At the Eleventh Hour, France and Italy Finalize a Deal Over the Contested Loan of Leonardo da Vinci Works to the Louvre’s Blockbuster

France and Italy have struck an
eleventh-hour deal so that major works will feature in the Louvre’s
blockbuster Leonardo da Vinci exhibition next month. After much
diplomatic back-and-forth, and with just four weeks to go before
the show is due to open, the French culture minister met with his
Italian counterpart in Paris yesterday, September 24, where they
signed a new agreement.

The deal, which is being hailed
as a shining example of European cultural cooperation, means that
masterpiece works by Leonardo will travel from Italy to mark the
500th anniversary of the Renaissance artist’s death. In return,
France will lend works by Raphael to Rome next year for an
exhibition also marking 500 years since Raphael’s death. The
cultural accord means a stumbling block created by nationalist
Italian politicians a year ago has been removed. 

The French culture minister
Franck Riester negotiated with the newly-reinstated Italian culture
minister, Dario Franceschini, to secure key works for the Louvre’s
retrospective. The most important of which is Leonardo’s famous
drawing Vitruvian
Man, which is normally
only shown for a few weeks at a time in Venice every six
years.

In a statement, Franceschini
celebrated the “extraordinary occasion” of the two major
exhibitions of Italian artists. “Today, more than ever it is
essential that culture is at the heart of European policies, both
because it is a vehicle for building common citizenship, and
because it is a great opportunity for economic growth,” he
said.

“The works of Leonardo da Vinci
and Raphael belong to all humanity,” Riester said in a statement,
stressing that “it is the duty of France and Italy to circulate
them when technical conditions allow for it.”

Aside from the
Vitruvian
Man, which is being
loaned by Venice’s Gallerie dell’Accademia for an as yet
undetermined time period, Franceschini agreed to send works from
the Uffizi Galleries in Florence. These include the earliest
existing drawing signed and dated by Leonardo; the oldest version
of the Battle of
Anghiari; a drawing of
the Arno river; a formerly “lost” fresco, and a particularly
accomplished version of Leda. Further works include a study for the
Adoration of the
Magi, and two
studies of drapery. However, the Uffizi’s cherished Leonardo
paintings the Adoration
of the Magi, and
the Annunciation, will not be heading to the Louvre as the
works are deemed too fragile to travel.

The last minute loans from
Florence will join works already agreed by institutions in other
Italian cities, including Venice, Rome, and Turin. The city of Parma will
send Leonardo’s painting Scaglipiata (Head
of a Woman) (around
1508) from its Galeria
Nazionale. From the
Vatican collections, Portrait of a Musician will travel from Milan’s Biblioteca
Ambrosiana, and the Vatican Museums will send the painting St.
Jerome.

In return, the Louvre will send
Raphael’s portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, the artist’s
self-portrait with a friend, and three drawings, with an additional
pair of drawings by Raphael’s assistant Gianfrancesco Penni, to the
planned Raphael show at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale in
2020.

The Louvre’s highly anticipated
Leonardo exhibition is due to open on October 24, and will run
until February next year. The Louvre already owns the largest
collection of Leonardo paintings—five, including the Mona
Lisa—because France’s national collections inherited them
after the Italian master died in the French town of Amboise. With
the important loans from Italy secured, the exhibition is set to be
a historic occasion. 

The new agreement will be a
relief for the Louvre. Its director will be grateful to the new
Italian coalition government, formed after Matteo Salvini’s
far-right party, the League, failed to force a general election
this summer. The loans were originally agreed by Franceschini in
2017 under the then centrist government, but Salvini’s government
had questioned the previously agreed loans to France. Italian
nationalists argued that the Louvre was monopolizing the 500th
anniversary of the Italian artist’s death, a stance Italy’s former
culture minister appeared to support. 

“Leonardo da Vinci” runs
October 24, 2019, through February 24, 2020, at the Louvre Museum
in Paris.

The post At the Eleventh Hour, France and Italy Finalize a
Deal Over the Contested Loan of Leonardo da Vinci Works to the
Louvre’s Blockbuster appeared first on artnet News.