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40 41
 Leonardo da Vinci’s Recurrent Use of Patterns
of Individual Limbs, Stock Poses and Facial Stereotypes

M. W. Kwakkelstein

42 43
 Leonardo da Vinci’s Recurrent Use of Patterns of Individual
Limbs, Stock Poses and Facial Stereotypes*

• M. W. Kwakkelstein

The purpose of this paper is to define the extent to which Leon-

ardo da Vinci’s studies of the human figure reflect a dependence
on older workshop practices, especially those connected with
the medieval pattern book tradition. As a theoretician Leon-
ardo emphatically advocated the direct imitation of nature and
repeatedly condemned painters who practiced their art other-
wise, especially those who imitated the works of other painters.
Given the importance Leonardo attached to the study of nature
one would not expect to find among his drawings evidence of
a practice that conflicts with his theoretical views on imitation.
Though he certainly allowed apprentices to copy the works of the
best masters, his notes on the structure and substance of artistic
training make it clear that this kind of drawing exercise consti-
tuted only a step in a learning process that led towards the last
and most difficult step: the study of nature.1
Except for the famous Arno landscape drawing, dated by
Leonardo 5 August 1473, a study of a sleeve and perhaps one or
two profile heads, Leonardo’s earliest known drawings have all
been dated to the late 1470s, when he was already active as an
independent painter. Surprisingly, a fair number of these draw-
ings, such as the famous double-sided sheet at Windsor, com-
monly dated to about 1478, correspond to the kind of drawing
exercises a beginning pupil was traditionally required to make.2
In the pedagogical precepts that Leonardo would later address
specifically to the young painter, he insisted on the importance
of memorizing forms and motifs by constantly drawing from

44 45
nature. He urged the student that even when not drawing he 1 .
Leonardo da Vinci : Figure studies for the Adoration of the Magi, pen and brown ink over leadpoint,
27.7 × 20.9 cm. Paris, Département des Arts Graphiques du Musée du Louvre. Photo: Musée du Louvre, Paris.
should try to recall the outlines of forms studied earlier in order
to fix them in his memory.3 This advice would seem to reflect
a practice Leonardo had adopted more than a decade earlier
when he repeatedly drew the same type of profile head on both
sides of the sheet at Windsor.
However, it is difficult to believe that as late as 1478 Leon-
ardo would still have felt the need to practice his hand in drawing
easy motifs such as a limited range of profiles in order to commit
them to memory. One might assume that six years after he had
joined the confraternity of St. Luke, an exceptionally gifted artist
like Leonardo, after fully assimilating the drawing style, forms
and motifs of his master and practicing life drawing, would have
perfected his innate draughtsman’s skills and developed his own
inventive faculties. We wonder why, after he worked alongside
Andrea del Verrocchio for several years, Leonardo’s early draw-
ings do not contain life studies showing foreshortened views of
the male or female head comparable to those executed by his
master.4 It is similarly puzzling that the few facial types Leon-
ardo continued to draw in profile in the late 1470s were not cop-
ied from nature, but, as was observed long ago, are indebted to
ideal heads invented by Andrea della Robbia, Desiderio da Settig-
nano, and above all, Verrocchio. The tenacity with which Leon-
ardo throughout his career would stick to these facial types has
puzzled scholars because it conflicts with his theoretical concern
with variety and his criticism of painters who repeat the same
faces in their work.5 The fact that Leonardo’s depictions of head
types vary so little and illustrate ideal types makes one wonder
about his renderings of full-length human figures. Could their
poses be equally dependent on inherited formulae?
In March 1481 Leonardo received a commission from the
monks of the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto, near Flor-
ence, to paint a high altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi. This
project provided him with the opportunity to demonstrate his
skill in depicting the animated human figure both in action and
at rest, within the context of a large-scale narrative composition.
The drawings connected to this commission are numerous and
enable us to gain insight into his interests and working meth-
ods. On a sheet in Paris [Fig. 1] Leonardo explored the expres-
sive potency of a range of figural poses.6 The figures, many of
them nude, are sketched with summary outlines and little or no
internal modeling. In effect, they anticipate his later theoretical

46 47
concern with the variation of figural poses and suggest that he 2 . Sandro Botticelli : Adoration of the Magi, tempera and oil on panel, 70 × 104 cm. Washington, National Gallery of Art.
Photo:Courtesy of National Gallery, Washington.
was already experienced in the attentive observation of attitudes
and motions that might occur spontaneously in life. As a the-
oretician Leonardo attached great importance to life drawing.
