LEONARDO – DÜRER. Drawings on Colored Ground. Part 2, Focus on Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci — a name synonymous with the artistic and intellectual revolution of the Renaissance. In our film, Ralph Gleis, Director General of the Albertina, and curator Achim Gnann engage in a dialogue about Leonardo’s masterful use of colored grounds — a medium that offered him unprecedented ways to convey light, corporeality, and emotional depth in his drawings.

The exhibition “Leonardo – Dürer. Renaissance Master Drawings on Colored Ground” presents 26 works by Leonardo from international collections, offering rare insight into the evolution of his technique. Through the use of blue, red, and other toned grounds, Leonardo’s perpetual experimentation becomes visible: blue evokes atmospheric distance and the metallic sheen of bronze in the Sforza equestrian monument studies; red, meanwhile, serves to model flesh tones with red chalk and delicate white highlights.

Gleis and Gnann compellingly illustrate how Leonardo pushed drawing beyond its traditional limits. His technical precision — such as his characteristic left-handed hatching that deliberately integrates the colored ground — reveals his profound reflection on light, materiality, and spirit.

Special focus is given to a study of an apostle, linked to Leonardo’s Last Supper. Although the figure does not appear directly in the fresco, the emotional tension of the scene is fully present: the body’s withdrawal, the raised finger demanding justice, the interplay of suspicion and fear. In this single sheet, Leonardo’s revolutionary approach is manifest: depicting not archetypes, but individuals, expressing inner emotional states.

Leonardo’s drawings are not mere preparatory works — they are independent testimonies to a new world view. They embody the core idea of Renaissance humanism: the human being as a sentient, thinking individual.
The exhibition also shows how colored papers became a favored medium among Italian artists of the time to enrich studies of the human body, draperies, and expressive heads with greater depth.

Our film follows the path of this silent revolution: the conscious expansion of drawing’s possibilities, the subtle exploration of light and color — and the deeper question of how art can make the inner life of humankind visible.

https://www.albertina.at

Interviewee: Ralp Gleis, Achim Gnann
Artworks by: Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer,

Copyright info: The audio and video recording has been made with personal permission of the artist.
Licensing: 0
Language(s): German
Subtitles: English
Producer: KA21 GmbH / CastYourArt
Production crew: Wolfgang Haas, Helmut Feier, Michael Rottmann
Production country: Austria, Vienna