Paintings

Leonardo da Vinci's surviving paintings — fewer than twenty universally attributed works, each one a milestone in the history of art. From the early Annunciation, painted in Verrocchio's workshop, through the revolutionary sfumato of the Mona Lisa and the dramatic chiaroscuro of the Virgin of the Rocks, to the haunting Saint John the Baptist of his final years. Leonardo's paintings are the rarest treasures in art: he worked slowly, obsessively, often leaving works unfinished as his restless mind moved to the next problem. The result is a body of work so small it can be displayed in a single room, yet so influential it reshaped European painting for centuries. Each painting is presented with detail crops revealing Leonardo's extraordinary technique — the famous sfumato that makes his figures seem to breathe, the landscapes that dissolve into atmospheric blue distance.