Twenty-four grotesque heads. Process print after L. Da Vinci.

[London] : [Colnaghi], [1902]

1 print : process print ; image 32.3 x 40.1 cm

Part II. No. 15.

Lettering on separate sheet discusses the proliferation in the 17th and 18th centuries of grotesques after Leonardo, and then speculates on his purpose in designing them: "Perhaps it is not too extravagant to suppose that he may have been investigating some pictorial 'doctrine of limits'. He may have suspected that, given a permanent correspondence between a certain character and a certain type, the essence of character, obscured as it is in the complexity of man, would be disclosed by the extreme or limiting form of its embodiment"

Wellcome Collection 34481i

Reproduction of an album sheet at Wilton House on which many different drawings had been pasted in two columns. The sheet is believed to have contained drawings attributed to Franceso Melzi recording designs by Leonardo da Vinci. The sheet appears to have been dismembered: the top left drawing, consisting of heads of a woman and a man, was sold at Sotheby's in 1917 and later at Christie's, London, 5 July 2011, lot 4. According to the Christie's catalogue, the drawings by Leonardo da Vinci from which these Wilton heads were copied were formerly at Chatsworth, and the head of the woman is still there (2011; inv. 824D)