An artist who was known for taking notes in mirror writing was recently celebrated in Mumbai, where his boundless creativity found a fitting stage in the city’s dynamic spirit. The City of Dreams became an unwitting participant in an intricate dance of art and technology, memory and imagination. This exhibition was a haunting encounter with the mind of a man who, five centuries later, still refuses to be bound by the limits of time or place. Each visitor became a part of something greater, pulled into a world where the past was not just remembered, but resurrected. And throughout it all, a carefully crafted soundscape by a brilliant music producer weaved its way through the exhibition, so perfectly attuned to Leonardo’s restless genius that it felt as if the very music could have only been composed to carry his vision into the present.
The “Leonardo da Vinci Genius Exhibition,” which opened on November 30, 2024, at the Nesco Center, ran for two weeks, leaving an indelible mark on Mumbaikars and all who experienced it.
The “Leonardo da Vinci Genius Exhibition,” which opened on November 30, 2024 at the Nesco Center, ran for two weeks leaving an indelible mark on Mumbaikars and all who experienced it.
Leonardo da Vinci, born in the spring of 1452, in a small Tuscan town, was not a man of his time. He was a man untethered—his thoughts flying like birds across centuries, his hands forever sketching the contours of an impossible future. His was a world of soft light and shadow, of precise dissections and wild dreams. The “Mona Lisa”, with her quiet, knowing smile, and “The Last Supper”, fractured by time and devotion, were but the most visible edges of his genius. The Mona Lisa is displayed in the Denon Wing of the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, where it attracts millions of visitors each year. The Last Supper is housed at the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. Beyond these two world-famous masterpieces, his notebooks swirled with intricate sketches and profound ideas—thoughts of flight, the human form, and machines that could weep or wage war, revealing a mind that reached far beyond the canvas.
Leonardo da Vinci’s painting was also celebrated, perhaps wrongfully, in the Summer Paris Olympics 2024. An art installation titled La Dernière Course (The Last Race) ignited a firestorm of controversy by twisting the sacred into the profane with its bold reimagining of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” What was once a tranquil communion of faith was transformed into a raw, chaotic tableau, where Olympic athletes, their faces twisted by ambition and exhaustion, surrounded a table not of bread and wine, but of plastic bottles, energy bars, and corporate logos. At its center, a gold medal—symbolizing human obsession and vanity—replaced the sacred chalice, mocking the very notion of grace. Some hailed the piece as a necessary provocation, challenging the intersection of sport, commerce, and spirituality, while others decried it as a grotesque desecration of one of history’s most revered images.
Meanwhile, Mumbaikars got to see Leonardo’s timeless visions revived in a radically different way. Here, the “Leonardo da Vinci Genius Exhibition” offered a profound counterpoint to the spectacle of the Paris installation. Instead of commercialized ambition, the exhibition brought Da Vinci’s genius to life through cutting-edge technology. AI-powered projections animated his masterpieces, turning static art into dynamic experiences. The “Vitruvian Man” spun, arms and legs outstretched, as though wrestling with the very geometry that once defined him. The “Mona Lisa” fractured into digital fragments, each piece catching the light like a thousand secrets, only to reassemble, her smile as enigmatic as ever. While “La Dernière Course” provoked with its critique of modern obsessions, Mumbai’s exhibition invited its audience into a space where Leonardo’s work transcended the material, encouraging contemplation of the infinite potential of the human mind, untouched by the fleeting nature of fame or commercialism.
But it was not just light and image that carried his genius forward—it was sound. British DJ Sasha, modern bard of bass lines and silken rhythms, wove music that seemed to rise from Leonardo’s own thoughts. From the lilting grace of “Mona Lisa’s Smile” to the mechanical grind of “The Flying Machine”, Sasha’s compositions were not mere accompaniments but echoes of Leonardo’s mind—fragments of melody and machine, reason and reverie.
Sasha’s “Da Vinci Genius” is a masterful blend of electronic innovation and classical depth, serving as the soundtrack to the immersive Leonardo da Vinci Genius Exhibition. Tracks like “Machines” hum with mechanical precision, channeling da Vinci’s visionary sketches of flight, while “Mona Lisa’s Smile” envelops listeners in ethereal tones that mirror the enigmatic allure of the famed portrait. Each of the 17 tracks in the album is a seamless fusion of Renaissance ideals and modern soundscapes, creating an evocative tribute to a mind that was centuries ahead of its time. Sasha’s ability to translate da Vinci’s genius into music gives the album a timeless quality.
There is a moment in the installation when the digital rendering of “The Last Supper splinters,” scattering apostles, bread, and wine across the walls, only to reassemble, pulsing with Sasha’s music. In that fleeting instant, it feels as if da Vinci himself has reached across centuries, his hand blurring the lines between the sacred and the synthetic, the Renaissance and the present. The result is a striking synthesis of art, technology, and music—a vivid reminder of the boundless nature of human ingenuity and the timeless resonance of innovation.
And yet, the exhibition was not content to linger in the luminous glow of Leonardo’s art. It dared to delve into the darker recesses of his notebooks, into the grim sketches of war machines and the elegant blueprints for inventions that might have rendered him both hero and heretic. Here were his flying machines, his hydraulic systems, his dreams made flesh—or at least wood and wire. And then, as if to ground him, to remind us of his humanity, there were his words. Over 20,000 of them, scrawled across the walls like echoes, exposing a man consumed by questions that still haunt us: Who are we? How do we live?
Mumbai’s art lovers, accustomed to the quiet reverence of museums, found themselves part of something far more visceral. This was no gallery to be tiptoed through. This was Leonardo’s world, and it demanded to be felt. The exhibition didn’t simply ask its visitors to admire—it urged them to inhabit. For those two shimmering weeks, the Renaissance was no longer a distant dream. It danced in Mumbai, wrapped in the glow of AI and the pulse of electronic music. The city, forever on the edge of collapse and creation, found itself perfectly in step with Leonardo’s restless genius.
The extraordinary fusion of past and present, Leonardo’s boundless genius colliding with a film city that has never known boundaries. A city long known as a crucible of creativity and imagination, Mumbai has produced its own cinematic masterpieces, constantly expanding the realms of possibility through the art of storytelling. Here, in the throbbing heart of the city, Leonardo’s fractured visions and flying machines soared once again—not as relics, but as living, breathing possibilities. And perhaps that is the true secret: Leonardo da Vinci was not just a man of the Renaissance. He was a man of every age, a visionary not of his time, but of all times—our time, and the future we have yet to imagine. The exhibition resonated deeply with Mumbaikars, capturing the city’s vibrant energy and creative pulse. As it prepares to travel to Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata, and Hyderabad within the next to years, it will continue to inspire and provoke, carrying with it the legacy of a man who transcended time itself.
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