BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Despite its rather out-of-the-way locale, Alabama’s Birmingham Museum of Art has landed one of the fall’s don’t-miss shows: “Leonardo da Vinci: Drawings from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin.” The small collection of works—on view from September 28 through November 9—comprises 11 drawings acquired by Carlo Alberto of Savoy (1831–1849), the library’s founder, plus the Codex on the Flight of the Birds, an important notebook from 1490–1505. The pieces, which because of their fragility have never before traveled to the U.S., include studies of an angel’s serene face for Leonardo’s altarpiece Madonna of the Rocks, now in the Louvre, in Paris; muscular figures drawn in preparation for his lost mural the Battle of Anghiari, executed 1503–05; and sketches of horses for his incomplete 1503–05 equestrian monument to the Milanese aristocrat Gian Giacomo Trivulzio. The exhibition travels to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in November.

"Detour Worthy" originally appeared in the September 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's September 2008 Table of Contents.