Indeed, the practical instructions on how to study attitudes and
draw from the nude given in Manuscript A may well be based on
his own experience.7 However, it is not easy to establish whether
these figure studies reflect that experience. That the drawing in
Paris combines on a single sheet studies in the form of mere
outlines strongly suggests that Leonardo was copying earlier
sketches of his own for future reference. It is unlikely that these
earlier sketches, now lost, were based on the study of natural,
spontaneous poses. The expressive attitudes of the figures are
adapted to the context of the Adoration, while, as we will now see,
some figure poses appear to be based on a pictorial source rather
than a life model.
A comparison of Leonardo’s figure studies to the figures in
three versions of the Adoration of the Magi Botticelli had painted
during the 1470s reveals that Leonardo was familiar with these
works. As observed long ago, Leonardo adopted the new concept
of placing Mary at the centre of a pyramidal composition from
Botticelli’s version in the Uffizi. From the Botticelli Adoration in
the National Gallery of Art in Washington [Fig. 2] he borrowed
another telling detail. The pose of the kneeling youth wearing
a blue mantle in the left-hand foreground of the Botticelli recurs
in the kneeling youth who occupies the same place in Leonardo’s
composition. In addition, the standing youth in the right-hand
foreground of Botticelli’s picture, bent slightly forward, with his
arms across his chest, provided the model for the youth imme-
diately to the right of the beardless, bald old man in Leonardo’s larity to the youth Leonardo drew in the top left-hand corner of
picture. Although in the Leonardo only the youth’s tilted head is the sheet with studies in Paris. It is moreover not unreasonable to
visible, the preparatory study for this figure just above the centre assume that Leonardo was familiar with Fra Angelico’s Adoration
of the drawing in Paris, showing him full-length, seems to indi- of the Magi in Cosimo de’ Medici’s chapel at San Marco. The pose
cate a dependence on Botticelli. Furthermore, the man standing of the figure Leonardo drew at the centre of the Paris sheet recalls
to the extreme left in Leonardo’s picture, holding his hand at his that of the figure of the prostrate king in Fra Angelico’s fresco.
chin in contemplation, was clearly inspired by the same motif in Both the manner in which Leonardo arranged the figures and the
the left side of Botticelli’s painting.8 fact that they are outline drawings – not sketchy or freely drawn –
Similarly, Leonardo borrowed the motif of the standing suggests that they are copies of earlier sketches he wished to join
youth at the far right of his picture, sometimes seen as a self-por- together and preserve as his “authors and teachers”.9
trait, from Botticelli’s Adoration in the Uffizi. The youth turning At about the same time, Leonardo compiled on both sides
his head towards the spectator in the foreground of Botticelli’s of a single sheet, now in the Rothschild collection in the Louvre,
version in the National Gallery in London bears a striking simi- drawings of horses based on earlier sketches he had made after

48 49
the antique and possibly a painting by Botticelli [Figs. 3 and 4].10 At .
3 Leonardo da Vinci : Studies of horsemen, horses, a dog and a dragon fight (recto), pen and brown ink and
wash, 193 × 123 mm. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Collection Edmond de Rothschild. Photo: Musée du Louvre, Paris.
the bottom of the recto of this sheet Leonardo juxtaposed a dog
to a horse that in comparison looks disproportionately small. .
4 Leonardo da Vinci : Studies of horses (verso), pen and brown ink and wash, 19.3 × 12.3 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre,
Collection Edmond de Rothschild. Photo: Musée du Louvre, Paris.
