From horses to birds, to studies of bears and cats, the role of animals in Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific and artistic method.
Speaking of Leonardo da Vinci’s favorite animals is fascinating, but also somewhat misleading because no direct references exist in historical sources. However, we can reconstruct which animals Leonardo observed, studied, and drew most often to understand why. His notes feature horses and equine anatomy linked to monumental projects and the study of movement; his notebooks contain naturalistic research on flight, birds, wings, and air dynamics; other collections reveal cats, small animals, and life studies, along with surprising examples like the famous bear drawn with extreme precision. Animals also play a role in Leonardo’s paintings, where they serve as symbols, cultural clues, or narrative tools.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Which are Leonardo’s favorite animals?
- Horses: power, movement, and anatomy
- Birds: flight as scientific research
- Cats, bears, and other animals observed from life
- Animals in Leonardo’s paintings: what do they symbolize?
- What do animals tell us about Leonardo?
Which are Leonardo’s favorite animals?
Leonardo left no record of which animals were his personal favorites, but animals appear frequently in his study sheets, sketches, notes, drawings, and paintings.
In his notes and Leonardo’s notebooks, it emerges that his numerous studies included animals—sometimes to understand how a leg moves, how a knee articulates, or how a body reacts to torsion—and other times to comprehend the flight of birds. In other cases, animals become symbols within a pictorial narrative for Leonardo.
In Leonardo’s writings and works, we therefore find recurring animals and animals useful to his method: those he observed for longer periods, analyzed, and used as “models” to study movement, anatomy, strength, balance, and aerodynamics.
Inside Leonardo’s World
Experience interactive machines and inventions at the Leonardo Exhibition in Rome
Horses: power, movement, and anatomy
Among the animals that cross Leonardo’s drawings with an almost structural presence is the horse, an animal associated with power, war, the court, and public celebration. Leonardo, working in ducal environments and receiving monumental commissions, found himself thinking about the horse as a body in motion and as a natural machine of strength. His sheets include equestrian studies where he analyzes posture, tension, weight, balance, and muscle contraction.
The horse allowed Leonardo to study the mechanics of the living: understanding the movement of a horse could help in understanding the movement of any body. In his anatomical studies, the horse returns as a natural reference for joints, muscles, and proportions.
Birds: flight as scientific research
If the horse represented power on earth for Leonardo, birds were a way to understand flight. In Leonardo’s notes and drawings, flight is conceived as a physics problem to be solved, where the wing is a device and flight is a matter of lift, resistance, balance, and the relationship between the body and airflow.
When Leonardo observes flight, he also observes what makes it stable or unstable, such as variations in tilt, body adaptation, and the relationship between thrust and fall. In this sense, birds are among his “favorite” animals because they led him to understand the general laws governing natural phenomena. The study of birds is inextricably linked to his projects for flying machines.
Cats, bears, and other animals observed from life
In addition to horses and birds, Leonardo showed interest in other animals, including cats—small felines that are easily observable and represent a concentrate of elasticity, torsion, sudden reflex, and balance. It is no coincidence that in sheets attributed to Leonardo or his circle, drawings of cats appear as exercises in movement.
There are also animals like the bear, the subject of studies that demonstrate Leonardo’s ability to render mass, gravity, paw structure, and the relationship between the body and the ground with almost modern precision.
Animals in Leonardo’s paintings: what do they symbolize?
In Leonardo’s paintings, animals become symbols of purity or power, or simply a compositional balance between lines and volumes. The most famous case is the Lady with an Ermine, where the animal is not a mere companion but an element charged with meanings that art history interprets in relation to identity, the court, and the construction of the image.
This also applies when animals are less explicit and are represented not as protagonists, but as elements to describe the relationship between humans and nature, or to make a scene more credible and alive.
What do animals tell us about Leonardo?
The animals drawn by Leonardo show his constant curiosity and his search for an understanding of nature and the laws that govern it. Horses and birds were observed and represented because they were perfect for studying strength and air, ground and flight, weight and balance, while cats, bears, and other animals scattered throughout his sheets were used to understand movement.
In his paintings, however, animals appear because, for Leonardo, nature is not a backdrop but the system within which humanity exists. Leonardo’s favorite animals are those that allowed him to do what defined him most: understand life, nature, and the laws that govern the world.
Leonardo Live
Visit the Leonardo Exhibition in Rome and discover his machines, inventions, and much more up close