A monstrous head, legs and tail have burst out of a large classical building, which pursues a man towards a flying woman surrounded by angels. She holds her arm over him in a gesture of protection; in her hand is what may be a pair of dividers, in which case she would be the personification of Architecture, perhaps then protecting the man (an architect? Leonardo himself?) from the terrors of an out-of-control building project. Turning the sheet anticlockwise, we see a representation of the heavens, with a figure seated on a globe surrounded by flames, and small objects or rays of light falling through the clouds below.

The pen style seems to be that of the 1490s, and the drawing may be related to Leonardo’s production of Baldassare Taccone’s comedy Danaë, staged in the Milanese residence of Gianfrancesco Sanseverino in January 1496. Leonardo’s cast list with a sketch of a stage set survives (New York, Metropolitan Museum), and the present drawing might depict Jupiter in the heavens, sending down the shower of gold in which guise he seduced the princess Danaë.

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