The anatomical drawings of Leonardo da Vinci
Human body, dissections and discoveries: how a painter invented a new way of seeing the interior of life.
Sawed skulls, muscles unrolled layer by layer, spine observed from several angles, heart modeled and fetus made almost transparent: about five centuries before medical imaging, Leonardo transformed the leaf into a laboratory.
Why are these drawings revolutionary?
Leonardo da Vinci does not just copy ancient authorities. He opens bodies, observes, measures, compares humans to animals and seeks the function behind form. His project goes beyond anatomy useful to the painter: he wants to understand how the skeleton carries, how the muscles pull, how the valves direct a flow and how the fetus lodges in the uterus.
Its second innovation is visual. The same structure appears in plan, elevation, section, transparency or "exploded view". The muscle layers are removed successively as in an interactive atlas. This graphic syntax, now familiar in textbooks, was radically new at the beginning of the 16th century.
But "visionary" does not mean "always right". The posture of the fetus is remarkably intuitive, while the drawn placenta borrows from the cow. The heart valves are studied with finesse, but Leonardo does not formulate the blood circulation later demonstrated by William Harvey. His work combines discoveries, hypotheses and ancient legacies.
Research conducted in waves
Anatomy does not occupy Leonardo continuously. Two major campaigns took shape: the first Milanese explorations around 1489, then the intense period from 1506 to 1513, between Florence, Milan and Pavia.
First organs
Animals, nervous system, large vessels and relationships between organs. The patterns still remain marked by Galen.
The skull
Precise sections, maxillary sinus, orbit and nervous paths. Leonardo also locates - wrongly - the seat of the soul.
The old man
In Florence, the autopsy of a very elderly man fuels his observations on vessels and arteriosclerosis.
Pavia
With Marcantonio della Torre he produced his most accurate studies of the skeleton, spine and muscles.
Heart and birth
Valves, ventricles, flows, genitals, pregnancy and fetus. The planned treaty will never be completed.
See behind the face
The leaves of 1489 constitute his first coherent anatomical campaign. Leonardo saws the skull in different planes and preserves the relationship between the surface and the internal cavities. The orbit is no longer a simple dark hole: it becomes a volume from which nerves leave. It represents with rare clarity the maxillary sinus, a cavity then very little documented.
His ambition, however, exceeds what observation can prove. He's looking for it senso comune, supposed center where sensations converge and where the soul resides. Geometric lines cross the skull to fix its position. This construction is false, but it reveals his constant desire to transform a philosophical problem into a spatial problem.
What drawing brings
The cut view connects external anatomy, depth and orientation. The precision of the image is empirical; its interpretation of the brain remains dependent on a medieval tradition of the cerebral "ventricles".
The body like a living machine
In Pavia, Leonardo no longer designed an ideal silhouette. He dismantles the mechanics of the gesture: bones as levers, joints as pivots, tendons as ropes and muscles as motors.
Several attitudes on the same sheet connect the visible shape to the structures working underneath.
The repetition of views functions as a progressive dissection: remove, isolate, turn, compare.
From skin to traction
To understand the movement, Leonardo must remember the position of a muscle after removing the layer that covered it. It therefore draws a succession of states. The fibers become oriented bands; their attachments indicate which bone piece they can move.
This logic is close to a mechanical exploded view, but it remains attentive to living matter. The shoulders, neck and back are examined because they combine surfaces visible to the painter and mechanisms that are difficult to guess.
Errors persist - certain contours are recomposed, certain fabrics schematized - but the relationship between form and function becomes the real subject of the board.
Observe the flow without discovering the circulation
Cardiac research is among Leonardo's most daring. He dissects human and animal hearts, compares cavities, examines valves and questions the spiral movement of blood. To make the phenomena visible, he even imagines a glass model of the aorta where water loaded with seeds can materialize the vortices.
His drawings of aortic valves anticipate modern observations of how vortices contribute to their closure. He understands the heart as a pump with a privileged direction and carefully describes the coronary arteries.
However, complete blood circulation should not be attributed to it. Leonardo retains the ancient idea of partially distinct venous and arterial systems, as well as functions now abandoned for the lungs. William Harvey formulated systemic circulation in 1628.
The old man and the great ships
A meeting at the Santa Maria Nuova hospital in Florence gives Leonardo a unique clinical case: a very old man, who said he was over a hundred years old, died peacefully after speaking to him.
Leonardo connects thickening and stiffness of arteries to age. He attempts to explain death by the material state of the vascular network.
The notes and figures construct a network: each organ is studied separately, then placed back into the general economy of the body.
The fetus: exact intuition, composite anatomy
The famous leaf shows a fetus folded into a transparently open pocket. Leonardo captures the compact position of the body, the curvature of the back and the relationship between the head and limbs with a force that evokes a modern medical image.
