Jonathan Jones asks if the Royal Collection is the best place for our art to be kept.
Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical drawings are the most compelling works of art in Britain. Many are on show in this year's Edinburgh festival, in an exhibition at the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
When I say these drawings are the greatest works of art in the British isles, I really mean it. Leonardo was both an artist and a scientist. It's in his intellectual-yet-imaginative, inquisitive-yet-humane studies of the human body that his visual genius perfectly complements his passion for knowledge.
So the exhibition in the Queen's Gallery at Holyroodhouse is an encounter with a sublime brain. Sadly, it is also a spectacle of absurdity. These drawings and many more by Leonardo belong to the Queen and will be passed on to her successors, right down to baby George and beyond. Why, except as a gross display of inherited wealth, do they need them?
Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical drawings are the most compelling works of art in Britain. Many are on show in this year's Edinburgh festival, in an exhibition at the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
When I say these drawings are the greatest works of art in the British isles, I really mean it. Leonardo was both an artist and a scientist. It's in his intellectual-yet-imaginative, inquisitive-yet-humane studies of the human body that his visual genius perfectly complements his passion for knowledge.
So the exhibition in the Queen's Gallery at Holyroodhouse is an encounter with a sublime brain. Sadly, it is also a spectacle of absurdity. These drawings and many more by Leonardo belong to the Queen and will be passed on to her successors, right down to baby George and beyond. Why, except as a gross display of inherited wealth, do they need them?