The large drawing, or cartoon,of The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and the Young St. John the Baptist (1501; charcoal and touches of white on paper) hangs in the National Gallery, London.
Such drawings were intended to be full-size preparations for pictures, but Leonardo, who hated the manual labour of painting, evidently made them for their own sakes, writes Kenneth Clark.
The Burlington House cartoon could scarcely be more beautiful, and many lovers of Italian art have found it more to their liking than the picture in the Louvre. It was executed in about 1497, directly after the completion of The Last Supper, and gives us some idea what the massive figures of the Apostles must have been like before time and restoration had reduced them to stains upon the walls 'faint as the shadows of autumnal leaves'.
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