This suggests, in my view, that both animals represent individ-
ual motifs Leonardo copied from earlier drawings, maintaining
their original dimensions. Because of their layout and somewhat
“frozen quality” and “tidiness”, the horses represented on both
sides of the Rothschild sheet illustrate Leonardo’s adherence
to the model book tradition. The fact that the sheet originally
belonged to a bound notebook provides further support for this
interpretation. Except for the dragon fight, the drawings stand
in marked contrast to the spontaneity and liveliness of the freely
and rapidly executed experimental sketches of the contempo-
raneous Madonna and Child with a Cat, which show Leonardo’s
extensive use of pentimenti.11 That Leonardo later re-used some of
the motifs from both sides of the Rothschild sheet shows that he
had compiled them for future reference. For instance, the profile
head of a horse on the verso that was drawn after an antique
model recurs on the verso of fol. 62 in Manuscript A of about
1492, where it is enclosed in an analytical rectangle. Importantly,
the same motif inspired the famous studies of the head of a horse
for the Battle of Anghiari of about 1503 – 1504, now at Windsor.12
Also connected to the Adoration of the Magi are two sheets in
Windsor with studies of hands that appear to have been drawn
from life.13 It may come as a surprise that the hand in the lower
left corner, used for the right hand of the Virgin in the picture,
was copied from one of Verrocchio’s stock types. It recurs in Ver-
rocchio’s Madonna and Child in Berlin and in paintings from his
workshop, such as the Tobias and the Angel recently re-attributed
to Verrocchio with the assistance of the young Leonardo, and in
paintings by Ghirlandaio and Perugino. The similarity between
the hand on the right of the sheet and the right hand of Charity is wholly based on its style, may well have to be revised by at least
in Antonio del Pollaiuolo’s painting of that name in the Uffizi of three years.15
about 1469 – 1470 suggests likewise that Leonardo preferred to In addition to the drawings from Leonardo’s first Floren-
turn to the works of established masters rather than to nature.14 tine period, his early interests as an artist are documented in
This practice would explain why the right hand of the angel in a list of works of art he is thought to have compiled when he
Leonardo’s Annunciation at the Uffizi corresponds closely to the moved to Milan in 1482 – 1483. If we accept that the items “many
right hand of St. John the Baptist in the so-called Madonna di complete nudes” and “many arms, legs, feet and postures” in this inven-
Piazza altarpiece in the Duomo in Pistoia, designed by Verroc- tory refer to drawings by Leonardo himself, then we may safely
chio during the second half of the 1470s and executed by Lorenzo assume that he had practiced life drawing in Florence.16 Of the
di Credi. If this connection is convincing, then the commonly “many complete nudes”, only very few examples have survived. One
accepted dating of Leonardo’s Annunciation to 1472 – 1473, which example now at Windsor has often been related to the figure of

50 51
St. John the Baptist in the Madonna di Piazza.17 To the best of
my knowledge it has escaped notice that in style and type the
model’s head in Leonardo’s drawing is very close to that of the
youth directly behind the Madonna in the Adoration of the Magi.
This connection would serve to confirm a pre-Lombard date for
the drawing, while illustrating Leonardo’s practice of re-using his
own motifs. It was not only his own motifs that he repeated, how-
ever, but also those he borrowed from Verrocchio. The model’s
pose in the Windsor drawing is derived from Verrocchio’s design
for the figure of St. John the Baptist in the Pistoia altarpiece.
The position of the legs in particular became a stock pose in the
work of Perugino and artists from his workshop. Though it is
difficult to establish whether Leonardo’s drawing was made from
a live model assuming a conventional pose, or whether Leonardo
drew the nude after earlier sketches or from memory, it yet again
illustrates his dependence on established formulae.
The “8 Saint Sebastians” in the inventory can be interpreted
as evidence that Leonardo drew from the nude model before
moving to Milan in 1482. A drawing at Bayonne, sometimes
classed as Leonardo’s first known nude study, may well be identi-
fiable with one of these eight drawings. But whether the drawing
is really a study from life is in my view uncertain. The position
of the model’s legs is identical to that of the figure of St. John
the Baptist in the Windsor drawing, while his facial type and the
upward movement of the head are repeated in one of the figures
standing near the monumental staircase in the background of
the Adoration of the Magi. These features of the St. Sebastian in Bay-
onne suggest the re-use of a pattern.18
Since no comparable studies of the nude figure from Leon-
ardo’s first Florentine period are known, I would like to turn our
attention to the representation of the human figure in his unfin-
ished painting of St. Jerome in the Vatican Pinacoteca. Despite the
complete absence of references to it in written sources of the time,
the St. Jerome is commonly dated to the end of Leonardo’s first
Florentine period. The item “certain Saint Jeromes” in Leonardo’s
inventory would favor this dating, as does the picture’s technical
and stylistic affinity to the likewise unfinished Adoration of the
Magi. Furthermore, the pose of St. Jerome is close to the move-
ment of devotion and piety Leonardo explored in preparatory
drawings for the Adoration of the Magi. As Hans Ost noted in 1975,
St. Jerome’s head seems to be the reverse image of the elderly
man in the crowd to the right of the Virgin and Child. These
52
parallels show that Leonardo continued to re-use his own inven-
tions rather than to pose nude models afresh, notwithstanding
that the entry “many complete nudes” might be taken to suggest
the contrary. That Leonardo adopted this working procedure is
further indicated by St. Jerome’s pose, which recurs in a study
of a kneeling angel of about 1480 – 1483, in a small sketch of the
Virgin adoring the Christ Child of about 1485, and in the recently
discovered underdrawing under the surface of the Virgin of the
Rocks in London, datable to the early 1490s.19
A drawing by a Milanese follower of Leonardo records the
same model for a study of a naked St. Jerome seen from a differ-
ent angle. This however does not prove that Leonardo’s figure
is based on a live model. Examination of the saint’s body has
revealed anatomical inaccuracies, especially within the shoul-
der area, which are difficult to explain if Leonardo had worked
from the live model.20 That Leonardo had a special interest in
the physical appearance of the elderly is shown by the “many
heads of old men” and “many throats of old women” in the inventory
and, of course, by various examples amidst his early drawings.
