The latest touring exhibition from Grande Experiences, a leading global arts and culture immersive experience company, is dedicated to the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci. Blending digital technology with physical artefacts to create a captivating experience and transcend the boundaries of traditional museums, the new show seeks to engage visitors on multiple sensory levels while providing deep insights into this timeless genius.
Da Vinci continues to captivate audiences even 500 years after his passing. His multifaceted talents as an artist, inventor, engineer, and visionary mean that his legacy transcends generations. The new touring exhibition, Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius, takes a unique approach to presenting his life and works. offering visitors a truly immersive journey into the mind of the Renaissance polymath.
Authenticity and connection
At the heart of the exhibition lies a commitment to authenticity and connection. Rather than simply showcasing Da Vinci’s famous artworks, the exhibition delves deeper into his diverse talents and interests, from engineering to anatomy, from art to warfare. Through meticulously crafted machine inventions, visitors are transported back in time to witness the ingenuity of one of history’s greatest minds.
One of the exhibition’s highlights for the launch of the new experience at THE LUME Melbourne in March 2024 is the display of pages from Da Vinci’s original notebooks, the Codex Atlanticus, on loan from the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan.
These priceless artefacts offer a rare glimpse into the inner workings of Da Vinci’s mind. They showcase his sketches, ideas, and scientific observations. To enhance the viewing experience, a bespoke room has been created to house the Codex pages, providing visitors with a serene and intimate space to explore the genius of Da Vinci up close.
To find out more about the creation of Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius, we speak to Grande’s head of creative experiences, Gary Moynihan, and Rob Kirk, head of touring.
Immersive storytelling
Technology plays a crucial role in bringing Da Vinci’s world to life. The exhibition leverages cutting-edge audiovisual technology to engage visitors in a multisensory experience. Virtual reality simulations allow visitors to take flight over Florence, experiencing first-hand Da Vinci’s fascination with human flight. Operatic scores accompany the visual journey, adding emotional depth and drama.
At the heart of it all, however, is a commitment to storytelling. Each exhibit, each artefact, is carefully curated to tell a cohesive narrative that resonates with visitors of all ages. Whether it’s the revelation of hidden details in the Mona Lisa or the exploration of Da Vinci’s military inventions, the exhibition aims to spark curiosity and ignite imagination.
Talking about how this production is an evolution of Grande’s vision, Moynihan says:
“This is quite a different take on our recent approach to experiences. Here we’re blending a digital experience with physical artefacts, to help deepen the connection to this particular subject matter.
“It’s more meaningful and engaging; we want visitors to come away having found some personal connection to it.”
This is a unique exhibition, adds Kirk:
“It is an opportunity for us to fuse different elements of an experience. We’ve got the display of Leonardo’s machine inventions, where we’ve worked in collaboration with our partner Museo Leonardo da Vinci in Rome. Then we have integrated various digital interpretations to encourage a deeper understanding and appreciation of Leonardo and his ideas and thoughts. And finally, we have our multisensory immersive gallery.
“For us, those three overarching elements allow us to encompass an extensive and comprehensive exhibition on Leonardo.”
Exploring Leonardo da Vinci’s life and legacy
Leonardo da Vinci’s legacy is vast. This means that deciding what to include and how to approach the content was one of the first challenges that the Grande Experiences team faced.
“Leonardo da Vinci is such a broad topic,” says Moynihan. “Everyone knows the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. But then he was also an engineer, a scientist, a sculptor, a musician, an inventor, an architect…the list goes on. He had such a wide spectrum of abilities, and he was a genius in every one of them. What we’re able to do in this experience is play on those and start to explore his thoughts in different areas.”
“The experience itself puts on display machine inventions based on drawings that he did. There isn’t any evidence to suggest he ever built these machines, but his ideas and inventions are all sketched out in his notebooks. Here we have these inventions crafted by Italian artisans, using the same materials that would have been available to Leonardo had he gone about prototyping something.
“To have a physical object in the room is compelling, and it’s got an incredible story behind it. But there’s also a contrast between who Leonardo was, and what he produced. There is a real juxtaposition between arguably the most beautiful art and these horrific war machines, designed to kill people.
“Leonardo’s this type of person where you never know what’s coming next. So, for visitors, it’s not a one-dimensional experience. There’s a lot of immersive content there. That comes back to our core belief that an immersive experience is not just projection. It’s everything; it’s spatial design, it’s the place setting, but it’s also the connection to artefacts that have stories behind them.”
A multisensory experience
Expanding on the multisensory elements of the experience, Moynihan says:
“Historically, our productions have focused more on the multisensory side of the experience, but we’ve taken a different approach here as we’re strategically placing the immersive element a bit later in the experience.”
