Da Vinci, the Genius

After Bodies, a phenomenal exhibition unveiling the wondrous complexities of the human body, the VAM Design Center has brought Budapestians another knockout travelling display, this time inviting you to discover the power of the human mind that is the prolific creativity and brilliance of Leonardo, arguably the greatest brain the world has ever seen.

The collection, billed as the most comprehensive of its kind, is organized thematically in the cellar labyrinth of the VAM Design Center – wrap up warm, it’s quite nippy down there – and guides you through the whole oeuvre of the genius, displaying models of various size based on Leonardo’s manuscripts as well as videos, reproductions of his astoundingly accurate anatomical studies and his most famous paintings, such as The Last Supper and the Vitruvian Man. Way ahead of his time, Leonardo definitely had the Midas touch, creating working plans for helicopters, parachutes, hang-gliders, submarines, musical instruments, diving suits and although being a self-proclaimed pacifist, tanks and gun machines. Even NASA consulted his plans for robots… almost five centuries after his death. And, good news, some of the models you can actually touch and play with!

Probably the most exciting part of the exhibition is the Mona Lisa room, where as many as 25 secrets of the priceless painting are unfolded, based on the recent findings of Pascal Cotte. The French engineer was given special permission to scan the picture with the 240-megapixel camera he invented, which is capable of creating multispectrum images using 13 wavelengths, from ultraviolet to infrared. His images, pulling off centuries of grime and varnish, unravel the mystery of Mona Lisa’s eyebrows (or rather, lack of), the position of her arms and her incomparable smile as well as reveal the artist’s creative process and what his masterpiece looked like back in the day. If you’ve never understood what the big fuss around the painting is about, you’re bound to stand in awe, goggle-eyed, gazing at the Frenchman’s beautiful magnified pictures, showing subtleties you would never discover at the Louvre, peering through the bullet-proof glass, from a distance.

A fascinating exhibit that is well worth a visit but be warned, if you’re looking for tangling (read: Dan Brown-ish) conspiracy theories, this display will let you down.