Leonardo da Vinci 'Virgin of the Rocks' at the National Gallery

The new exhibition at the National Gallery is 'Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece' about his painting, 'Virgin of the Rocks' which is the National Gallery's collection. They've taken over most of the ground floor galleries for this exhibition and reconfigured them so you walk from one immersive room into the next as you get closer to the actual painting. There is only one painting in this exhibition and that's the 'Virgin of the Rocks'.

The 'Virgin of the Rocks' is one of the highlights of the National Gallery collection, one of the few Leonardo da Vinci paintings that exist. There's an earlier version of this painting in the Louvre but I prefer the London version as a more aesthetically pleasing composition.

The first room you go into doesn't really seem to serve any purpose, a stack of boxes looking at a big projection of a mountain with some of the boxes blocked with copies of Leonardo's famous backwards 'mirror' writing. Why? I don't know. Next you go into a room that's set up partially like an artist's studio and partly like a conservation room with text books and technical journals. Most people hovered by the door looking in at a video projection about he painting when I was there rather than walking right into the room. It wasn't clear if you could touch things on the desks or not so I didn't.

The next room was far more playful and interesting, a room of light and shade, but still a bit puzzling.  There's a life sized photo of a woman dressed like the Virgin in the middle of a big circle that lights up and shines in different directions that you control with your finger on a large dial in front of the  photo. It's fun to play with it but only one person can play at a time. Also in the room are three smallish boxes with different things inside and with six levers with which you control the direction and intensity of light to create different shadow effects. I really liked playing with this piece, especially on the man's head.

Another box had a large rock inside and the other had various geometric shapes. It was fun to play with the lights but it raised a few questions for me. Only one person can play at a time so is the National Gallery assuming there'll be a queue to play with the exhibit, in which case why plan for an unsatisfactory experience for punters? Or is the assumption that not many people will go into the exhibition? In which case why give over so much space to it and have the large room at the end as a shop? It wasn't very busy when I was there which was good for me but not good for the exhibition given that it's only just opened and, generally speaking, the busiest time for an exhibition is when it's just opened.

The next room was dark and empty - literally - except for some gauzy material suspected in mid air showing designs for the church the painting was designed for and a projector that seemed to be on a one minute repeat showing the building of the church in Milan. This was nice enough but very short. The most exciting bit was when I stepped forward into the line of the protector and waited for the floor to explode around me as the church columns sprang into life. That was almost a disorienting experience and I loved it. I went back to do it again.

It did raise questions about 'why?' again. It's a large virtually empty room. While I was enjoying the church exploding into life around me a guard felt th need to tell me that there was another room at the end of the room with the actual painting in it - there was no sign that there was another room but I sort of guessed that there was since I had't seen the painting yet. If a guard has to tell you where to go next then that's not really a good look.

The final room includes the actual painting at the centre of various projections of what the original altarpiece it was part of might have looked like. There are no records of what it looked like and the church no longer exists so it's anyone's guess really., The National Gallery has used its experts to re-imagine what the altarpiece might have looked like and developed some video projections to show it to us.

This exhibition seems to be the National Gallery's foray into the use of technology in an art exhibition and is trying to make it immersive so that you experience the exhibition rather than just look at it. There is only one painting on show but lots of technology in the forms of lights and projections. Someone has spent a lot of time developing these special effects in an attempt too look at a work of art in a different way. In principle I approve of it but it still left me puzzled and wondering if there'd been any user testing at all. This video projection lasts for about five minutes, showing different versions of that the altarpiece might have looked like and I really enjoyed this bit, going back for seconds.

I'm not quite sure what I thought about this exhibition. I suspect it needs a bit more of an explanation in the promotional materials as to what you can expect and I'd hate to be there when it was busy since you wouldn't be able to really enjoy the experience. Good on the National Gallery for being brave enough to try this kind of "immersive" exhibition but I'd really recommend some user testing and testing how crowds might work in something like this.