Leonardo da Vinci Drawings: Colour Plates

Leonardo possessed a greedy curiosity and desire for discovery of unknown worlds. Only observation, says Leonardo, is the key to knowledge and understanding. In his Studies for the Nativity, he studied different poses and gestures of the mother and her infant, probably in preparation for the main panel in his altarpiece known as the Virgin of the Rocks. Similarly, in a sheet of designs for a stage setting, prepared for a staging of a musical comedy in Milan in 1496, he made notes on the act...