This is my favorite Leonardo painting - mostly because of the way he has painted Saint Anne (the Virgin Mary's mother - at top). It may have been begun as early as 1500 and it remained unfinished at his death. It is now in the Louvre. This painting

With the revival of Plato's writings in the 15th century, Venus made a comeback, split of course, into naughty Venus Naturalis or Vulgaris - the extravagance of erotic visions seen above in Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538) - and the demure Venus Coelestis (Heavenly Venus) like in

This famous drawing was completed around 1490 as an illustration for a book on the works of the Roman architect Vitruvius. It is now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice. It asserts an essential symmetry between the human body and the universe, the microcosm and the macrocosm. In