"The Lady With an Ermine" on display in “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan” at the National Gallery in London

"The Lady With an Ermine" is one of the works on display in “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan” at the National Gallery in London (9 Nov 2011 - 5 Feb 2012)

• Exhibition focuses on Leonardo’s years as court painter to Ludovico Maria Sforza, the duke of Milan, in the 1480s and 1490s. 
• Because the works are so fragile, the show cannot travel and is on view only through Feb. 5.
• Only 500 tickets are available each day

The advance tickets, which went on sale online in May, sold out the first week the show opened, prompting box-office Web sites to start scalping $25 tickets for up to $400. Luke Syson, the exhibition’s curator, said he knew the show would be a hit, but he was still amazed by the public’s response. “I am struck by how we invent this figure for the 21st century,” he said one recent morning, sipping a cappuccino in the National Gallery’s cafeteria. “These pictures communicate something that’s just out of reach. There’s always more than meets the eye.”

On view are 7 of Leonardo’s 14 extant paintings, along with works by artists in the school of Leonardo da Vinci as well as Giampietrino’s reproduction of “The Last Supper,” on loan from the Royal Academy in London. There are also 60 Leonardo drawings, 33 of which are from the Royal Collection. (About 10 of the show’s drawings relate to the apostles depicted in “The Last Supper.”)

Five years in the making, the exhibition is not only a feat of scholarship but also of diplomacy, with loans from museums in St. Petersburg, Krakow, Paris, New York, Rome and Milan.

Only 500 tickets are available each day

Even though the exhibition has been billed as a once-in-a-lifetime event and has received rave reviews, Mr. Syson said he “wanted to make sure this wouldn’t be a Marx Brothers moment where we tried to cram as many people into the show as possible.” Adamant that there be crowd control so people can actually see the works properly, officials have limited the visitors admitted to 180 every half-hour, although people may stay as long as they like. That figure is under the 230-person maximum capacity of the galleries.

Taking a page from the Met, the National Gallery has extended the show’s hours. It now stays open until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays (it generally closes at 6 p.m.) and two more hours on Sundays, now closing at 7. For the show’s last two weeks the museum will be open until 10 every night, Michelle Gonsalves, a National Gallery spokeswoman, said. And for the first time ever it will be open on New Year’s Day.

“We advised people to book early,” Ms. Gonsalves said. And while the museum is aware of the frenzy to get the remaining tickets, it was surprised to learn that they were being scalped. She said the National Gallery’s security officers could tell if tickets had been scalped, and that visitors found with such tickets would not be allowed into the show. “We can’t say how we can tell, but we are doing spot checks,” she explained.

Despite all the madness Mr. Syson, who is leaving the National Gallery to become curator of European sculpture and decorative arts at the Met in January, has a message he hopes the exhibition is delivering: Realizing that Leonardo has recently been prized more as a scientist than as an artist, he wants the public to see how painting was actually central to the master’s way of thinking. Judging by the show’s popularity, that point is getting across.

“I don’t mean to sound like a mystical priest, but on some level these paintings communicate soul to soul,” he said. “Great art does work on people in mysterious ways.”