Mona Lisa V ‘the monstrous’: the grotesque, shocking side of Leonardo da Vinci

The Italian master didn’t just paint the conventionally beautiful. As a new National Gallery show reveals, he was also drawn to irregular, diseased and aged faces – all captured with mind-bending accuracy and compassion

Leonardo da Vinci comments in his notebooks that while few are trained in judging portraits, everyone feels entitled to criticise actual people: “whether someone is a hunchback (gobbo), or has one shoulder higher or lower than the other, or too big a mouth or nose, or other defects.” It’s a telling remark, but at first sight some of his most disturbing drawings suggest he shared those prejudices against people who look different.

We think of him painting the beautiful: Ginevra de’ Benci, Cecilia Gallerani and Salai glow with glossy hair and good bone structure. Yet alongside his fascination with youth and loveliness Leonardo was obsessed with irregular, diseased and aged faces whose “monstrous” distortions he drew with daunting precision.

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