The Ringling Welcomes International Expert on Leonardo da Vinci

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art announces author Martin Kemp as part of their Viewpoint lecture series. Kemp will present Living with Leonardo April 4, 2020, at 10:30 a.m. Having been involved in the “Leonardo business” for over 50 years, Martin Kemp is uniquely placed to discuss the resulting sanity and insanity surrounding the cultural phenomenon of Leonardo da Vinci. The talk will look at selected incidents that involve insights into how Leonardo’s mind worked and how he is received in the present. The topics are drawn from Kemp’s book of the same title.

Martin Kemp was trained in Natural Sciences and Art History at Cambridge University and the Courtauld Institute, London. His 30+ books include The Science of Art, Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (Yale), and The Human Animal in Western Art and Science (Chicago). He has published and broadcast extensively on Leonardo da Vinci, including the prize-winning Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvelous Works of Nature and Man and Leonardo (both Oxford). His Christ to Coke: How image becomes icon (Oxford) looks at 11 representatives of types of icons across a wide range of public imagery. He wrote regularly for Nature, the essays for which have been published as Visualizations and developed in Seen and Unseen (both Oxford) in which his concept of “structural intuitions” is explored. Recent books include Art in History (Profile Books) and Mona Lisa with Giuseppe Pallanti (Oxford). Living with Leonardo (Thames and Hudson) was published in March 2018. In 2019, his five books on Leonardo include a co-authored book on Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi and an edition of the Codex Leicester with Domenico Laurenza. He has collaborated the vocal ensemble, I Fagiolini, on a series of concerts and a recording entitled Leonardo – Shaping the Invisible

He has been a trustee of the National Galleries of Scotland, The Victoria and Albert Museum and British Museum. He has curated and co-curated a series of exhibitions on Leonardo and other themes, including Ca 1492 at the National Gallery in Washington, Spectacular Bodies at the Hayward Gallery in London, Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2006 and Seduced: Sex and Art from Antiquity to Now, Barbican Art Gallery London, 2007.

The cost for the program is $10.00 and $5.00 for members. Tickets may be obtained at https://www.ringling.org/events/viewpoint-living-leonardo or by calling 941-358-3180.