Drawings

Leonardo da Vinci's finest drawings — landscapes, drapery studies, portraits, battle scenes, and the famous grotesque heads that anticipate caricature by three centuries. Leonardo drew constantly; his surviving sheets number in the thousands. These selections showcase the full range of his draughtsmanship: the silvery delicacy of the silverpoint portraits, the explosive energy of the Battle of Anghiari studies, the meticulous naturalism of the plant studies, and the visionary strangeness of the Deluge drawings made in his final years. For Leonardo, drawing was thinking made visible — the primary instrument of his investigation into the nature of everything from water currents to human emotion. Each sheet is a record of a mind in motion, working out problems that spanned art, science, and engineering.