Leonardo da Vinci’s creations will leap off the page when Da Vinci Machines: Inventions Brought to Life opens this month across City of Moreton Bay museums.
From 8 August to 2 November, the free, interactive exhibition showcases 60 of da Vinci’s inventions, recreated from his 500-year-old sketches by artisans from the Museum of Leonardo da Vinci in Florence, Italy.
Director of Artisans of Florence Tom Rizzo said there would be plenty to surprise visitors.
“Firstly, Leonardo was not just a great artist, but an incredible engineer, scientist, botanist and designer,” Tom said. “I think people are often astonished by the breadth of his work and the many fields of study he innovated. But, in particular, visitors often marvel at the innumerable designs that we recognise from modern life, such as helicopters, hang gliders, parachutes, the tanks, bicycle and many more.
“It’s painstaking work to trawl through the 25,000 technical drawings left to us by Leonardo da Vinci, especially considering that he wrote backwards in what is known as mirror script, which means that unless you are skilled at reading his calligraphy, you need a mirror to be able to read it.”
Exhibition Highlights and Special Events
Opening events will take place from Friday, 8 August to Sunday, 10 August, at all City of Moreton Bay museums.
At Redcliffe Museum on Friday, 8 August from 3.30pm to 6.30pm, families can enjoy a UQ Science demonstration and a talk by Tom, who will share behind-the-scenes insights. He’ll discuss the challenges of making the replicas, including how some of da Vinci’s works had been lost or miscatalogued after being left to da Vinci’s best friend’s son, Orazio, who compiled them into themed notebooks.
“In the case of the aerial screw (da Vinci’s famous helicopter prototype), our artisans discovered the page detailing a cross-section of the helicopter’s hidden launch mechanism in a completely different book to the aerial screw itself!” he said.
Tom said his favourite invention was da Vinci’s robot drummer, which took decades to research and reconstruct.
“In the process, we discovered that his robot was not intended to be a soldier (a common misconception among academics) but actually a musician,” he said. “We also uncovered a special mechanism that drives the robot’s rhythm that has not been used elsewhere in mechanics.”
The exhibition also includes Decoding Da Vinci at Pine Rivers Heritage Museum on Saturday, 16 August, where visitors can try mirror-writing and explore hidden codes, and a talk on Thursday, 28 August linking the Mephisto World War I tank to da Vinci’s wooden war machine. A life-size replica hang glider will also be on display at North Lakes Library.
More free activities are planned for the September school holidays.
For full exhibition details and to book, visit mbrc.link/da-vinci-machines25
Da Vinci Machines: Inventions Brought to Life is presented by City of Moreton Bay, and sponsored by Artisans of Florence International, Niccolai Teknoart Frenze and Sew Eurodrive.
Da Vinci Machines: Inventions brought to life
- Opening weekend: 8-10 August
- Redcliffe Museum, 75 Anzac Avenue, Redcliffe
- Pine Rivers Heritage Museum, Old Petrie Town, 901-949 Dayboro Road, Whiteside
- Bribie Island Seaside Museum, 1 South Esplanade, Bongaree
- Hang Glider display at North Lakes Library, 10 The Corso, North Lakes
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