Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and His Circle - American Collections (Collection) Facsimile Edition

Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and His Circle - American Collections is a selection of eighty plates featuring the reproduction of both Leonardo's autograph drawings and drawings that were valued for their connection with Leonardo, namely those of his school and circle, as well as later copies, such as the caricatures in the Spencer collection of grotesques.

Autograph Drawings by Leonardo

This first section includes fifteen drawings. Although Leonardo was held in high regard as an artist and scientist, his drawings were rarely collected in nineteenth-century America: more than half of the fifteen Leonardo drawings in the American collections came to the United States after 1950. The drawings included in this section are as follows: Drapery study for a kneeling figure (ca. 1475); Drapery study of a standing figure (ca. 1475); Head of a youth with curly hair (ca. 1478); A horseman (ca.1480); Studies of a bear walking, a forepaw, and a seated female nude (ca. 1487-90); Sheets of technological studies (ca. 1487-90); Studies for a Nativity (ca. 1490); Caricatures (ca. 1490-5); Sheet of studies (ca. 1494-6); Heroic profile (ca. 1495); Caricature of an old woman with a carnation (ca. 1495); Caricature of a man with bushy hair, laughing (ca. 1495); Profile of a man (ca. 1495); Sheet of figure and technological studies (ca. 1497-1500); Sheet of figure studies (ca. 1508-10).

The drawing with the studies for a Nativity is particularly remarkable. It displays four studies of the Virgin kneeling over the Christ Child lying on the ground, one of which including the figure of the infant St. John the Baptist. Of all the drawings by Leonardo in America, this is the most frequently reproduced. It is often dated to the late 1470s or early 1480s, as a sheet of studies for a Nativity or an Adoration preceding the Uffizi Adoration of the Magi, or as a preparatory stage in the development of the Virgin of the Rocks. Interpretations that consider these studies as a stage in the evolution of the Virgin of the Rocks are based on the kneeling position of the Virgin and the novelty of her open arms.

Drawings Attributed to Leonardo

This section includes four drawing attributed to Leonardo. The first of them, Studies for the Uffizi Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1480, is an extraordinary, perhaps unique case of a Leonardo drawing originally made in metalpoint and then gone over in pen and ink by another, possibly contemporary but hopelessly inept hand. The other three drawings in this section are: The Virgin and child with St. Anne and a lamb, seated below an arch (ca. 1501); Study for the hand of the Virgin in the Louvre Saint Anne (ca. 1510); Old man in profile to right (early sixteenth century).

School of Leonardo

This section includes a series of drawings attributed to artists belonging to the school of Leonardo, including Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Francesco Napoletano, Cesare da Sesto, and Leonardo’s favorite pupil, Francesco Melzi. Five drawings in this section are anonymous.

Leonardo Followers and The Spencer Collection of Grotesque after Leonardo

In this section are a series of drawings attributed to Giovanni Agostino da Lodi, Andrea Solario, Bernardino Luini, and Giampietrino. There follow the group of drawings "Sixteenth-Century Copies after Leonardo," featuring a drawing by Ambrogio Figino and drawings by various anonymous. The collection also includes the section "Later copies after Leonardo," including such late followers as Rembrandt and Degas. The collection end with the drawings included in the grotesques after Leonardo in the Spencer Collection, datable to the late sixteenth century.