

- Just where you might going to,

thanks very much, Larry.

- Yeah, thank you.

- The most recent renovation work on this painting

has been on also on the impressive frame,

and we've talked to Peter Schade,

the gallery's Head of Framing to find out more

about the work he's been doing

to present this great painting in a new way.

- The opportunity to reframe this, the Madonna of the Rocks

just was purely by chance when I discovered

part of an old frame at an auction in Italy.

Amongst three or four frames, there was this one,

these three pieces of this one frame,

which I immediately thought it would be useful

for something in the gallery.

The idea to use this for Madonna of the Rocks

came slightly later when I discovered

that amongst the paintings that were roughly

the right size, this was being what this was really

a very suitable one.

The Virgin of the Rocks has now come out of the frame

prior to the exhibition allowing us

one last chance to check that the newly created bit

still works as well with the old parts

that we've bought at an auction.

The frame has been made using

original early 16th century parts,

which are the columns and the entablature on top.

Combining them with elements that we had to create

partly because they were missing

like the cre-de-la, the entire bottom part,

we just didn't have.

So we had to recreate that

but also partly to adapt the shape of the frame

to the arch top image of the Madonna of the Rocks.

We did not want to copy exactly bits of the frames

that we bought because that would have been unusual

to repeat this or something else, curses of being an edge.

But we copied things to their very much current

in Italy at about 1500.

This is a so-called gi-osh passing that's carved in wood,

and then jostled and gilded.

In the end, this stretch to look like

part of the original frame.

Of paintings being restored is a moment

that you rethink the framing.

The crucial point was that the curator look-size

and shared my vision or could see what I tried to

propose that we could do, we could achieve

but also had the sort of trust and confidence in that

we should attempt this.

Because this reframing of a Leonardo's

is something potentially controversial.

- The complex creative relationship between Leonardo

and his pupils is explored this work, the Madonna Litta.

The idea of the artist working alone

to create a masterpiece is a relatively recent product

essentially a 19th century romanticism.

Leonardo like every other artist of his time,

worked alongside a number of assistants.

Until midway through the 19th century,

the Madonna Litta had always been linked

to being painted by Leonardo himself.

Ever since though a debate has raised

to how much of it may have been painted by Leonardo

and how much by the workshop.

Recent research such as the existence of these

proprietary drawings makes a very strong argument

that it was done solely by the great man himself

but perhaps the most persuasive argument of all

is to ask who else but Leonardo

could have created a work of such quality.

Many artists have depicted the biblical scene

of the Last Supper, a final meal that Christ shared

with his apostles, and before his Crucifixion

but Leonardo's is the best remembered, the most famous.

Why is it?

Well partly because of the level of ambition

that Leonardo had, and partly because even on this scale,

gigantic, he was still trying to experiment technically

but mainly because unlike other artists,

Leonardo was able to bring such a convincing sense

of narrative to a fixed image.

The original can't be here if it was painted

directly onto a wall back at the

Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.

It was commissioned by Leonardo's patron, Duke Ludovico,

and Leonardo worked on it between 1495 and 1498.

Although typically we hear accounts that Leonardo

often wouldn't paint anything for days.

Vasari then tells us when the Duke questioned

him on this, Leonardo replied that

"The greatest geniuses sometimes accomplished more

when they work less."

Nice motto.

The Last Supper is not a true fresco

that it was painted onto a dry wall

rather than wet plaster.

Because a fresco can't be modified as the artist works,

in his typically experimental way,

Leonardo chose to seal the stone wall

with a mixture of pitch, gesso and mastic,

and then paint onto the ceiling layer with tempera and oil.

Because of this experimental method

that the painting began to deteriorate

even within Leonardo's lifetime.

This however didn't stop the King of France

from wanting to try and move the painting,

presumably wall and all back to France.

Who knows what condition it might now be in

had he actually attempted it.

Two early copies of the Last Supper are known to exist.

This one is painted onto a canvas by Leonardo's pupil

called Giampietrino around 1520.

It allows a fascinating glimpse to what the original

might have looked like in all its pre-faded glory.

As I mentioned, perhaps the key to this painting's

rightful reputation is one of the greatest works

in art history is down to its ability

to tell a convincing and dramatic story.

Standing here in front of Giampietrino's copy,

I'm grateful for the documented memory

but I missed the punch and presence of the original

in all its faded damaged glory in Milan.

But it's the drawings that really bring this image

to life here in London.

Just as the monks in the refectory in Milan

would have had their leap of faith required

to believe that the Last Supper was taking place above them

prompted by Leonardo's grand illusion on the wall,

so the drawings here help us to try and grasp

what remains of the work, and they also help

the viewer to make a leap of faith in imagination.

The last two decades of Leonardo's life

was spent traveling the courts of Italy and beyond

at the height of his fame.

By 1503, he was back in Florence along

with his great contemporary Michelangelo.

Their intense rivalry came to a head

when the now celebrated artists were commissioned

to decorate either end of the city's council hall

with two extraordinary battle scenes.

Leonardo, the Battle of Anghiari,

and Michelangelo, the Battle of Cascina.

The Renaissance heavyweights were not on good terms though.

Michelangelo reportedly mocked Leonardo

for not completing the Sforza's horse

while Leonardo had once described Michelangelo's

muscular male nudes as looking like a bag of walnuts.

When he left Florence in 1506, Leonardo typically

abandoned the mule unfinished.

It was destroyed in the mid 16th century,

and all that remains is this chalk-drawn copy,

showing his hugely ambitious design.

Around the same time, Leonardo was working on

what would become his most famous painting,

a portrait of the wife of a Florentine silk merchant,

a lady called Lisa del Gioconda.

Even through the layers of discolored varnish

applied down the centuries,

we see it had delicately reddened face.

