Recto: Studies of dragons. Verso: A design for a decorated cuirass

Studies of a dragon reeling away from the impact of a lance; an almost invisible stylus sketch at upper left shows (with the sheet inverted) the dragon slumped in defeat. The dragons conform to the standard Renaissance advice to create a monster by assembling the parts of different animals, as Leonardo himself recommended: If you wish to make an animal imagined by you appear natural, let us say a dragon, take for its head that of a mastiff or hound, with the eyes of a cat, the ears of a porcupine, the nose of a greyhound, the brow of a lion, the temples of an old cock, and the neck of a terrapin. Here the wings are half-bird, half-bat, the legs are a lion’s, the head a dog’s, the neck and tail like a snake; but the body resembles a plucked chicken, and Leonardo was remarkably uncertain in attaching the different parts to this torso – it is hard to distinguish front from back, or how the beast might look when not under attack. Text adapted from Leonardo da Vinci: A life in drawing, London, 2018