This is an extreme example of Leonardo ‘thinking aloud’ on paper. The sketches cover many of the subjects that were bubbling away in his mind in the years around 1490: geometrical diagrams; a rearing horse with rider echoing the Sforza monument, and a standing warrior; two sketches of a screw press; an old man in profile, his cloak merging with a study of trees; a meticulously drawn blade of grass, and an arum lily; a bank of strongly-lit cumulus cloud; and a sketch of water falling into a pool, though the scale is hard to gauge – it could be a puddle or a vast cloudburst comparable to the late Deluges.

Text adapted from Leonardo da Vinci: A life in drawing, London, 2018