Da Vinci code: a 500-year-old sketch offers clues to the polymath

A 500-year-old sketch depicting a bearded man was revealed on Thursday as one of only two portraits of the Renaissance artist who remained faithful during his lifetime.

The design, which would have been done, would have been done by an badistant, is part of the Royal Collection of the United Kingdom and will be on display at the Buckingham Palace at an exhibition marking the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death .

This was a quick sketch of a double-sided study sheet, most made by the Florentine master himself from a horse leg, in anticipation of a monument that has never been completed.

Martin Clayton, head of prints and drawings at the Royal Collection Trust, compared it to Leonardo's only other contemporary image by his pupil. Francesco Melzi.

Both were produced shortly before the artist's death in 1519 and reveal his well-kept and "lush" beard that was relatively rare at the time, Clayton said.

"The elegant and straight nose, the linen The beard rising diagonally from the cheek to the ear, a loop falling from the mustache at the corner of the mouth and the long wavy hair are exactly what that Melzi showed them in his portrait, "he added.

:" Beside the portrait of Melzi, it is the only other contemporary likeness of Leonardo. "In the skit, he has about 65 years old and seems a little melancholy and tired of the world.

"However, the presence of the portrait alongside studies of another great equestrian monument shows that Leonardo's ambitions remained intact later." 19659002] The two portraits will be exhibited alongside 200 drawings of the artist in "Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing", which opens on May 24.

It will also be Leonard's first public show Studies of Hands for the Adoration of the Magi that only emerged from what appeared to be a blank sheet of ultraviolet paper .

A lock of hair

The drawings of the Royal Collection are grouped since the death of the artist. and were probably acquired during the reign of King Charles II of England in the seventeenth century.

Historians believe that Leonardo da Vinci's hair was on display Thursday in a museum located in his birthplace in Tuscany, while they were trying to prove he contained his DNA 500 years after the death of the genie. The art historian, Alessandro Vezzosi, said that a DNA study would be conducted on the hair.