Universal Leonardo.(Leonardo da Vinci )

This autumn a number of exhibitions devoted to Leonardo da Vinci are being held throughout Europe. There is no obvious reason, such as an anniversary, but rather a desire on the part of the Council of Europe to promote Leonardo's legacy through exhibitions in six cities.

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Oxford is host to five of the shows. In the University of Oxford Botanic Garden Leonardo's Plants provides the visitor with examples of the live species studied and drawn by the artist. This presentation is open until September 30. The four other exhibitions in Oxford will run through November 5. At the Ashmolean Museum, Imagining Leonardo focuses on how some of Leonardo's drawings have been visualized and interpreted by artists and collectors. Christ Church Picture Gallery will show the collection of an eighteenth-century military officer and collector, General John Guise. Entitled Leonardo and Milan: Drawings from the Guise Collection, it highlights a group of drawings by Leonardo and many by his pupils and followers.

The well-known fresco The Last Supper, on the refectory walls of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, has inspired many copies. One of them, a canvas attributed to Giampietrino (w. c. 1495-1549), is being loaned to Magdalen College, Oxford, for an exhibition entitled The Last Supper from Leonardo's Circle. Finally, at the Museum of the History of Science Leonardo and the Mathematical Arts includes scientific instruments of the type that Leonardo would have used to make his many innovative discoveries in the fields of astronomy, time-telling, surveying, and drawing.

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London's offering is at the Victoria and Albert Museum from September 14 until January 7, 2007. Entitled Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment and Design, it features sixty drawings from British ...