Made up of eight sheets of paper, this is the only surviving large-scale drawing by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). The outlines of the figures have neither been pricked nor incised to transfer the design from paper to panel. The delicate modelling and high level of finish instead suggest that it was a full-scale presentation drawing, intended as a work of art in its own right, to be presented to a potential patron.
The drawing may be the one described by Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574), who wrote that: 'men and women, young and old, continued for two days to flock for a sight of it to the room where it was, as if to a solemn festival, in order to gaze at the marvels of Leonardo, which caused all those people to be amazed'. Leonardo possibly made the drawing in about 1506 to 1508 as a proposal for an altarpiece in the Palazzo della Signoria (now called the Palazzo Vecchio) in Florence. The altarpiece, however, was later commissioned from Fra Bartolommeo (1472–1517).
The drawing is known today as the Burlington House Cartoon, after the building in which it was displayed when it was still in the collection of the Royal Academy of Arts, London. It was acquired by the National Gallery in 1962.
