Beauty is in the eye of the brush holder

Ever since Leonardo da Vinci followed curiously featured people in the street to capture their likeness on canvas, artists have been fascinated by the grotesque and unusual, says Michael Prodger

- Michael Prodger

LEONARDO DA VINCI had many personal quirks. He was, among other things, a left-handed vegetarian, who was very proud of his glossy hair and had a penchant for wearing salmon-coloured hose. He was also fascinated by oddities. According to the artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari, Leonardo was ‘so delighted when he saw curious heads, whether bearded or hairy, that he would follow anyone who had thus attracted his attention for a whole day, acquiring such a clear idea of him that when he went home he would draw the head as well as if the man had been present’.

Today, such behaviour might lead to police intervention and a restraining order, but, in late-15th-century Florence and Milan, it resulted in a series of extraordinarily vivid caricature drawings. Whether the cities of Renaissance Italy really abounded with such a startling array of undershot jaws, pendulous lips, goitrous necks and potato-shaped noses is not clear, but Leonardo turned his people-watching to unforgettable account. The Romans may have invented the caricature, but Leonardo made it into an art form.