Soft centre
Taut muscles are conjured with soft red chalk shadows within a sharply outlined pen and ink silhouette in this study, created around the time Leonardo was prepping for his lost mural depicting the Battle of Anghiari.
Renaissance man
Renaissance artists had twin gods – nature and knowledge of the classical world – and this drawing fuses both. This was the era when pattern books went on the rubbish heap, and instead artists looked to nature first. The model may have been a musician, as suggested by a name scribbled on a similar drawing of a curly haired Adonis, seen from the back.
Body building
However, this nude is an idealised type, his pose directly recalls Leonardo’s earlier Vitruvian Man. Perhaps the most famous drawing of all time, its double image of a figure with arms and legs outstretched is an experiment in “ideal proportions” as described by the classical Roman architect Vitruvius.
Mr Universe
Vitruvius applied these human proportions to buildings, while Leonardo strove to relate them to the natural world, looking for a hidden pattern that connected man to the universe.
Part of The Encounter, National Portrait Gallery, WC2, to 22 October