That means visitors connect with Da Vinci as a human being first:
“He was an absolute genius. But he was flawed as well. He was an outsider. He had an inferiority complex. His mind was going a mile a minute, his entire life.”
“We’ve looked at interesting stories from his life. For example, he’s credited with coming up with an early form of scuba diving equipment. All we have from that is a couple of sketches in a notebook. But we were able to play on that in an immersive experience. We fill up the gallery with water and explore what the picture in his mind might have been.”
“We also do a more traditional presentation of his artwork. But then we look to deconstruct his paintings and look at the different areas of them. For instance, we have a beautiful sequence where we build up the Mona Lisa. Everyone knows the Mona Lisa, but there’s so much going on in that painting that it’s hard to capture it all. In the immersive content, we’re able to deconstruct that image and start to reveal the stories behind it.
“We also built an operatic score behind it to give it a real sense of delicacy and beauty because ultimately it is a beautiful image in its purest and simplest form, which is what Leonardo always wanted to create; the ultimate portrait.”
Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus
A standout feature of the exhibition in Melbourne is a selection of pages from Da Vinci’s authentic notebooks, known as the Codex Atlanticus. These are on loan from the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan.
“They’re original Leonardo da Vinci drawings, so it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view these in the flesh,” says Moynihan. “For us, it goes back to our philosophy and our desire as an organisation to transcend the digital-only approach and to lean on this connection between a digital immersive experience plus an artefact experience, blending the two.”
“We created a bespoke room to display these. We could have tried to recreate the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan with its gilded ceiling, plush red carpet and 500-year-old books everywhere. But there’s a beautiful quote by Leonardo himself: “Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication” which we have used as the inspiration for the design of this room.
“We had fairly strict guidelines on how to display the actual pages themselves, so there are custom-built display cases with specific lighting and climate control.
“We’ve also got codices facsimiles on display so that visitors can see the scale of these incredible notebooks. Every page just opens up another chapter of his mind. We’re able to link the pages that we have on display back to other areas in the experience as well. For instance, one of the pages has a military sketch on it, and we then have that machine built in the experience.”
“We’re able to create these connections within the exhibition. That has become an important part of why we wanted to include the Codex pages, to make that real tangible link to the hand of Leonardo himself.”
Delving deeper into the Mona Lisa
The experience also includes a significant section honouring the work of renowned French optical engineer Pascal Cotte, who served as a consultant to the Louvre Museum, and his multispectral camera, which can scan from ultraviolet to infrared. His study reveals hitherto undiscovered information by removing the layers from the Mona Lisa.
The Mona Lisa Revealed gallery explores Cotte’s ongoing discoveries, which have taken over fifteen years to complete. It features the only exact 360-degree replica of the well-known painting in existence, created from his unique research, with Cotte’s 240,000,000-pixel multispectral camera revealing the painting’s front, back, and sides to the public.
Moynihan explains:
“Cotte was able to reveal several findings based on his imagery because he was able to photograph the entire light spectrum. That means we can see the full gamut, not only viewable by the human eye but underneath the surface as well.
“With all that imagery, we’ve been able to recreate a 3D Mona Lisa so you can see the reverse of the poplar wood panel. It is an interesting historical artefact in its own right, and it’s had this incredible history of where it’s been over the years. It was in hiding during the war, it was on display in the United States and Japan, and it was in Napoleon’s bathroom. So, throughout the years it’s picked up marks and scratches. And there’s been writing on the back of it that’s been added over the centuries as well.
“It’s a fascinating insight into one of the most iconic images.”
Technology as a tool to enhance the narrative
The exhibition is a high-tech environment, but the team hasn’t used technology for technology’s sake, stresses Moynihan:
“The artefacts themselves include interactive machine inventions. They’re very tactile and low-tech, so we’ve kind of got this balance between a high-tech immersive environment and these physical artefacts. We’re not there to celebrate the tech. We want our visitors to focus on the content and on what we are presenting.”
“We’ve introduced a VR piece of equipment as well, where we have a flight simulation over Florence. This plays on this idea of storytelling; Da Vinci’s story is all about flight, in some ways. His earliest memory was of a bird flying into his cot as a baby, and that’s what inspired his fascination with flight. He genuinely thought in his lifetime, humans would be flying. So, we’ve done the next best thing.”
Da Vinci never flew himself, of course, but he designed machines that he thought had the potential to fly.
