Leonardo at 500

Interesting discussion at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival looking at Leonardo da Vinci on the 500th anniversary of his death.

It began with the bother Michael and Stephen Farthing talking about their book  on Leonardo’s anatomical drawings. Michael is a surgeon and Stephen an artist so they had brought their different expertise to the work. They talked about Leonardo’s ideas to publish an anatomical text book and how the pictures were largely forgotten in the Royal Collection until William Hunter, the first professor of anatomy at the Royal Academy brought attention to it. They talked about how accurate the drawings were and how close Leonardo came to changing anatomical knowledge.

Ben Lewes then talked about his book on the Salvator Mundi and looked at the controversy around its authenticity. It was initially bought at an auction in New Orleans for about $1000 but later sold for $450m. The author had researched who the original seller was and showed us slides of the different stages of the restoration as well as pictures which related to it which may also be the original Leonardo.