A drawing of a tempest with storm clouds releasing shafts of water onto a wooded hill. The power of the rain rushing down the hill bends the trees under its force, and the flooded landscape contains many trees submerged and uprooted by the swirling water; with the careful addition of wash creating differing degrees of obscuration in the clouds. Far from being chaotic, the scene is drawn with the eye of a scientist, fascinated by the forms and optical qualities of clouds, rain, debris and dust. Melzi's number 139.

During the last years of his life Leonardo repeatedly treated the subject of a cataclysmic storm overwhelming a landscape, in both his drawings (RCIN 912376 - 912386) and his writings. This obsession with death and destruction can be seen as the deeply personal expression of an artist nearing his end – an artist who had seen some of his greatest creations unfinished or destroyed before his eyes, and who had a profound sense of the impermanence of all things, even of the earth itself.

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