A drawing of a deluge which seems to have turned on itself. In the foreground cataracts and whirlpools are carrying all before them; but in the sky huge spouts of rain no longer aim at the earth, but curl upwards in great volutes.

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. In this drawing huge blocks of rock are thrown about by the wind, while a fortress on a mountain at lower right collapses outwards under the impact of the storm. But far from being chaotic, the scene is drawn with the eye of a scientist, fascinated by the forms and optical qualities of clouds, rain, floodwater, debris and dust.

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