The largest ever da Vinci exhibition at the Louvre Museum.

The Leonardo da Vinci exhibition is built upon the museum's collection of 5 paintings and 22 drawings, along with over 120 other works borrowed from art institutions in France, Italy, Germany, Russia, England, and the United States.

The works – paintings, drawings, manuscripts, sculptures, and artifacts – will be on display in the Napoleon Hall of the Museum for four months, beginning on October 24th, and are expected to attract up to 7,000 visitors per day.

Leonardo da Vinci's surviving works are few: only about 15 to 20 paintings can now be definitively identified as his, among whichMona LisaandThe Last SupperThese are the most famous. Many of the pieces are too "fragile" to move, and for most organizations that own them, they are the pinnacle of the entire collection.

To acquire additional works by da Vinci for the exhibition, the Louvre curators had to work hard to borrow six paintings, supplementing the museum's existing five and bringing the total number of paintings in the exhibition to 11. To date, the largest Leonardo da Vinci exhibition was at the National Gallery in London in 2011, featuring nine paintings.

The six paintings borrowed from the Louvre include:

• Benois Madonnafrom State Hermitage (St. Petersburg)
• Saint Jeromefrom Vatican
• Musicianfrom Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (Milan)
• Head of a Woman(La Scapigliata) from Galleria Nazionale (Parma)
• 2 paintings with the same nameMadonna of the Faucetwinder- one from a private collection and one from the National Gallery in Edinburgh

These six paintings will be exhibited alongside five paintings from the Louvre:La Belle Ferronnière, Virgin of the Rocks, Mary and Child with Saint Anne, Saint John the BaptistandMona Lisa.

Three other famous Leonardo paintings, owned by the Uffizi Museum (Florence), Italy's most visited museum, were the subject of some political controversy and were ultimately deemed too fragile to transport by the Uffizi Museum's director. However, the Uffizi did send the Louvre some drawings, including Leonardo da Vinci's first known artwork: a sketch of the Arno River valley around Florence.

Unlike paintings, Leonardo da Vinci's drawings are not so rare, and many will be on display in Paris, including sketches for his paintings, his remarkable anatomical drawings, and, most famously, his sketches.Vitruvian Man, a study of human body proportions.

Huong Thao