JAPAN: Leonardo Da Vinci's "Annunciation" arrives at Tokyo museum after protests in Italy

As Japanese museum officials held their breaths, a Leonardo Da Vinci painting whose loan set off an uproar in Italy was eased gently into place on a Tokyo museum wall on Friday (March 16) by white-gloved workers. Da Vinci's "Annunciation" arrived in Japan this week from Florence, Italy, to be installed in a glass case in an air-conditioned, earthquake-proof special exhibition room at the Tokyo National Museum. The painting will be displayed for three months as the centrepiece of the "Italian Spring" campaign in Japan -- a series of exhibitions and events celebrating Italian art and products. "I am so relieved to see the artwork installed in our glass case without a hitch," said Yoichi Inoue, curator at the Tokyo National Museum. Organizers of the event wouldn't say how much they paid for the loan of the painting. Earlier this week, an Italian senator chained himself to the gates of Florence's Uffizi Gallery to protest the transfer of the Annunciation, saying that the painting, which had only left the Uffizi three times between 1935 and 1940, was too precious to send overseas. Some 300 politicians and art experts wrote to Italy's Culture Minister Francesco Utelli asking him to stop the transfer, a move that was also opposed by the Uffizi's director. But the culture minister has dismissed the protest as a publicity stunt. Italian Ambassador to Japan Mario Bova played down concerns over the transfer, saying that the environment in which the painting will be kept for the next three months is "perfect." "The reply comes from this view. The painting is in perfect and perfect conditions, technologies are absolutely adequate, no problem at all," said Bova. "Then, I think that people who were concerned can be absolutely calm, tranquil," he said. The Annunciation, painted between 1472 and 1475 when Leonardo was in his 20s, depicts the Angel Gabriel revealing that she was pregnant to the Virgin Mary. Weighing about 40 kilograms, the painting measures 217 by 98 centimetres. In the 1970s, the same Tokyo museum hosted Leonardo's best-known masterpiece, "The Mona Lisa", on loan from the Louvre.

ITN Source | March 17, 2007

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