描述
The exquisite small sketch of a tondo on the recto of the Metropolitan sheet was undoubtedly intended for a medal on a theatrical costume, therefore perhaps related in theme to the verso sketches for the staging of Baldassare Taccone’s La Danae or another festa. In its type of design and drawing style, the recto drawing on the Metropolitan sheet is closely comparable to two other sheets with small allegorical scenes inscribed within a tondo shape, one in Cambridge and the other in Bayonne; all three sheets are rendered with the same style of quick, reinforced outlines and delicate parallel-hatching typical of Leonardo’s drawings of the early to mid-1490s, and can be placed close enough to ca. 1496, as a terminus ante quem, based on the verso of the Metropolitan sheet with the Danae sketches.