From May 15 on, the day of the official opening (by invitation only), the Castello Sforzesco will become the big city stage consecrated to the genius of Leonardo. The ground floor of the Sforza’s fortress will be transformed into the heart of the celebrations dedicated to the five hundred years from the death of the genius from Vinci, which occurred in Amboise, France, on May 2, 1519 between Francis I’s arms, as the legend goes. That day, Rome has reserved for itself the national ceremony scheduled at the Academy of Lincei, but then it will be Milan’s turn to trump its cards. First of all, “Leonardo ever seen,” the sequence of three exhibitions at the Castello Sforzesco in a path including the Sala delle Asse, the Armory, the ducal Chapel and a train in the Scarlioni’s room.
These days, the works are all focused on the spectacular re-opening’s tuning of the Sala delle Asse (Planks’ Room), closed for renovation since 2013, made temporarily accessible for only six months during Expo 2015, and in May presented for the first time free from the scaffolding and readable in its entirety. The whole world will finally be able to admire the extraordinary discoveries of these years, that is, the stretches of wall covered by wooden planks and never investigated before in spite of the repeated restorations done in the centuries. There, under thirteen layers of plastering that got overlapped in more than three hundred years, thanks to the restoration carried out under the supervision of Florence’s Hard Stones’ Factory, mysterious drawings of landscapes, tree trunks, branches, leaves have been discovered. Now visitors will be able to have a different perception of the Room, much more similar to how Leonardo had conceived it on Milan’s duke, Ludovico the Moor, request: a landscape covered by a pergola painted on the ceiling and on the walls, in optical continuity with the garden visible at that time from the windows. In short, an enchanted place, designed both for entertainment (because it is pleasantly cool in the summer) and to lavishly represent the power of Milan’s lord, named duke by Maximilian I, the emperor praised by the writings in the arboreal roof intertwined with branches of white mulberry, morus alba, a symbol of the Moor.
“With all our modesty and caution about the Leonardian attribution of the drawings brought to light during the restoration, this is the real news of the year dedicated to Leonardo,” says Claudio Salsi, the director of the Castle’s Superintendance area and of the historical and archaeological museums, assisted in the complex organization of the events’ palimpsest by Ilaria De Palma. “We won’t draw any conclusion also because the restoration is not over yet and on next February, we will begin new surveys on the walls and around the windows. But all the scholars who have so far viewed the results were impressed”.
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