Curiously, however, he does not seem to have used any of these
apparent life drawings for his St. Jerome; the saint’s head is actu-
ally close in type to that of Verrocchio’s St. Jerome in the Galleria
Palatina at Palazzo Pitti. In addition, Verrocchio is reported to
have modeled in clay a head of St. Jerome, now lost, which may
well have been the prototype for both depictions. This connec-
tion is supported by the occurrence in two anonymous Floren-
tine late fifteenth-century drawings, one in Amsterdam and the
other in Florence, of a sculpted model of a man’s head, portrayed
from different viewpoints; both bear a striking resemblance to
the head of St. Jerome in Leonardo’s picture.21
The noted errors in anatomical detail suggest that Leon-
ardo constructed his St. Jerome by combining the familiar motif
of the kneeling figure in devotion with Verrocchio’s sculpted
head-type. He may further have used figures and detail studies
by other artists. The saint’s extended arm recalls the right arm at
the bottom of a sheet with arm studies by Maso Finiguerra and
the right arm of the left-hand nude in Pollaiuolo’s influential
drawing, now in Paris, of A Nude Man Seen from Three Angles.22
Though this connection suggests a pictorial source for Leonar-
do’s St. Jerome, it has often been pointed out that Pollaiuolo’s
drawing records a sculpted model. This theory is strengthened
by the fact that a closely similar muscular arm, possibly copied
53
after Pollaiuolo’s model, is studied from various angles on two
sheets in the so-called Raphael sketchbook in Venice.23 The diffi-
culty of adopting an eclectic working method without sufficient
anatomical knowledge to convincingly combine different parts
into a organically unified whole may well have led Leonardo to
abandon work on the picture.
Since Paul Müller-Walde, over a century ago, suggested that
many of Leonardo’s figure studies betray an indebtedness to Pol-
laiuolo, the relationship between the two artists’ works has been
illustrated by a fair number of comparisons. The examples cited
by Bernhard Degenhart, Bernard Berenson, Laurie Fusco and
more recently Jonathan Nathan suggest that even after Leonar-
do’s anatomical knowledge far surpassed that of Pollaiuolo, he
continued to turn to the older artist’s models for inspiration.
Only Kenneth Clark believed that “Pollaiuolo’s direct influence
passed towards the end of the 1480s”.24
It remains puzzling that Leonardo would continue to use
Pollaiuolo’s formulae even after he acquired experience in dis-
section and underwent an impressive stylistic and intellectual
development. Such dependence is also inconsistent with his
advice to painters never to imitate the work of others and to
study nature directly. Moreover, it has often been surmised that
when Leonardo criticized those masters who, “in order to appear
great draughtsmen”, show all visible muscles flexed simultaneously
in a single figure, “so that they seem a sack full of nuts”, he hinted
at Pollaiuolo’s anatomically inaccurate renderings of the nude
figure. Yet the outlines of the nude Leonardo illustrated on the
recto of fol. 15 from the so-called Anatomical MS A, datable to
about 1509 – 1510, correspond closely to those of a standing nude
in a copy after a lost drawing by Pollaiuolo; Leonardo even cop-
ied the figure’s right hand holding a stick. The posture of Pollai-
uolo’s Berlin David of about 1470 – recurring in the somewhat
later Martyrdom of St. Sebastian in London – demonstrates that
the identical legs in Leonardo’s drawing also derive from Pollai-
uolo.25
In a similar manner, Leonardo had previously relied on
a figure study by Pollaiuolo when he started his anatomical
studies around 1487. The outlines of a man’s legs at the left of
what may well be Leonardo’s earliest known anatomical study
are strikingly close to those of Pollaiuolo’s Standing Nude with
Folded Arms in Bayonne, which in turn seems to be derived from
one of Andrea del Castagno’s formulae. Furthermore, Leonardo
54
also borrowed from Pollaiuolo his characteristic diagrammatic
rendering of kneecaps. He employed this schema in nearly all of
his leg studies, many of which are based on the leg of the man
Pollaiuolo illustrated at the center of the drawing in Paris.26
In addition to the parallels between Leonardo and Pollaiu-
olo in an anatomical context, Leonardo’s few extant nude stud-
ies reveal a similar dependence on tradition. Considering Leon-
ardo’s recurrent advice to study from the nude model not only
to become familiar with its form, proportions and mechanisms,
but also as an integral part of the design process of paintings,
one would have expected to find numerous life studies of actively
posed models among his drawings. Instead, Leonardo’s draw-
ings of the nude figure after 1500 are strongly reminiscent of the
model in the above-mentioned drawings by Pollaiuiolo, showing
a male standing with legs apart and arms outstretched. Coming
at a moment when in his writings Leonardo was emphasizing the
