Search results

Start typing

This exhibition is in the past. View our current exhibitions.
LEONARDO DA VINCI (VINCI 1452-AMBOISE 1519)

A bust of a child from the front and back

c.1500

RCIN 912567

Two studies of the bust of a child: above, the shoulders, seen from behind, and the head not shown; below, the same seen from the front

Leonardo's first outline for a treatise on anatomy, drafted around 1490, included a note to study 'which are the members which, after the child is born, grow more than the others, and the measurements of a child of one year.' This drawing seems however to be simply a visual survey of the soft contours of a thriving infant, with no attempt to analyse its proportions. Another drawing, of the bust of a child in left profile (RCIN 912519), must be related for the chest of the child terminates at the same horizontal line in all three studies. The obvious context would be a terracotta bust of the Christ Child or Infant Baptist, common during the Renaissance as suitable exemplars in children’s nurseries. While no such bust by Leonardo is known – indeed, no surviving sculpture is generally accepted as being by the artist – the Milanese artist and writer Gian Paolo Lomazzo described in 1584 a terracotta bust of the Christ Child supposedly by Leonardo, in his own collection.

The careful handling of the red chalk in this drawing suggests a date around 1500. The putative terracotta could thus have been executed either during Leonardo’s last years in Sforza Milan – perhaps for the nursery of Ludovico’s sons Massimiliano (b. 1493) and Francesco (b. 1495) – or soon after his return to Florence.

Text adapted from Leonardo da Vinci: A life in drawing, London, 2018
  • stamp, ER VII, crowned, in oval: Lugt 901


The income from your ticket contributes directly to The Royal Collection Trust, a registered charity. The aims of The Royal Collection Trust are the care and conservation of the Royal Collection, and the promotion of access and enjoyment through exhibitions, publications, loans and educational activities.