REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE LEONARDO DA VINCI ‘CODEX LEICESTER’ EXHIBITION
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE LEONARDO DA VINCI 'CODEX LEICESTER' EXHIBITION CHESTER BEATTY LIBRARY
Good afternoon, everybody,
Is mór an pléisiúir dom bheith anseo libh inniu agus ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl díbh as an chaoin-chuireadh agus as fáilte fíorchaoin.
Thank you for that warm welcome and thanks to Chairman Tom Hardiman for the invitation to the opening of this dazzling exhibition with its remarkable insight into the mind of a genius who exhausts our superlatives – the artist, scientist, inventor and thinker, Leonardo da Vinci.
What a great honour for the Chester Beatty Library, and for Ireland, to have been entrusted with such a rare and precious manuscript as the 'Codex Leicester', one of the famous series of manuscripts of scientific speculation by Leonardo, evidence of his enormous, intellectual curiosity and his scholarly application to the task of unlocking nature’s secrets.
Exactly five hundred years ago, Leonardo was sitting in his room in Milan putting sepia ink to the linen pages that we are privileged to see here in Dublin. Back then he addressed his words and thoughts to ‘the reader’. I wonder did it cross his mind that he was addressing you and I half a millennium later? That we are here at all is thanks to the generosity of Bill and Melinda Gates who, having bought the manuscript in the 1990s, have made it available for display internationally from time to time. It has not been seen publicly for two years and, quite rightly, the Gates family insist on the most exhaustive level of protection and care, so it is greatly to the credit of the staff here that the Chester Beatty Library is hosting the manuscript in Ireland.
Somewhere in the text of the Codex, Leonardo remarks that ‘the more detail you write … the more you will confuse the reader’. I think I should take that as a sensible hint to desist from trying to describe either the content or the historic significance of the Codex but it is worth remarking that this amazing man anticipated many discoveries by centuries and he had little patience with those who refused to budge from ancient authority or tradition despite the evidence of their own eyes and senses. It is reassuring, mind you, to see that he was not always correct in his speculations but at least they always emanated from his rigorous application of the available evidence.
I am not sure what he would have made of modern opinion polls, this man of detailed observation, of patient impatience, of desire to know truth rather than story, but I am sure that this exhibition of his work, his craft, will be overwhelmingly endorsed by the public who will vote with their feet. Here they will find a treasury, rich, rare and fascinating – the thought life of a man, the very embodiment of the Renaissance, who, had he lived all these five hundred years, would never have exhausted his curiosity or finished all the projects he had in mind and in hand at the time of his death.
The 'Codex Leicester' is of course the jewel in the crown of this wonderful exhibition. Thanks to the generosity of Trinity College Library and Cambridge University we have a chance to see the printed books and manuscripts of writers that Leonardo was familiar with, Pliny the Elder, Dante, Lucan, St Thomas Aquinas and Quintilian. And the Chester Beatty Library has also drawn on its own legendary collection introducing us in particular to the peace loving Al-Jazari, one of the great masters of the management of water in the Islamic world and who, unlike Leonardo, was never tempted to use his knowledge for the development of military machines.
A particular delight is the contribution to the Exhibition from the Edward Worth Library in Doctor Steevens' Hospital. The trustees and the librarian, Dr W J McCormack, are greatly to be congratulated for adding a special dimension with works from the likes of Petrarch, S. Benedict of Nursia (founder of the Benedictine Order and Monte Cassino) and Albertus Magnus.
Without sponsorship an exhibition and opportunity like this is almost impossible to contemplate, so our thanks to the sponsors and to the Director, Dr Michael Ryan and the staff of the library. Their ambition for Ireland, their hard work and their pursuit of nothing less than excellence has given us this landmark exhibition and catalogue.
Da Vinci’s ambition to push out the boundaries of human knowledge, his appetite for research, his magnificent canon of artistic and scientific works are matched only by his generosity, for in that word ‘reader’ written all those centuries ago, he invites us into his mind, into our world and into a kind of covenant with him that the questioning will continue, the search will go on. It is not so much that he towers over us, overwhelming us with the sheer magnitude of his brainpower, though he surely does all of that, but rather that he asks us not just to be passive spectators who merely marvel, but to be active investigators like him, enthralled not by his own brilliance but by the world around him.
Tá gach súil agam go mbainfear taitneamh agus oiliúint as an dtaispeántas seo.
Ár moladh agus ár mbuíochas don Leabharlann agus iad sin a bhaineann leis.
It now gives me great pleasure to declare this exhibition open.