Recto: A sheet of miscellaneous studies: Verso: Studies of geometry

This is an extreme example of Leonardo ‘thinking aloud’ on paper. The sketches cover many of the subjects that were bubbling away in his mind in the years around 1490: geometrical diagrams; a rearing horse with rider echoing the Sforza monument, and a standing warrior; two sketches of a screw press; an old man in profile, his cloak merging with a study of trees; a meticulously drawn blade of grass, and an arum lily; a bank of strongly-lit cumulus cloud; and a sketch of water falling into a pool, though the scale is hard to gauge – it could be a puddle or a vast cloudburst comparable to the late Deluges. Text adapted from Leonardo da Vinci: A life in drawing, London, 2018