Search results

Start typing

This exhibition is in the past. View our current exhibitions.

Deluges

During the last years of his life Leonardo repeatedly drew a cataclysmic storm overwhelming a landscape. He also wrote several long passages that recount the futile struggles of man against the overwhelming forces of nature – tempests, floods, a mountain collapsing on a city, and finally the storm sweeping away all matter. This obsession with death and destruction can be seen as the deeply personal expression of an artist nearing his end – an artist who had seen some of his greatest creations unfinished or destroyed before his eyes, and who had a profound sense of the impermanence of all things, even of the earth itself.

Far from being chaotic, these deluges were drawn with the eye of a scientist, showing a fascination with the optical qualities of cloud, rain, water, debris, dust and smoke. They are thus of a piece with Leonardo’s notes throughout his life towards his treatise on painting, with every effect now amplified and thrown together.


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.