Leonardo da Vinci’s Animal Anatomy: Bear and Horse Drawings Revisited

摘要

Simple SummaryLeonardo da Vinci was an outstanding artist of the Renaissance. He depicted numerous masterpieces and was also interested in human and animal anatomy. We focused on the anatomical drawings illustrating different parts of bear and horse bodies. Regarding Leonardo’s “bear foot” series, the drawings have previously been described as depicting a bear’s left pelvic limb; however, based on the anatomy of the tarsus and the digit (finger) arrangement, they show the right posterior limb. In addition, an unreported rough sketch of a dog/wolf antebrachium (forearm) has been identified and reported in detail in one of the drawings of the “bear’s foot” series. After a detailed anatomical analysis, the drawing “The viscera of a horse” has more similarities to a canine anatomy than to a horse anatomy, suggesting that it shows a dog’s trunk. Besides, the anatomies of the drawings depicting the horse pelvic limb and the human leg were analyzed from the unprecedented point of view of movement production.