Leonardo's unrivaled ability to create tonal modulation.

Why the Mona Lisa has attained quite such global fame

is complex and not altogether justified

but what is clear is that in this,

in many ways straightforward painting,

Leonardo achieved much of his ambitions for his art.

The final room of the exhibition contains two pictures

that we're going to focus on.

The first is one of the greatest achievements

in representational art, the amount of respect

it commands is incredible

and yet it's an unfinished drawing.

The second is a painting that's been causing all

manner of excitement in the art world, in the press,

and with those with us tonight,

namely a new rediscovered painting

attributed to the hand of Leonardo.

In the period when Leonardo first left Milan

at the end of the 15th century,

he was at the height of his fame

and immersed in his philosophy that art

could truly capture the divine and insinuating

the touch of divinity upon the artists capable of doing so.

He's now linking his talent directly to God,

and both the works we're going to look at in this room

have a religious subject matter.

His drawing of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne,

and John the Baptist also known as

the Burlington House Cartoon caused a furore

when it was exhibited during Leonardo's lifetime.

The newly discovered Salvator Mundi,

it shows to show the cause similar excitement

exhibited here for the first time.

More though on the Salvator Mundi in due course.

First though, let's take a closer look at

a monumental work on paper.

Often called the Burlington House Cartoon

due to the decades it spent hanging in the

Royal Academy in London, this is one of the most famous

drawings in the history of art.

The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and John the Baptist

is one of Leonardo's great works.

As a subject, this was unprecedented,

and possibly commissioned by the French King Louis XII.

A tribute to his wife, Anne of Brittany.

Even in his days, it was admired but the Renaissance

Vasari reporting how the people of Florence

queued over two days to see the image,

unimaginable for a drawing then and now.

This was a drawing by an artist

who was the superstar of his day.

It was believed to have God-given powers.

His artistic achievement is unrivaled.

A monumental drawing that conveyed an almost

sculptural presence using white chalk and charcoal.

Its inter-mingling the figures

is an almost impossible composition.

Despite its name, it was never used as a cartoon,

that is pricked with pins and scaled up to be used

as the basis for a larger painting.

Because of that, it remained in an exceptional condition

down the centuries.

Drawing and more importantly planning encapsulated,

in the Italian word, vi-sa-nio,

linked the hand of the artist to the mind.

In doing so, raised the status of the artist

beyond that of a mere craftsman.

That this image that Leonardo created further evidence

in various changes of mind and unfinished passages

seems to link the hand to the soul.

As I mentioned earlier, also in this room is the

recently restored Salvator Mundi

or Christ, the Savior of the World.

It's remarkable that this is the first painting

to be authenticated as a work by Leonardo in over a century

but equally remarkable is the story of

where it disappeared to, and how it ended up here.

It's always been known that Leonardo painted

an image of the Salvator Mundi

or Christ the Savior of the World.

Over the years, numerous versions of the subject

have surfaced, all showing the influence of the master

but the original on which all of these were based

was believed to have been lost forever.

But after recent extensive restoration,

scholars have now agreed that this image

is indeed the lost Salvator Mundi, a remarkable

and rare moment in the story of Leonardo da Vinci.

Much of the painting's history remains unknown.

It passed from the French royal family

into the possession of Charles I.

Was sold off with the rest of his art collection

after his execution in 1649,

and then disappeared only to resurface in

a private collection that came 50 years later

in London around 1900.

Severe over-painting, aggressive cleaning,

and other damage meant that it remained disregarded

by art historians throughout the 20th century.

Even selling for a mere £45,

the equivalent of about £800 today.

But once cleaned, the quality of the image

became immediately apparent.

Layers of thin paint had built up to create

the incredibly soft modeling on the face,

a technique known as scre-mato.

Other pleased that it's a bonafide of Leonardo

are the delicacy of the curls of hair

and the brilliantly irregular pleats in the cloak

plus the pentamenti, small adjustments made

during the painting process.

Something that would only be an original, wasn't copied.

But unlike many of his other depictions of the human face,

Leonardo abandoned his desire to create the ideal

to something far more powerful.

Here he based his proportions of the face

on the Mandylion of Edessa,

a piece of cloth therein the miraculous image of Christ.

Leonardo's image of the son of God therefore

in a way could be seen to approach the miraculous

actual likeness of Christ,

created by a divinely gifted artist.

His final years were spent under the patronage

of the French King Francis I at his castle at Amboise.

He was paid an enormous court salary.

Paid it seems, simply for being Leonardo.

A 1,400 kilometer journey from Rome to Amboise

was undoubted grueling for the elderly luminary.

But an invitation from the King of France

was not one to refuse.

One of the clues Leonardo continued

to stay fully occupied finishing his three masterpieces

as well as continued investigations

into architecture and engineering.

His continued appetite for knowledge

impressed all who met him.

The king sought him out for conversation and inspiration

but no amount of invention could prevent the inevitable.

The story goes that Leonardo wept on his death bed

particularly regretting that he did not work on his art

as well as he should have.

He declared his frustration that he was about to die

with still so much to learn and so much to give.

He died in his bed chamber on the 2nd of May 1519.

Leonardo's final resting place

is in the king's private chapel

in the grounds of the Chateau at Amboise.

This was a rare privilege and reflects

the king's affection and respect for him.

Leonardo, the universal man, illuminated with his vision

and intellect of the world in which he lives.

He ventured into uncharted unscholarly territory.

Investigated everything from the possibilities

of flight to the workings of the human body.

He brought the rigors of scientific study

and creative imagination to his art.

He had a great impact on the world

in the many spheres that he explored.

Leonardo also recognized how little humans

actually knew and understood of the world around them.

It's this self-awareness and enthusiasm for knowledge

that could be placed above all

of the heart of Leonardo da Vinci as a man.