critical importance of life drawing and animated poses, we can
only wonder at the derivative fixedness of pose in the model and
the extremely small number of nude studies.27
Closely connected with the apparent lack of bodily and
emotional variety and certainly no less astonishing, is Leonar-
do’s occasional dependence on the medieval pattern book tra-
dition for constructing his figures. It comes as a shock that an
artist who devoted his life to the meticulous study of nature
and who as a theoretician professed that good painting imitates
nature faithfully, should stick to patterns of individual limbs,
stock poses and facial types when working out compositions for
his narrative paintings. Although Leonardo left many sketches
that illustrate his keen powers of observation, recording fleeting
and spontaneous bodily movements, when it came to figures in
paintings, he adhered to the model book tradition and adopted
motifs from the work of other painters. In the painting of St.
Jerome, Leonardo’s construction of the saint’s body as a com-
posite of individual limbs or details borrowed from exemplary
models by leading artists, shows that he still treated movement
as a pattern. Moreover, this practice would explain the contrast
between the elderly age of the saint suggested in the face and the
youthful vigor of his body.
It is clear that throughout his career Leonardo re-used var-
ious motifs and compositional schemes to suit not just one but
a variety of contexts. Some figure poses he explored in connec-
tion with the Adoration of the Magi recur in the apostles in the Last
55
5 . Sandro Botticelli : Adoration of the Magi (detail), tempera on panel, 70 × 104 cm. Washington, National Gallery of Art.
Photo: Courtesy of National Gallery, Washington.

6 . Leonardo da Vinci : Adoration of the Magi (detail), oil on wood, ultraviolet photography. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.
Photo: Courtesy of author.

of the London Virgin of the Rocks.28 Regarding the figure of St.

Philip, to the best of my knowledge it has gone unnoticed that
his pose is similar to that of the figure Leonardo sketched [Fig. 1]
after one of the bystanders in Botticelli’s Adoration of the Magi in
Washington [Fig. 5], while St. Philip’s head is clearly indebted to
that of the corresponding figure in Botticelli’s picture. The same
motif also served Leonardo for the head of the youth standing to
the right of the Virgin in the unfinished Adoration [Fig. 6].
Repetition and adaptation are typical of Leonardo’s design
method. In his later works he would increasingly perfect and gen-
eralize existing solutions rather than develop new ones based on
the study of nature. As is well known, Leonardo converted an
earlier design for the Angel of the Annunciation into a St. John the
Supper and the horsemen in the Battle of Anghiari. As we have seen, Baptist; this is just one more example of how he adopted inter-
he re-used the kneeling pose of St. Jerome at least twice, while the changeable physical types for different characters. From Vasari
saint’s bent left arm, with the back of the hand seen frontally, we learn that Leonardo “always” imitated Verrocchio’s draw-
reappears thrice. We find it in the Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, in ings of female heads with beautiful faces and hair style “for their
the figure of St. Philip in the Last Supper, and in the figure of the beauty”. No wonder that Leonardo’s ideal of feminine beauty, as
Virgin in the underdrawing recently discovered under the surface represented in his various depictions of the Virgin and of Leda,

56 57
reflects that of Verrocchio. Leonardo even used this ideal type
for some of his male characters, such as St. John the Baptist and
St. John the Evangelist in the Last Supper. The fact that John the
Baptist’s facial expression and type bear a resemblance to those
of the woman Leonardo depicted in the Mona Lisa shows again
that he applied his favorite type to portraiture as well as narrative
painting.29
Leonardo’s own attentive study of nature, as attested
in numerous scientific studies and drawings, enabled him to
improve upon the Tuscan style of figure painting he so often
criticized. It was Vasari who recognized that in terms of natural-
ism, design, expression and beauty Leonardo’s paintings were of
unprecedented perfection, leading the biographer to initiate the
third and last style, which he called modern, with Leonardo.30
As the above-mentioned examples of the re-use of stock motifs
show, however, Leonardo’s greatly improved skills as a natural-
istic painter did not lead him fully to abandon the language
of forms and types he had learnt from Verrocchio, Pollaiuolo
and others. In all likelihood, Leonardo never intended to do so,
despite his negative theoretical views on imitation. He simply
stuck to motifs and forms from the works of other artists that
at an early stage he had committed to memory through frequent
copying, a practice he would later also urge on young painters.
