Audio Guide Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman

Back to Audio Guide

Press the "Play" arrow below the image to begin the audio clip. Then, select the image to explore the details.

		Studies for a Bear Walking; Faint Underdrawing of an Unrelated Design of a Pregnant Woman's Body. Leonardo da Vinci (Vinci, 1452–Cloux, 1519). Metalpoint on pink-light brown prepared paper; 103 x 134 mm (4 1/16 x 5 5/16 in.). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975.1.369). (Cat. no. 43).

Philippe de Montebello
In this study of a bear, we see Leonardo building shadows and contours with his deftly drawn, parallel hatching. His implement was a silver stylus or a silver wire in a wooden holder. This drawing technique is called "silverpoint."

Carmen Bambach
And one sees Leonardo sort of searching for the contours, and so he will draw them first very lightly. You can barely see them, especially around the snout of the bear. And then you see him reinforcing it gradually, and you can see him also using very, almost, incisive lines into the paper. But the tonal subtlety of this bear study is again quite dazzling. Leonardo is relying on the silverpoint medium to get at a precision of detail. And you see him repeating the paw of the bear on the lower left, the kind of detail that again, even with the pen, you would have to work a lot harder to get at those kinds of tonal subtleties.

The audio clips in this section were produced by Antenna Audio. The Audio Guide is available for rental in the exhibition galleries. For more information, see Events & Programs. The Audio Guide program is sponsored by Bloomberg.