Investigation · copies · archives · drawings
The works
lost
Leonard's
Erased paintings, monumental sculpture destroyed, boxes disappeared and projects never executed: what is missing from Leonardo's work is almost as famous as what remains.
The short answer
What works by Leonardo have disappeared?
The best documented losses are the mural of the Battle of Anghiari, the colossal clay model of the equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza and one Leda and the Swan known through drawings and studio copies. Other works are attested only by an ancient text, while several "lost projects" have probably never gone beyond drawing.
I · The evidence
How do you know a work that no longer exists?
The documents
Contracts, payments, correspondence and ancient accounts establish that work was commissioned, started or seen.
The drawings
Autograph studies reveal pattern, movement research and sometimes several competing solutions.
Copies
Later students and artists preserve a composition, but their fidelity and date must be evaluated.
II · Reasoned inventory
Eight disappearances, abandonments and projects
Original started then destroyed
1. The Battle of Anghiari
Commissioned for the Grand Council Hall of Palazzo Vecchio in 1503, the immense composition was to show a Florentine victory. Leonardo experimented with a mural technique which proved unstable. The executed part remained visible long enough to be copied, then disappeared during the transformations of the room in the 16th century.
The famous drawing associated with Rubens was not executed in front of the fresco: it derives from intermediaries and was widely used.
Ancient witness
2. The Tavola Doria
This panel is not a lost Leonardo found. This is an ancient interpretation of the struggle for the standard. It helps to reconstruct colors, tangle and energy, but remains the testimony of another painter.
The illustration shows another copy of the composition: it allows us to understand the family of witnesses without being confused with the Tavola Doria itself.
Painting lost · copies preserved
3. Leda and the Swan
Leonardo first studied a kneeling Leda, then a standing figure surrounded by his children. Several copies from the 16th century suggest that a completed or very advanced painting existed. His journey after his arrival in France remains obscure and the original disappears from inventories.
The copies agree neither on the landscape nor on all the details: they document a family of images rather than a facsimile.
Project abandoned
4. The kneeling Leda
The drawings show a very different first solution from the standing version. There is no evidence that it was transformed into a stand-alone painting. It illustrates an essential distinction: an abandoned idea is not necessarily a lost work.
What remains here is the very essence of the project: the graphic research of torsion, motherhood and the relationship with the ground.
Model destroyed · bronze never cast
5. The Sforza monument
Leonardo worked for years on a colossal equestrian statue in honor of Francesco Sforza. The gigantic clay model was exhibited in Milan, but the bronze intended for casting was used for military needs. In 1499, the model was destroyed during the French invasion.
The bronze monument often imagined today therefore never existed.
Old mention · no sure trace
6. The Medusa
Vasari describes a head of Medusa painted on a shield and attributed to young Leonardo. No corresponding object can be identified with certainty. The paintings of Medusa sometimes proposed do not offer sufficient provenance.
The image presented here is that of Caravaggio: it only serves as a comparison and should never be captioned as a work by Leonardo.
Drawing offered · original disappeared
7. Neptune and his horses
The sources evoke a spectacular drawing by Neptune intended for Antonio Segni. Copies and derivations preserve the god and sea horses. Leonardo's original is no longer located.
The study of water illustrated here illuminates the vocabulary of whirlwinds with which Leonardo could feed such a subject; it's not the missing Neptune.
Unexecuted or transformed projects
8. Canals, cities and architectures
Arno Canal, ideal city, palaces, stables, hydraulic works and party devices populate the manuscripts. Some were studied for real sponsors; many remained on paper or were modified by others.
These are not "destroyed monuments": their absence is part of their project status.
III · Reconstruct without inventing
The Battle of Anghiari, exemplary file
Which is certain
An official order, a large box, partial execution and disappearance are documented. Autograph studies confirm the search for horsemen, infantrymen and dust.
Which remains hypothetical
The exact color, the extent actually painted and the precise relationship between each copy and the lost wall. No preserved image gives access to the planned set over nearly eighteen meters.
IV · The falsely disappeared
Famous works, but not lost
| Work or project | Real status | Why the confusion? |
|---|---|---|
| The Adoration of the Magi | Kept at the Offices, unfinished. | Its abandonment is sometimes confused with a disappearance. |
| The Burlington House box | Preserved at the National Gallery in London. | It was probably never transposed as is into painting. |
| The Last Supper | Still in place in Milan, very altered. | Much of the original material is lost, but the work is not. |
| The Mona Lisa | Preserved at the Louvre. | Theft stories and copies periodically fuel false rumors. |
| Salvator Mundi | Existing table, attribution discussed. | An attribution controversy does not turn the work into a "lost original". |
Unfinished, not lost
The Adoration of the Magi
The panel allows you to precisely observe Leonardo's method: drawing, brown values, figures at varying degrees of advancement and composition still open.
Cardboard preserved
London cardboard
This vast sheet is a surviving original, not the ghost of a painting. However, its fragility explains why so many comparable boxes have disappeared.
V · What the losses change
An incomplete catalog by nature
The mural
Without Anghiari, we misjudge Leonardo's ability to think of a monumental scene of collective violence.
The sculpture
Without the horse Sforza, his sculpted work seems almost non-existent despite decades of plastic research.
The circulation of models
Copies and variants show that the workshop extended an invention beyond the autograph object.
Institutional sources
Check the files
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FAQs
Questions about missing works
Does the Battle of Anghiari still exist under a Vasari fresco?
Research has fueled this hypothesis, but no work by Leonardo hidden behind the current setting has been demonstrated. The state of knowledge requires us to speak of a vanished painting.
Did Rubens copy the mural directly?
No. He arrived in Italy after the destruction of the work and worked from drawings or intermediate copies.
Was Leonardo's horse cast in bronze?
No. The large clay model was made; monumental melting was not.
Is there a faithful copy of Leda?
Several old copies document the composition, but none can be considered a perfectly faithful reproduction of the lost original.
How many of Leonardo's works are lost?
No definitive figure is possible: the sources poorly distinguish between projects, works started, workshop copies and creations actually completed.
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