A caricature of a bald fat man

Recto: a drawing of the head and shoulders of a stout bald man, facing right. This corpulent man is not one of Leonardo’s stock types, and the speed with which he was drawn suggests that this may be a sketch of a specific individual, the nose and lower lip exaggerated for comic effect, and thus one of Leonardo’s few true caricatures. Verso: some infantile scribbles, perhaps representing legs. Melzi's number 24. As court artist to Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo was required to devise not just works of art but also ephemeral entertainments – pageants, stage sets and costumes, songs improvised to the lute, and apparently drawings of grotesque figures. Such grotesques were an interest for Leonardo throughout his life, and especially around 1490, when he was investigating the principles of ideal human proportion. But by deliberately distorting these ideals of beauty, Leonardo could create images of ‘ideal ugliness’. Text adapted from Leonardo da Vinci: A life in drawing, London, 2018