Suppose there were an exhibition in which we saw Leonardo side by side with say Titian

Suppose there were an exhibition in which we saw Leonardo side by side with, say, Titian. There could then be no doubt that Titian had the more creative personality, and a more ample and generous attitude towards the world. Such thoughts are prompted by a visit to the new exhibition of drawings by Leonardo at the Queen’s Gallery The collection is the most important anywhere. It was first recorded at Kensington Palace in 1690 but, curiously enough, we do not know how or when it became royal property. We do know that all the drawings were originally mounted in an album. More recently they have been put through conservation processes and are now pressed between ultraviolet-filtered Perspex sheets.

Many of the drawings included in the present exhibition are seen in this “new” condition for the first time.
Because the light levels are so low one has to peer into these drawings. Furthermore, they are all small, book-sized, so one approaches them as though in expectation of secrets preserved in some precious and arcane volume. Well, that’s exactly what the original album was, so the feeling is legitimate. It’s difficult not to be awed in the reverential atmosphere of the Queen’s Gallery But aesthetic efforts must be made. Some drawings are much better than others; the interest of the lesser drawings is documentary. There is no sheet that does not carry a special message about the nature of Leonardo’s intellect; on the other hand, not every sheet gives the limpid satisfaction of pure and achieved art.I recommend Martin Clayton’s catalogue – and with a paperback version at pounds 12.95 it’s not too expensive for anyone who wants to study and understand Leonardo.

Clayton’s work is not full of easeful delights: rather the opposite. Anyway, he is a good guide: he’s a curator at Windsor so probably had to hold back from personal views I wish he’d written a longer introduction. He might then have explained what he means by the subtitle of his book: Leonardo da Vinci: a Curious Vision.Of course we all know in a general sense what Clayton is suggesting, but I would go further – as follows Leonardo had a weird and even sinister sense of beauty It was his alone. Many people tried to copy his manner, but they could never reproduce the svelte, evasive undercurrent of evil. Leonardo himself could not eradicate the part of his art that makes us so uneasy when contemplating it, and perhaps he left so few finished works precisely because he feared the nature of his genius. Is not fear the real subject of the four final drawings here, all called The Deluge, in which the aged master confronted not only nature but his own mind?I first notice the “curious” Leonardo in the early St John the Baptist, done while he was apprenticed to Verrocchio in Florence in the mid-1470s.