It only opened a week ago, but it seems like everyone is already really excited about it. During our visit we were surprised to see a lot of people carefully reading the text and curiously touching some of the exhibits. Since Leonardo Da Vinci was a great inventor, especially with technical stuff, we’re lucky there are a few exhibits that can be touched and tinkered with. Many of them are even life-sized.
You can see the exhibition ‘Da Vinci – The Genius’ at The GR – Ljubljana Exhibition and Convention Centre (Gospodarsko razstavišče), almost in the centre of Ljubljana every day from 9.00 till 20.00. It will be set up till 12 May.
The big one on the left is an “aerial screw” for which Leonardo thought that four men on the central platform at the base would push the bars in front of them to turn the shaft. As the linen-covered blades spun around, lift would be generated. This machine, which most likely never would have flown, has been identified as the ancestor of today’s helicopter.
One of more interesting exhibits is a self-propelled car that is suggested to foreshadow the modern car. It was probably designed as a stage prop for a play at the court in Milan. The surprising fact is that on stage, the driver-less car would move without anyone pushing it.
He also conceived the idea of a submarine, “a ship to sink another ship,” drew sketches of the world’s first robot, and designed an interesting offensive weapon: an armoured vehicle capable of moving in any direction and bristling with cannons on all sides (on upper picture).
Da Vinci was a polymath, a true archetype of the Renaissance man. He is considered to be one of the greatest painters ever and his Mona Lisa one of the most famous and enigmatic portraits in history. The exhibition presents some of the new findings made with a multispectral camera. Pascal Cotte, a French scientist and engineer, has created a camera that uses a multispectral technique to see layers of the painting’s evolution. That’s how Pascal was able to reconstruct the Mona Lisa’s story. There is a good chance you will finally get an answer to where her eyebrows and eyelashes are!
More information: official web page.
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