A drawing of a deluge accompanied by a thunderstorm. The great coils of rain swoop down from the left, and above them lightning plays in the sky and lights up the trees on which water-spouts are falling. Melzi’s number [14]7

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. He wrote with relish about the futile struggles of man and animal against the overwhelming forces of nature, and made a set of drawings of a vast deluge destroying the earth. These are not studies for paintings, but expressions of Leonardo’s fascination with storms and destruction, and among the most visionary works of the entire Renaissance. 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, and who had a profound sense of the impermanence of all things, even of the earth itself.

In this drawing all solid matter has been pulverised and swept away, and the scene is dominated by plumes of wind, water and lightning issuing from the clouds. But far from being chaotic, it 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