“It’s taking the 21st-century technology that we’ve now got available to play on his story. That piece of equipment wouldn’t make sense unless it was relevant to the story, it doesn’t become part of the visitor experience. That’s our approach to technology in general. We use it if it tells a story or if it helps tell the story. If it doesn’t, it’s just a piece of equipment and anyone can do that.”
Leonardo da Vinci and Renaissance Italy
The exhibition also pays homage to Da Vinci’s contemporaries and the broader context of the Italian Renaissance. Visitors are treated to a journey through the artistic achievements of Giotto, Titian, Raphael, Michelangelo, and others, culminating in a crescendo at the Sistine Chapel.
This curated selection of artworks serves to contextualise Da Vinci’s contributions within the larger cultural and historical landscape of his time:
“We wanted to tell a story about the Italian Renaissance itself, which was where Leonardo lived and worked; that was his era and he was the master of it, but there was so much else going on,” explains Moynihan. “It’s such a rich history. We wanted to celebrate it and put into context the time and place of Leonardo as well.”
“I’d almost describe it as a love letter to Italy. It’s a tribute to the best of the Italian Renaissance, and we’ve paired it with an Italian opera score. We wanted to play on this idea of drama, and the highs and lows of the music to make an emotional connection with our visitors. So, it becomes quite a beautiful piece of content but it’s quite dramatic as well.
“It’s a separate piece of content from Leonardo’s story. We tell Leonardo’s story and then, as that story concludes, we take a look at the rest of the period. It’s a beautiful story of progression through the Italian Renaissance, showing the improvement of perspective and depiction of humanity. We’re also then supplementing that with imagery of where some of this artwork exists, for instance, churches and galleries in Italy.
“It becomes a celebration of Italy and the Italian Renaissance.”
A timeless subject
Concerning Leonardo da Vinci’s evergreen appeal and why people are still interested in him after all this time, Kirk says:
“He influenced so many different areas that are still relevant today. He was coming up with concepts and ideas 500 years ago that probably took another 300 or 400 years to become a reality. So, he’s portrayed as a visionary, and he is a global icon in that respect.”
There’s also a curiosity around Da Vinci as an individual, an element of mystery and intrigue which adds to this fascination, he adds:
“When we look at the Codex pages that exist, they believe that this is just a fraction of what he produced. So, people are intrigued as to what else he was thinking about. It’s one of those subject matters that we know has global mass appeal. It always has done and he’s relevant in any walk of life and society; he touches on science, technology, engineering, arts and so much more.
“There really is something for everyone in an exhibition on Leonardo.”
Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius on tour
Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius will debut this March at THE LUME Melbourne, Grande Experiences’ permanent digital gallery. It will then embark on a global tour.
“Bringing the Codex Atlanticus to Melbourne is a fantastic opportunity for us,” says Kirk. “People will have this rare chance to get up close and personal with them and see Leonardo’s ideas on display. This is going to be hugely inspiring and rewarding to share with the public.”
THE LUME is a 3000 square metre digital gallery, serving as an ideal launchpad for Grande’s productions before they go on to tour other venues around the world.
“Everything that we do has the ability to both be put on display at THE LUME and then be offered as a touring version. From a touring perspective, we’ve created an experience that is presented across 15 key theme areas. We’ve always approached our exhibitions in a modular way because each location and venue that we go to is very different from the next.
“This means we can tailor the experience to suit the venue and also potentially the approach that the local host wants to take. For example, they may want to focus on certain machine inventions. They may want to have a greater emphasis on the Mona Lisa Revealed component. Or, they may want to have a larger immersive gallery.”
Something for everyone
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the exhibition is its ability to transcend time and space, bridging the gap between the past and the present. As visitors immerse themselves in Da Vinci’s world, they are reminded of the enduring power of human creativity and innovation. In an age of rapid technological advancement, Da Vinci’s legacy serves as a timeless reminder of the boundless potential of the human mind.
“We find that with our Leonardo da Vinci exhibition, there is something to engage every visitor, no matter what age, no matter what background or education level,” says Kirk. “The way that an exhibition is presented ensures that everyone can have an important take home.
“One of the big ‘wow’ moments that people have when they visit the exhibition is that Leonardo’s most well-known for the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, but what they don’t realise is everything else that he was involved with and he had an influence on, from the first concepts and ideas for the car and the tank to early flying machines.
“People come away and say, ‘I had no idea that he had such an influence on a lot of things that we just take for granted these days.’ It all just came from one individual, which is quite spectacular.
As the exhibition tours cities around the world, it will continue to inspire and educate audiences, sparking conversations and igniting passions. Through the fusion of art, science, and technology, it invites visitors on a journey of discovery, inviting them to explore the wonders of the Renaissance and the brilliance of one of history’s greatest minds.