But the board is not the faithful reproduction of a single human dissection. The placenta with multiple cotyledons is that of a bovine. Leonardo likely combined animal observation, incomplete human knowledge, and graphic reconstruction.
This hybridization explains both the power and the limit of his method: when access to the human body is lacking, animal comparison becomes a hypothesis. The drawing makes this hypothesis persuasive, sometimes more so than the available evidence.
Six operations to make the body readable
Leonardo develops a true grammar of scientific illustration. He does not choose a single beautiful view: he changes the process depending on the question asked.
Cut
A section reveals cavities invisible from the surface.
Turn
Face, profile, back and oblique prevent a complex shape from being reduced to a silhouette.
Overlap
Transparent layers maintain the relationship between organs.
Burst
Elements are separated without losing their assembly order.
Repeat
A series of positions explains a movement rather than a frozen moment.
Annotate
Mirror writing records questions, measurements, doubts and protocols.
Discoveries, intuitions and errors
To judge Leonardo correctly, we must distinguish what he observed, what he represented with new precision and what he only anticipated. His notes having not been published, even his best results hardly transformed the medicine of his time.
| Subject | What Leonardo brings | Modern limit or correction |
|---|---|---|
| Spine | First known representation of great accuracy, with curvatures, sections and separate cervical vertebrae. | Some details and functions remain incomplete, but the general structure is remarkable. |
| Skull and sinus | Precise sections of the orbit, cranial cavity and maxillary sinus; pay attention to the optic chiasm. | The geometric location of the soul and the theory of ventricles are incorrect. |
| Muscles | Layered reading, pulling directions and the relationship between bones, tendons and movement. | Several beams are simplified or reconstructed after dissection. |
| Heart | Valves, coronaries, flow vortices and experimental models of exceptional modernity. | It does not demonstrate complete blood circulation and retains galenic ideas. |
| Vascular aging | Association between stiffening of the arteries, age and deterioration of circulation. | An isolated case is not enough to establish a general pathophysiology. |
| Fetus | Posture and spatial organization rendered with striking intuition. | Placenta and membranes combine human and bovine anatomy. |
Why did the atlas never appear?
Leonardo repeatedly announced a comprehensive treatise. He envisages the order of chapters, the succession of layers and the cooperation between text and image. His collaboration with the anatomist Marcantonio della Torre in Pavia could have provided the necessary academic framework.
Marcantonio's death around 1511, Leonardo's travels, the growing scale of the project and his taste for revision prevented completion. The leaves remain scattered. After his death in 1519, they passed to his student Francesco Melzi, then were largely reunited and assembled by Pompeo Leoni. They entered the Royal Collection around 1670.
It was not until the end of the 19th century that anatomical studies were widely reproduced. The analogy with Vesalius's plates, published in 1543, is striking, but direct transmission from Leonardo's notebooks is not demonstrated.
Its most enduring legacy is therefore retrospective: it shows how far observation, experience and exceptional graphic intelligence could lead even before the constitution of modern anatomy.
Replacing anatomy in Leonardo's work
Dissections are not an isolated area. They extend his research into proportions, light, movement, machines and how to make visible what escapes the eye.
See the leaves and go deeper
The notices below allow you to check dates, inventory numbers and current search status. The images in this article are all served from Shopify; the links open institutional sources.
Overview of dissection campaigns, graphic methods and leaf conservation in Windsor.
Read the official summary →Notice of RCIN board 919102, with explanation of correct intuitions and bovine elements.
Consult the instructions →Notice of sheet RCIN 919007, considered the first exact representation of the column.
Consult the instructions →The context of artistic anatomy, the collaboration with Marcantonio della Torre and the vocabulary of scientific illustration.
Read the Met essay →1983 catalog dedicated to fifty sheets of Windsor, available free of charge in PDF.
Download the catalog →Catalog of Martin Clayton and Ron Philo: 87 studies, scientific commentary and detailed reproductions.
See the reference book →Anatomical drawings in six answers
How many bodies did Leonardo da Vinci dissect?
His notes suggest around thirty human bodies, plus many animals. The figure remains an estimate and the dissections are mainly concentrated around 1507 -1513.
Did the Church prohibit all dissections?
No. Human dissection was regulated and difficult to access, but it was not simply banned throughout Italy. Leonardo works in particular in hospitals and academic circles.
Where are the anatomical drawings kept?
The majority of the large leaves are in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. They are shown by rotation during exhibitions in order to limit their exposure to light.
Did Leonardo discover blood circulation?
No. It includes many aspects of the heart, valves and flows, but does not formulate systemic blood flow. This demonstration is associated with William Harvey in 1628.
Is the design of the fetus accurate?
The posture of the fetus is remarkably convincing. The uterus and placenta, however, contain elements observed in a pregnant cow: the plank is a composite reconstruction.
Why was he writing backwards?
Leonard, left-handed, frequently uses right-to-left mirror writing. It suited his gesture and his private use of notebooks; it does not necessarily constitute a secret code.
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