Meet the man who brought da Vinci’s drawings to the Powerhouse Parramatta

Detailed summary

A flight from Milan and temperature-controlled frames. It’s not easy transferring historic pages to the other side of the world.

With his clerical collar, black blazer and sunglasses, Monsignor Alberto Rocca cuts an imposing figure as he walks past the stark white of the Powerhouse Parramatta’s steel exoskeleton.

And he should. Rocca holds a lot of power: he’s the gatekeeper of the Codex Atlanticus, a collection of 1119 pages from Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks dating from 1478 to 1519, and the man responsible for delivering a small selection of the artist’s drawings from Milan to western Sydney.

Standing in the dimly lit room that houses the drawings, Rocca explained just what it takes to move the pages – which are so delicate, each page can only be displayed for three months at a time – safely to the other side of the world.

“When you transfer important masterpieces you have a codified method, which is international,” he said.

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