Leaves From Leonardo’s Notebook : Art: ‘Leonardo & Venice’ marks the first time so many of the artist’s small drawings have been shown together.

If, at first glance, teaming Leonardo da Vinci with Renaissance Venice seems like a marriage of titans, look again. The result in a canalside 18th-Century palace here is less a flourish of trumpets than the trill of flutes.

“Leonardo & Venice,” which opened Monday, has all the hallmarks of an art spectacular that is a small joy. No sense rushing in for 20 minutes expecting a “Wow!” But more time and some reflection could produce some rewarding “Ahas!”

The show, which runs at the Palazzo Grassi until July 5 under sponsorship of Venice’s Fine Arts Authority and the automobile giant Fiat, is twin-barreled.

It marks the first time that so many of Leonardo’s small drawings, more than 70, have been shown together. And, by juxtaposing the drawings with paintings by such Venetian contemporaries as Bellini and Giorgione, it offers the first systematic look at Leonardo’s impact on fellow artists in a city that was then the capital of a great maritime empire.

Leonardo, who divided most of his time between his native Florence and Milan, visited Venice in time of war in March, 1500. He was 48 that year and already a legend, but hard-pressed Venetian authorities welcomed him as a military engineer as much as an artist.

A Turkish war fleet lay menacingly offshore. Leonardo threw out engineering advice like sparks: Flood the neighboring countryside to forestall an invasion; attack the Turkish ships from underwater.

As ever, Leonardo ambidextrously recorded his design ideas in painstaking detail on bits or paper or parchment with pen and brown ink or colored chalk. He scribbled extensive notes in mirror writing, right to left.

The main part of the Grassi’s show is fruit of Leonardo’s lifelong habit of carrying a notebook around in his pocket in the way today’s news photographers never stir without a just-in-case camera.

Many of the drawings, which span a lifetime of art and engineering, are from Italian museums, but some of the best have been lent by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II from her Windsor Castle collection. Drawings and sketches from museums in Hungary, Germany, Vienna and France are also shown, along with contributions from the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

The scope of the drawings reflects the depth of the man: a genius equally at home with schemes for flying machines, gargantuan crossbows, dragonlike cats--and the “Mona Lisa.”

Drawings in the show, neatly categorized, explore Leonardo’s thematic consistency: the horse in motion, the human body, plants and flowers, men at war, mechanics, engineering and architecture.

Some drawings illuminate his plans for religious works, ranging from Nativity scenes to “The Last Supper.” As counterpoint, there are drawings of an almost surrealistic scythed war chariot and lifelike scenes of cavalry attacking infantry. One highlight is Leonardo’s jumping-Jack “Proportions of the Human Body According to Vitruvius,” which is normally shown across the canal at the Accademia.

Most drawings are usually on paper no larger than book-sized. They are displayed vertically and at eye level. Some are faded, and details are often hard to discern, although in conjunction with the well-illustrated catalogue, they all spring to awesome life.

Paintings and sculpture by other artists of the Venetian Renaissance that accompany the drawings were chosen to illustrate what is called the “Leonardesque” influence on early 16th-Century Venetian painting.

Leonardo’s studies of old people, for example, find vivid echo in the haunting anguish of age that stamps Giorgione’s “The Old Woman.” So, too, is there a clear Leonardo influence in the composition and the use of light in Giovanni Bellini’s “Virgin and Child With Saints Catherine and Mary Magdalene” on display at the show.

Leonardo did not tarry long in Venice, only a few months. But he left some drawings behind, and copies of his work are known to have circulated widely among Venetian artists of the period. Many of Venice’s Renaissance masters such as Titian owe some secret of technique or vision to the Leonardo visit. Indeed, his presence lingers still.

“Leonardo & Venice” at the Palazzo Grassi on the Grand Canal is open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day until July 5. Admission is about $9.