When you hear the name Leonardo da Vinci you automatically think “Genius” with a capital “G.” Such Genius that he seemingly came from nowhere to walk among us. Science fiction writers love to imagine Leonardo as a brother from another planet or a time-traveling tourist from the future. The High Museum of Art’s exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Hand of the Genius (open until February 21, 2010) restores the Genius to his own place and time without diminishing him, as if that were possible. We may stand upon the shoulders of giants such as da Vinci, but da Vinci had shoulders to stand on as well. This exhibition gives names to those guiding hands that helped da Vinci reach his first heights.

Of all the arts that Leonardo mastered, sculpture seems the last one in the list. As Gary M. Radke points out in the catalogue, Leonardo da Vinci and the Art of Sculpture, much of that is due to the fact that Leonardo’s “sculptural ambitions—sometimes bigger than life, always pushing the limits of expression—largely remained objects of his imagination.” Politics, war, and sometimes just the technical limitations of the time often conspired to keep Leonardo’s sculptures on the drawing board. This exhibition gathers together many of those drawings to recreate the visions in da Vinci’s head that he never got to touch with his own hand.

It’s hard to make us look at an artist such as Leonardo in a new light, but this exhibition manages to do so by approaching all of his art from the perspective of sculpture. The amazing detail and texture of Leonardo’s drapery in his drawings and paintings finds its roots in sculpture. In addition to copying ancient statuary, as most artists of the time did, Leonardo would create his own clay models and then cover them with plaster-dipped rags. After physically arranging the folds with his hands, Leonardo would draw them. “The extraordinary range of grays and subtle transitions” in the drawings made from these models “document and reveal Leonardo’s fine touch,” Radke writes, “as both a modeler and a draftsman, a man for whom the simplest and humblest of materials could reveal a world full of fascinating variety and detail.” Edward Hopper once said that all he wanted to do was paint sunlight falling on a bare wall. You can imagine da Vinci saying the same think of fabric covering the human form.

Leonardo got his start studying under Andrea del Verrocchio, a master sculptor and painter. Donatello, another great sculptor, had just died when Leonardo came to Verrocchio’s workshop around 1464. Verrocchio may have apprenticed with Donatello, but regardless of whether he did or not, both men influenced how young Leonardo saw the world in three dimensions, even when drawing or painting in just two. Another mentor, Bertoldo di Giovanni, a confirmed student of Donatello who specialized in medals and coins, exposed Leonardo to the world of ancient sculpture, coins, and even sarcophagi. Bertoldo showed Leonardo “how to draw inspiration from and expand upon ancient models without being bound by them,” Radke explains. Leonardo unbound drank in all of these sources and soon brewed his own special brand of genius.