Though we have hundreds of his drawings, we have precious few of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings. Depending on questions of attribution, perhaps 15 survive, of only 20 or so known works painted in his lifetime (see the list of extant works on Wikipedia).

Of Leonardo’s existing paintings, more than half of them, 9 works, will be on display together in an extraordinary exhibition that opens next week at the National Gallery in London.

Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan is the first major exhibition to focus on Leonardo’s paintings, rather than his drawings.

Though the enigmatic Lady Lisa will not be making the journey across the channel, another stunning work from the Louvre will. Leonardo painted two versions of The Virgin of the Rocks and the one from the Louvre will be seen together for the first time with the National Gallery’s own version (images above, 3rd, 4th & 5th down, zoomable version here). I just love the face of Leonardo’s angel in that painting.

In addition to the other works, and the supplementary paintings by other artists that will provide context, there is a stunning jewel that promises to be the centerpiece of the exhibition.

Though its attribution has at times been in question Lady with an Ermine (aka Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, images above, top two — larger image here) will be on loan from the Czartoryski Museum in Krakòw.

Wow. Makes me wish I could jet over for the show. (If Lady with and Ermine is not by Leonardo, it’s by somebody just as good!)

There is an article on The Guardian about how this remarkable show was assembled, another about Leonardo’s portraits of women, and a third urging readers who attend the exhibition to savor the rest of the National Gallery’s superb collection.

Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan will be on view until 5 February 2012.

The museum’s pages for the exhibition unfortunately don’t include many images; you can supplement the descriptions with images from the WGA.

California based painter John Budicin often works with a muted palette and seeks out subjects with subtle value contrasts, though he also works with higher contrast subjects in a brighter range of color.

I particularly enjoy those compositions in which he places the foreground and subject in shadow, with more brightly lit objects in the backgrounds. You will also find small touches of brighter light and color punctuating his more atmospheric works.

Budicin, originally from Italy and now living and working in San Bernadino, prefers to work in plein air whenever possible, but also develops larger paintings in the studio from his field sketches.

Budicin occasionally teaches workshops in various areas.

The navigation on his website isn’t as well organized as it might be; you’ll find paintings in the sections for “New Artwork”, Painting Showcase”, Painting Archives” and “Field Studies”. There are also examples of his work in the websites of the galleries I’ve listed below in which he is represented.

Since I last wrote about his work back in 2006, California painter William Wray has moved even further toward abstraction. By “abstraction” I don’t mean non-representational art, but the original sense of the word, now somewhat lost, meaning to distill the essence of something.

He has also moved from a more muted palette to a vibrantly bright one, sometimes intensely so, placed on the canvas with energetic and highly textural brush marks.

Wray paints bold compositions that revel in the geometry of the industrial landscape and everyday mechanical objects. From those subjects he pulls an abstract of planes and divisions of space, and displays them in arrangements in which the negative space plays just as strong a role as the subjects themselves.

In addition to his website, Wray maintains a frequently updated blog on which you can sometimes find his work displayed larger than on the website (click on the images in the articles for the larger versions), allowing a better appreciation of the textural surface of his paintings.

On the website, note the fascinating page showing examples from some of his influences.

I was delighted to learn from the blog that Wray is now represented by a new gallery that is local to me, Parke Schaffer Fine Art in Wayne, PA, and I’m looking forward to the chance to see his work in person.

For those in the Los Angeles area, Wray’s paintings are featured in a show titled “City to a Fault” that opened today at José Fine art & Antiques and runs until November 29, 2011. The opening reception is November 12.