Importantly, throughout life Leonardo kept his own drawings as
his “authors and teachers” (“altori e maestri”).31 In doing so, Leon-
ardo showed that while giving free rein to his imagination by
exploring and introducing new drawing techniques, he would
not repudiate a drawing practice dependent on the medieval pat-
tern book tradition. This duality of his approach to the func-
tion of drawing, I believe, makes Leonardo a transitional figure
between the old and new design practices.32
58
Notes
*
I wish to thank Ingrid Ciulisová for asking me to use this essay that previ-
ously appeared in KWAKKELSTEIN, M. W. – MELLI, L.: From Pattern to Nature
in Italian Renaissance Drawing: Pisanello to Leonardo. Florence 2012, pp. 175-193.
It is here reprinted (though with fewer illustrations and with some editorial
improvements) with permission kindly granted by Ginevra Marchi.
1
PEDRETTI, C. – VECCE, C. (eds.): Leonardo da Vinci. Libro di Pittura. Codice
Urbinate lat. 1270 nella Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. 2 vols. Florence 1995, Vol. 1,
p. 185, § 82.
2
See POPHAM, A. E.: The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. London 1946, Nos. 8A,
130A, 253. For the Windsor sheet, see CLARK, C. – PEDRETTI, C.: The Draw-
ings of Leonardo da Vinci in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle.
3 vols. London 1968 – 1969, Vol. 1, p. 3, No. 12276.
3
PEDRETTI – VECCE 1995 (see in note 1), Vol. 1, p. 178, § 67; pp. 180-181, § 72.
4
For instance, Andrea del Verrocchio’s black chalk drawing of the Head of an
Angel Looking Upwards in Berlin, for which see SCHULZE ALTCAPPENBERG,
H.-Th.: Die italienischen Zeichnungen des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts im Berliner Kup-
ferstichkabinett. Kritischer Katalog. Berlin 1995, pp. 144-143, No. 5095 recto.
5
THIIS, J.: Leonardo da Vinci. The Florentine Years of Leonardo and Verrocchio. London
1913, p. 161; and VALENTINER, W. R.: Leonardo and Desiderio. In: The Burlington
Magazine, 61, 1932, pp. 53-61. Various theories have been advanced to explain
the discrepancy between Leonardo’s theoretical concern with physiognomical
variety in painting and his recurrent use of facial stereotypes. See GOMBRICH,
E. H.: The Grotesque Heads. In: GOMBRICH, E. H.: The Heritage of Apelles. Studies
in the Art of the Renaissance. Oxford 1976, pp. 57-75; and ZÖLLNER, F.: “Ogni Pit-
tore Dipinge Sé”. Leonardo da Vinci and “Automimesis”. In: WINNER, M. (ed.):
Der Künstler über sich in seinem Werk. Weinheim 1992, pp. 137-160.
6
POPHAM 1946 (see in note 2), No. 43. For a more recent assessment of this
drawing, see BAMBACH, C. – VIATTE, F. et al.: Leonardo da Vinci. Master
Draftsman. [Exhib. Cat.] New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New
York 2003, pp. 324-328, No. 29 verso.
7
The notes on life drawing in Manuscript A (Paris, Institut de France) are given
in PEDRETTI – VECCE 1995 (see in note 1), Vol. 1, p. 187, § 88; p. 190, § 99;
p. 217, § 175.
