The exhibition Unveiling Leonardo. Leonardo’s codices and the work of the Commissione Vinciana, promoted by the Commissione Vinciana in collaboration with the National Library in Rome (October-December 2019; National Library, Rome; curator: Domenico Laurenza), allows the general public to see the results of work carried out on the first printed editions of Leonardo’s manuscripts and drawings. The Commissione Vinciana began this titanic enterprise back in 1905 in the very year of its foundation. Many of the leading exponents of Italian culture of this period took part in the initiative, from the Lincean Gilberto Govi to the philosopher Giovanni Gentile, from Giuseppe Favaro to Adolfo Venturi and Pietro Toesca.
The Commission’s work is attested by glass photographic plates and prints made with pioneering techniques of the time, by manuscript transcriptions, studies, autograph letters, reports and various notes, which form the Commission’s Archive housed in the National Library of Rome. The exhibition aims to evoke the frenetic nature of the Commission’s work, the research, photographic campaign and publication of the works by Leonardo scattered across the world which, for the first time, were unveiled to readers and scholars according to rigorous philological criteria. By reconstructing the work of the Commission, the exhibition will at the same time introduce the general public to the fascinating but problematic world of Leonardo’s manuscripts.