Drawn In By Leonardo

Leonardo Da Vinci survives in our minds as a great artist, but his drawings show that he was also one of the great Renaissance scientists

- Helen Glenny

May 2019 marked the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo Da Vinci. The UK’s Royal Collection has the most important group of Leonardo’s drawings to survive. It’s more than 500 sheets that have been together as a group since the artist’s death.

Can you contextualise for us the importance of these drawings?

Martin Clayton Drawing was central to Leonardo’s work. It’s the paintings that have survived today, but he was also a sculptor, an architect, an engineer and a scientist. But none of his sculptures survived, and we can’t tell if any of his architecture was even executed. His engineering seems mostly to have been designed, rather than built, and none of his science reached a conclusion that he was ready to publish. But through the drawings, we get to know all these different fields of activity. We see in his drawings not just the preparations for his paintings, but also the preliminary works for his sculpture and architecture, so we can understand what he was working towards.

How did science influence his art?