In London, a Music Critic Takes in the Sights and Suds

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

LONDON — Even for a music critic eager to hear as much as possible while here, a day off is a good idea. Mine came on Sunday, a lovely day, with mild temperatures and only intermittent showers. 

In the afternoon I walked to Buckingham Palace to see a special exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery, “Leonardo da Vinci, Anatomist: Inside His Mind, Inside the Body.” It is the largest showing of Leonardo’s anatomical drawings ever, from the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. Among his staggering accomplishments, Leonardo was a pioneering scientist, one of the most important of all time. He produced thousands of pages of detailed drawings and extensive notes (written in his distinctive left-hand reverse script), and planned to collect them all into a major anatomical treatise. But he died in 1519, at 67, before organizing his work, and the papers were left unpublished and essentially unexamined for nearly 400 years.

The exhibition, which runs through Oct. 7, has drawings and notes from the two main periods during which he did these studies. As an artist who depicted the human body, Leonardo wanted to understand exactly how it worked, though sheer scientific curiosity drove him as well.

The first set of studies was made starting in the late 1480s, after he had moved from his native Tuscany to Milan. The drawings were mostly based on close examinations of the body, including a human skull, which he cut apart and analyzed.

But in 1507, Leonardo resumed his work with the cooperation of a professor of anatomy at the University of Pavia, just outside Milan. Over the next few years he was able to dissect corpses, perhaps as many as 30, including, it would appear, a miscarried fetus. For scientists today, the fascination is not with what Leonardo got wrong but how much he got uncannily right. During my visit I came upon a couple of awestruck medical students.

The exhibit is also a collection of staggering artworks. The drawings are obviously encased for safety. But if you get nose-to-the-glass close to them, you can see every stroke, most of them made in reddish-brown ink on faded white paper.

Leonardo could not help being swayed by some of the anatomical misunderstandings of his day, especially regarding the female reproductive system. And like all scientists of that era, he never understood the system of  blood circulation. How could he? There were no microscopic ways to detect capillaries, no understanding of blood cells. But according to the commentaries posted at the exhibit, Leonardo was close to fathoming the way circulation worked when he died.

By 9 at night, after a bit of writing (well, almost a day off), I was ready for dinner and headed to an inviting pub near my hotel, the Barley Mow on Horseferry Road, a quaint street in Westminster, not far from the abbey. With England facing off against Italy in the quarterfinals of Euro 2012 soccer, the European soccer (er, football) championship, the street was almost deserted, but the pub was packed with sports fans, mostly men, desperate for an English victory.

When I walked in and made my way to the bar, someone muttered, “Go back to America.” More than being hurt by the rudeness I was miffed at being so easily pegged. Anyway, most of the men were gregarious and friendly, and consumed by the game, which, as the world knows by now, England lost in crushing fashion, in a tie-breaking round of penalty kicks.

Alas, there was no food to be had. The pub had stopped serving dinner at 7:30. 

This was a time for serious beer-drinking, so I did my part.

The Monday morning headline in The Sun said it all: “Anyone for Tennis?,” referring to the start of Wimbledon. As a passionate tennis fan, I can’t believe that I am in London for the start of Wimbledon but otherwise engaged. Not that I could have gotten into the tournament if I were free.

And I can console myself on Monday night with a new production of Berlioz’s epic opera “Les Troyens” at Covent Garden. I do have a great job.