Leonardo’s anatomical work was the most accomplished of his many scientific studies. Like all his research, it combined traditional beliefs with acute direct observation, including the dissection of up to thirty human cadavers. But Leonardo also studied and dissected animals at many points of his career. His subjects included horses, bears, monkeys, frogs, dogs and oxen – as surrogates for human material, as independent subjects of study, and on occasion to compare explicitly human and animal anatomy. Though it is challenging to identify any overarching methodology in these studies, and even harder to detect any lasting ‘influence’, this is typical of Leonardo’s scientific studies. The drawings and notes on animal anatomy can therefore be seen as a case study of his aims in anatomy and his scientific methods overall.
Martin Clayton LVO FSA has worked in the Print Room at Windsor Castle since 1990, and from 2013 as Head of Prints and Drawings for Royal Collection Trust. He has curated many exhibitions on the drawings in the Royal Collection, including shows on Leonardo’s anatomical work (1992, 2010 and 2012-13) and his studies of physiognomy (The Divine and the Grotesque, 2002). For the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death in 2019 he curated fourteen exhibitions of Leonardo’s drawings at museums and galleries across the UK, that were seen by a total of 1,300,000 visitors. He is currently working on an exhibition of Italian Renaissance Drawings at the Queen’s Gallery in 2024/25, and a revised full catalogue of the Leonardos at Windsor.
This event is organised by the Leonardo da Vinci Society.