8
The connection between Botticelli’s Washington Adoration and Leonardo’s
work, if accepted, would favor a date of the former work to shortly before Bot-
ticelli left for Rome in 1481. Leonardo’s early interest in Botticelli’s tondo of the
Adoration of the Magi at the National Gallery in London was suggested by WIE-
MERS, M.: Bildform und Werkgenese. Studien zur zeichnerischen Bildvorbereitung in
der italienischen Malerei zwischen 1450 und 1490. Munich – Berlin 1996, pp. 292-306.
9
See PEDRETTI – VECCE 1995 (see in note 1), Vol. 1, pp. 216-217, § 173.
10
See KWAKKELSTEIN, M. W.: The Young Leonardo and the Antique. In:
BOSCHLOO, A. W. A. – GRASMAN, E. – VAN DER SMAN, G. J. (eds.): “Aux
Quatre Vents”. A Festschrift for Bert W. Meijer. Florence 2002, pp. 25-32. The horse
and rider at the top of the verso of the Rothschild drawing bears a striking
resemblance to the type of horse and rider on the famous sarcophagus relief
59
 at the Campo Santo in Pisa that Bertoldo sought to reconstruct with his
bronze relief, now in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. See ARIAS,
P. E. – CRISTIANI, P. E. – GABBA, E.: Camposanto Monumentale di Pisa. Le
Antichità. Pisa 1977, pp. 151-152. The movement and type of horse Leonardo
depicted at the far left of the recto of the Rothschild drawing corresponds
closely to the one in Botticelli’s Discovery of the Dead Holofernes of ca. 1470
(Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi) where it is seen in reverse but from the same
angle.
11
MARANI, P. C. in LOISEL, C. (ed.): Il Rinascimento italiano nella collezione
Rothschild del Louvre. [Exhib. Cat.] Florence, Casa Buonarroti. Florence 2009,
pp. 98-99, No. 38. For the sketches of a Madonna and Child with a cat, see
POPHAM 1946 (see in note 2), Nos. 8B, 9A-B, 10-14.
12
See CLARK – PEDRETTI 1968 – 1969 (see in note 2), Vol. 1, No. 12326 recto. For
additional examples of sheets in which Leonardo arranged drawings based
on earlier sketches, see KWAKKELSTEIN 2002 (see in note 10). According to
CLARK, K.: Leonardo and the Antique. In: O’MALLEY, C. D. (ed.): Leonar-
do’s Legacy. An International Symposium. Berkeley – Los Angeles 1969, p. 14, the
design of the Battle of Anghiari was influenced by an antique relief of the Fall
of Phaeton.
13
CLARK – PEDRETTI 1968 – 1969 (see in note 2), Vol. 1, Nos. 12615 and 12616.
14
For a discussion of the recurrence of this hand motif in the paintings by Ver-
rocchio and his immediate followers, see PASSAVANT, G.: Andrea del Verrocchio
als Maler. Dűsseldorf 1959, pp. 119-120. For the theory of Leonardo’s collabo-
ration with Verrocchio on the picture of Tobias and the Angel, see BROWN, D.
A.: Leonardo da Vinci. Origins of a Genius. New Haven – London 1998, pp. 47-56.
MARANI, P. C.: Leonardo da Vinci. The Complete Paintings. New York 2000, p. 112,
also notes that the hands in the Windsor sheets are close in style to those
painted by Antonio del Pollaiuolo. Leonardo drew similar hands on a sheet
datable to the late 1470s, reproduced in POPHAM 1946 (see in note 2), No. 18.
This sheet is usually connected to Leonardo’s portrait of Ginevra de’Benci in
the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
15
For a recent analysis of this work, see COVI, D. A.: Andrea del Verrocchio. Life
and Work. Florence 2005, pp. 174-180.
16
See RICHTER, J. P. (ed.): The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci. Compiled and
Edited from the Original Manuscripts. 2 vols. London 1970 (3rd ed.), Vol. 1, § 660.
17
CLAYTON, M.: Leonardo da Vinci: A Curious Vision. [Exhib. Cat.] London, Buck-
ingham Palace, The Queen’s Gallery. London 1996, p. 2, No. 2.
18
Reproduced in BEAN, J.: Bayonne. Musée Bonnat. Les Dessins Italiens de la Col-
lection Bonnat. Paris 1960, No. 44. In pose and physical type, the nude figure
bears a striking resemblance to Antonio Rossellino’s life-size marble statue of
St. Sebastian in Empoli, datable to 1460 – 1470.
