A Bear Walking

Artist:: Leonardo da Vinci (Italian, Vinci 1452–1519 Amboise)

Date:: ca. 1482–85

Medium:: silverpoint on light buff prepared paper

Dimensions:: 4 1/16 x 5 1/4 in. (10.3 x 13.3 cm)

Classification:: Drawings

Credit Line:: Robert Lehman Collection, 1975

Accession Number:: 1975.1.369

Not on view

Leonardo da Vinci's abundant drawings and notebooks record his keen and tireless observation of all aspects of the natural world. He probably drew this study from life and his anatomical understanding of the animal may have been aided by his dissections of bears. The sheet relates to a group of bear studies that Leonardo probably produced for his planned anatomical treatise, about which he wrote: “I will discourse of the hands of each animal to show in what way they vary, as in the bear which has the ligatures of the toes joined above the instep.” The faint outlines of a seated woman are visible beneath the drawing of the bear, indicating that Leonardo reused the sheet.

Thomas Lawrence, London; Samuel Woodburn, London; Lawrence-Woodburn sale 1860, June 8, lot 1038; private collection, England; [P.& D. Colnaghi & Co., London]; Ludwig Rosenthal, Bern, Switzerland; (later L.V. Randall, Montreal); [Schaeffer Galleries, New York]; acquired by Robert Lehman from Schaeffer Galleries in February 1945

Essays
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)

Art and Anatomy in Renaissance Italy: Images from a Scientific Revolution
[adapted from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 69, no. 3 (Winter, 2012)]
The Art of Renaissance Europe: A Resource for Educators
Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 4, The Renaissance in Italy and Spain
Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy
The Robert Lehman Collection. Vol. 5, Italian Fifteenth- to Seventeenth-Century Drawings

Department

Robert Lehman Collection (2,589)

Artist / Maker / Culture

Leonardo da Vinci (159)

Object Type / Material

Geographic Location

Date / Era

A.D. 1400–1600 (26,339)

Divina proportione

Artist: after Leonardo da Vinci (Italian, Vinci 1452–1519 Amboise) Date: June 1, 1509 Medium: Book with woodcut illustrations Accession: 19.50 On view in:Not on view

Compositional Sketches for the Virgin Adoring the Christ Child, with and without the Infant St. John the Baptist; Diagram of a Perspectival Projection (recto); Slight Doodles (verso)

Artist: Leonardo da Vinci (Italian, Vinci 1452–1519 Amboise) Date: 1480–85 Medium: Silverpoint, partly reworked by the artist with pen and dark brown ink on pink prepared paper; lines ruled with metalpoint (recto); pen and brown ink (verso) Accession: 17.142.1 On view in:Not on view

A Bear Walking

Divina proportione

Compositional Sketches for the Virgin Adoring the Christ Child, with and without the Infant St. John the Baptist; Diagram of a Perspectival Projection (recto); Slight Doodles (verso)

The Head of a Woman in Profile Facing Left

The Head of a Grotesque Man in Profile Facing Right

Head of a Man in Profile Facing to the Left