Damien Hirst and Da Vinci in Leeds

Leeds plays host to two artists at completely opposite ends of the art world.

Damien Hirst homecoming announced for Yorkshire sculpture festival
The inaugural Yorkshire Sculpture International festival on Wednesday announced plans to display in Leeds and Wakefield provocative works such as The Virgin Mother, a 10-metre high surgically flayed pregnant woman, and Black Sheep with Golden Horns, part of Hirst’s animals in formaldehyde series.

Hirst grew up in Leeds and followed in the giant footsteps of Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore by going to Leeds Arts University, then called Jacob Kramer College.

He recalled happy, important visits to Leeds Art Gallery. “I never thought I’d ever be famous or considered important or anything like that, but seeing paintings by people like John Hoyland, Francis Bacon, Peter Blake and Eduardo Paolozzi – alongside the aquarium and natural history stuff in the City Museum – opened my mind to art.”

Meanwhile, at Leeds Art Gallery currently…

Leonardo da Vinci: A life in drawing
The Royal Collection holds the finest surviving group of Leonardo’s drawings – more than 550 sheets that have been together since Leonardo’s death, acquired by King Charles II around 1670. As paper is damaged by light, these drawings cannot be on permanent display.

So to mark this anniversary, we are collaborating with 12 museums and galleries to stage simultaneous exhibitions of Leonardo’s drawings across the United Kingdom from 1 February – 6 May.

The exhibition
12 of Leonardo’s sculptural drawings are presented at the home of sculpture at Leeds Art Gallery. Although none of Leonardo’s sculptures themselves survive, the drawings on display provide an unparalleled insight into his investigations and thinking as an artist, and his reach across parallel areas such as anatomy as well as proposed sculptures and his design for the monumental Sforza monument.

Update 16/04/2019

And that story about one of his paintings is still rumbling on.

London’s National Gallery defends inclusion of Salvator Mundi in Leonardo show after criticism in new book
If Lewis is correct, then the consensus was that only part of the painting was by the master, with the remainder presumably done by his assistants. Yet in Syson’s National Gallery catalogue entry, the painting is unequivocally attributed to Leonardo and described as “an autograph work”. Exhibition curators are fully entitled to make their own judgements, but it is surprising that Syson’s entry does not at least allude to the suggestion by other scholars that parts of the picture may have been painted by assistants, even if he went on to dismiss this idea.