Leonardo Parlante: Milan Becomes the Open Book of Leonardo’s Lost Words

Milan turns into a living dictionary and an open-air museum with Leonardo Parlante, the exhibition conceived and curated by artist and researcher Sabrina D’Alessandro (URPS – Ufficio Resurrezione Parole Smarrite).

Sabrina D'Alessandro URPS, Leonardo Parlante, Vanagroria e Purità 2025, installazione, Courtesy the artist and Casa degli Artisti, ph. ©Filippo Romano

The project, co-produced with Casa degli Artisti, runs from 1 November 2025 to 31 January 2026, unfolding between the Castello Sforzesco and the city’s public billboards, transforming streets and courtyards into pages of a rediscovered lexicon.

The opening will take place on Thursday, 13 November 2025 at 4:30 PM in the Weil Weiss Hall of the Castello Sforzesco, as part of the BookCity Milano 2025 programme. The project transforms the city into a vast open-air manuscript, bringing back to life a selection of words drawn from the Codex Trivulzianus 2162, the celebrated lexical collection in which Leonardo transcribed, studied and catalogued nearly 8,000 terms, now preserved at the Trivulziana Library of Castello Sforzesco.

In the Cortile delle Armi, the terracotta sculpture Salvatica offers a new reading of the term salvatico: not “wild”, but “that which is saved,” according to Leonardo’s own interpretation. The work houses pairs of opposing words engraved in the clay, reflecting on the fragile balance of human qualities. In the Corte Ducale, two symbolically complementary sculptures face one another: Vanagroria, a mirrored steel totem that evokes the fragile illusion of the ego, and Purità, a terracotta form inspired by Leonardo’s notes on elephants that ritually bathe in running water, an allegory of regeneration and integrity.

Sabrina D'Alessandro URPS, Leonardo Parlante, Salvatica 2025, installazione, Courtesy the artist and Casa degli Artisti

Beyond the castle’s walls, Milan becomes a written page. Public posters displayed across the city’s municipal billposting spaces juxtapose lemmas from the Codex with excerpts from other Leonardian manuscripts, prompting short meditations on knowledge, experience, freedom, fullness, and the harmony of opposites. Each street becomes a threshold of thought, each word an invitation to rediscover the world.

Winner of the AAA – Atelier Aperti per Artista 2024 open call by Casa degli Artisti, the project led to an artist residency, production support, and new acquisitions for MUNAF – Museo Nazionale di Fotografia. The work will continue internationally throughout 2025, including a presentation at the Italian Cultural Institute in Oslo on the occasion of the Week of the Italian Language in the World.

Sabrina D’Alessandro, founder of URPS – Ufficio Resurrezione Parole Smarrite (Office for the Resurrection of Lost Words), transforms rare and forgotten terms into sculptures, installations, performances and public art projects. Her work, which merges lexicographic research with visual practice, has been exhibited in Italian and international institutions (including MUNAF – Museo Nazionale di Fotografia, Museo CAMeC, and Art Sonje Center Seoul) and has drawn the attention of the Treccani Encyclopedia.

Sabrina D'Alessandro URPS URPS, Leonardo Parlante, supèrchi 2025, affissione pubblica, Courtesy the artist and Casa degli Artisti

With Leonardo Parlante, URPS’s decade-long mission expands: to pull words from silence, return them to the public sphere, and restore them as symbols, images, and living thought. In Milan, Leonardo’s notebook finally speaks again — out loud.

Milano, Castello Sforzesco, Cortile delle Armi e Corte Ducale

Mostra diffusa: affissioni urbane nella città di Milano

Date

3 novembre 2025 - 31 gennaio 2026