![Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci attributed to Francesco Melzi](https://cmsadmin.rct.uk/sites/default/files/lead_image_half_height/RC1894_Leonardo%201600%20x%20625_Yellow.jpg)
Ideal male heads
Two standard male types recur repeatedly in Leonardo’s drawings and paintings – an adolescent with delicate, refined features, and an older man with aquiline nose, prominent chin and beetling brow. In the last decade of his life Leonardo produced a number of independent drawings of such heads, exercises in form and draughtsmanship simply for his own satisfaction.