Leonardo da Vinci’s Five Grotesque Heads: early evidence of cranio-facial mycobacterial infection

Excerpt

Leonardo da Vinci was a master artist of the renaissance era. He was well known to follow extraordinary people around Florence to sketch their features in his notebooks, and his genius of observation, insight and artistic mastery has thus given us many of the first anatomical [1] and pathological illustrations [2]. The Five Grotesque Heads, painted in 1494 and now owned by the British Royal Collection Trust, represents one of his most well known sketches of the grotesque. The grotesques are a series of depictions of faces and busts, sketched or painted by renaissance artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. These are thought to portray observations of human physiognomy or physical manifestations of personality, and whilst some are pure caricatures, others are recognised to depict pathology [3]. …