19
OST, H.: Leonardo-Studien. Berlin – New York 1975, p. 69; SYSON, L. – BILL-
INGE, R.: Leonardo da Vinci’s Use of Underdrawing in the “Virgin of the
Rocks” in the National Gallery and “St Jerome” in the Vatican. In: The Burl-
ington Magazine, 147, 2005, pp. 450-463.
20
See BORA, G., et al.: Disegni e dipinti leonardeschi dalle collezioni milanesi. [Exhib.
Cat.] Milan, Palazzo Reale. Milan 1987, p. 66, No. 15. For an analysis of the
60
errors Leonardo committed in rendering the bodily forms of St. Jerome, see
SCHULTZ, B.: Art and Anatomy in Renaissance Italy. Ann Arbor 1982, pp. 68-69.
21
As suggested by KWAKKELSTEIN, M. W.: The Use of Sculptural Models by
the Master of the Pala Sforzesca. In: Raccolta Vinciana, 30, 2003, pp. 147-178,
esp. p. 169.
22
For Maso’s drawing, see MELLI, L.: Maso Finiguerra: I disegni. Florence 1995,
p. 118, fig. 24. The connection with Pollaiuolo’s drawing in Paris was suggested
by NATHAN, J.: Motiv und Werkmethode. In: FEHRENBACH, F. (ed.): Leon-
ardo da Vinci. Natur um Übergang. Munich 2002, pp. 347-370, esp. p. 356.
23
See KWAKKELSTEIN, M. W.: New Copies by Leonardo after Pollaiuolo and
Verrocchio and His Use of an ecorché Model. In: Apollo, 159, 2004, pp. 21-29, esp.
p. 24 and fig. 9.
24
Ibidem, p. 21 (with previous bibliography).
25
Ibidem, pp. 21-22 and figs 1-2.
26
Ibidem, p. 22 and figs. 3-4; and NATHAN 2002 (see in note 22), p. 360.
27
For the notes on dynamic figure poses, see PEDRETTI – VECCE 1995 (see in
note 1), Vol. 2, pp. 256-257, § 279; pp. 263-264, § 297; p. 273, § 325; p. 273, § 326;
p. 285, § 357; p. 288, § 368; p. 297, § 395; p. 297, § 396. For a recent discussion of
the Windsor nude drawings, see CLAYTON, M.: Leonardo da Vinci. The Divine
and the Grotesque. [Exhib. Cat.] London, Buckingham Palace, The Queen’s Gal-
lery. London 2002, pp. 42-45.
28
See also NATHAN 2002 (see in note 22), p. 352.
29
For Leonardo’s dependence on tradition for the depiction of ideal facial
stereotypes, see GOMBRICH, E. H.: Ideal and Type in Italian Renaissance
Painting. In: GOMBRICH, E. H.: New Light on Old Masters. Studies in the Art of
the Renaissance. Oxford 1986, pp. 89-124, esp. pp. 110-112 (with reference to Vasa-
ri’s comment on Leonardo’s habit of copying Verrocchio’s drawings of female
heads). Cf. GOMBRICH 1976 (see in note 5), pp. 69-70: “The Mona Lisa passes as
a portrait and is at the same time a type that recurs in Leonardo’s vocabulary, a type,
we may assume, applied to an individual.” As noted by MARANI 2000 (see in note
14), p. 198: “… the x-ray of the face shows clear variations from the finished painting.”
30
Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori scritte da Giorgio Vasari pittore
aretino con nuove annotazioni e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi. In: MILANESI, G.
(ed.): Le opere di Giorgio Vasari. 9 vols. Florence 1906, Vol. 4, p. 11.
31
See PEDRETTI – VECCE 1995 (see in note 1), Vol. 1, pp. 216-217, § 173. My con-
clusions regarding Leonardo’s dependence on established formulae further
support the validity of those drawn long ago by W. R. Valentiner. In studying
the influence the works of Verrocchio and Desiderio da Settignano might
have exerted on Leonardo, he concluded that “artists of that period could not
recognize reality other than by means of the forms of speech of their teachers, and that
tradition had so saturated their blood that a realistic reproduction of nature was scarcely
possible”. – VALENTINER, W. R.: Leonardo and Desiderio. In: The Burlington
Magazine, 59, 1932, pp. 53-61, esp. p. 54.
32
According to GOMBRICH, E. H.: Leonardo’s Method for Working out Com-
positions. In: GOMBRICH, E. H.: Norm and Form. London 1966, pp. 58-63,
Leonardo’s innovative method of inspired and imaginative sketching intro-
duced a radical break with the older practice of using patterns.
61