Leonardo da Vinci at the Louvre: the exhibition of the century

du 24 Octobre 2019 au 24 Février 2020
Leonardo da Vinci exhibition
The year 2019, the fifth centenary of Leonardo da Vinci's death in France, is particularly significant for the Louvre, which has the world's largest collection of Leonardo's paintings and 22 drawings. In this year of commemoration, the museum finds the opportunity to gather around the five essential paintings it preserves, as many of the artist's paintings as possible, in order to confront them with a wide choice of drawings as well as a small but significant collection of paintings and sculptures from the master's environment.
Learn more
Exhibition Catalogues

Exhibition catalogue Leonardo da Vinci

MX637721
  • € 25
French catalogue

Official catalogue of the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the Louvre Museum from October 24th 2019 to February 24th 2020.
The year 2019, the fifth centenary of Leonardo da Vinci's death in France, is particularly significant for the Louvre, which has the world's largest collection of Leonardo's paintings and 22 drawings.

This unpublished retrospective of Leonardo's career as a painter shows how much he put painting above all else and how his investigation of the world, which he called "the science of painting", was the instrument of his art, whose ambition was nothing less than to bring life to his paintings.

The result of more than ten years of work, including the renewed scientific examination of the Louvre's paintings and the restoration of three of them, allowing a better understanding of his artistic practice and pictorial technique, the exhibition also clarifies Leonardo's biography by including all the archival documents. It portrays a man and an artist of extraordinary freedom.

480 pages / 380 illustrations
Co-publishing Hazan / Louvre éditions
More Details
" Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. So we must stretch ourselves to the very limits of human possibility. Anything less is a sin against both God and man. " Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci, the greatest of all painters

His immense fame over most of the past five hundred years has been based on his achievements as a painter and a handful of works that have been considered among the most beautiful masterpieces ever created.

An inspiring work of art

Many artists have paid tribute to the master by reproducing his most famous works through chalcography. Today, the Ateliers d'art are the guardians of this little-known collection.

Final prints!

The exhibition Leonardo da Vinci is an opportunity for the chalcography workshop of the Réunion des musées nationaux - Grand Palais to print the last ten engravings from a selection of copper plates from the Louvre's Chalcography engraved by the Count of Caylus after the Tuscan master's drawings.

A large collection of drawings

Vinci was not a prolific painter, but he was as a draftsman, filling his journals with small sketches and detailed drawings in order to keep track of everything that had caught his attention.

Musée du Louvre editions

Discover the Leonard de Vinci selection of the Musée du Louvre editions, which has been involved since 1988 in one of the museum's main vocations, namely the dissemination of knowledge about its collections, a universal heritage that covers eight thousand years of history.

Many publications

Artist, show organizer, scientist, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, urban planner, botanist, musician, poet, philosopher and writer are all labels that stick to Leonardo da Vinci. Many books are available to learn more about this multi-faceted artist.

All our partnerships

Find all the articles resulting from our collaborations with brands of know-how.

Louvre X Gangzai

Simple and unpretentious, Gangzai brand objects bring pep to our interiors with bright and playful colors and strong graphics.

The Gien faience factory

Symbol of the know-how of a French heritage that draws on its roots and is constantly renewed, the Gien faience factory has created this collection inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's famous Codex.

Petrusse and Brochier

The Maison Brochier Soieries, specialist in silk printing of masterpieces and the Petrusse house, creator of stoles, offer these items as a tribute to Leonardo da Vinci's drawings.

Codex Jewellery Line

This line of jewellery has been developed from the artist's famous Codex drawings.

Bottega Tifernate

Discover the works of Bottega Tifernate, the art shop of Città di Castello in Italy which reproduces the works of the great masters of the past in fresco

Rubinato

Founded in 1957 in Treviso, Italy, by a passionate enthusiast of antique writing tools, the brand still manufactures a wide range of high-quality writing accessories for refined enthusiasts.

Italeri

The famous Italian model-making brand presents these machines, faithful reproductions of the inventions present in Leonardo da Vinci's Codex.

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

24 October 2019 20 February 2020 Exhibition has ended
The year 2019, the fifth centenary of Leonardo da Vinci's death in France, is particularly significant for the Louvre, which has the world's largest collection of Leonardo's paintings and 22 drawings. In this year of commemoration, the museum finds the opportunity to gather around the five essential paintings it preserves, namely the Virgin of the Rocks, the Beautiful Ferronnière, the Mona Lisa - which remains in the room where it is usually exhibited -, the Saint John the Baptist and the Saint Anne, as many of the artist's paintings as possible, in order to confront them with a wide choice of drawings and a limited but significant number of paintings and sculptures from the master's environment.
Discover all products