A cloudburst of material possessions

A sketch of a torrent of objects falling to earth from stormclouds – rakes, ladders, lanterns, bagpipes, shears, spectacles and so on. Written below is the lament ‘Oh human misery, how many things you must serve for money’. Leonardo was fond of allegories of human folly, but what might be a straightforward criticism of materialism is here complicated by a lion prowling in the clouds at top left, as yet unexplained. Verso: six lines of household expenses and the fragment of a seventh, not by Leonardo. Melzi's number 184.