Leonardo travelled from Rome to the Loire valley in central France in late 1516, and was given apartments in the manor house of Clos Lucé, half a mile to the south of the castle at Amboise. This drawing depicts the castle as seen from Leonardo’s residence (the opposite side from the usual views of the castle, from the river). The drawing may even have been made from the windows of Leonardo’s apartments, but it is not by Leonardo himself, and his assistant and eventual heir Francesco Melzi is perhaps the likeliest candidate.

From ancient foundations the castle had grown haphazardly, and though Charles VIII had imported Italian designers during the 1490s to remodel the castle, when Leonardo arrived it was still a jumble of buildings of different periods within a rambling curtain wall, essentially medieval in plan. The view shows the principal buildings to the left of centre, a large low circular tower in the defensive walls below, a gate and wooden bridge over a ravine to the right, and a cluster of cottages below the walls at left.

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