Assault Chariot With Scythes

Assault Chariot With Scythes by Leonardo da Vinci

Created in 1485 during the Renaissance period, this work belongs firmly within the daily life tradition. Leonardo da Vinci worked at a moment when the rivalry between Catholic Baroque drama and Protestant restraint reshaped what a painting could mean. Every gesture, fabric, and gleam of light was decoded by contemporary viewers like a private language.

The physical object — silverpoint, pen and ink on paper, 210 x 292 mm — carries its own history of handling and restoration. Leonardo da Vinci's brushwork here moves between exacting description and looser, more suggestive passages, a balance typical of Baroque studio practice.

Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. Scenes like this were prized precisely because they made ordinary labor and leisure worth painting at all.

Housed at Biblioteca Reale in Turin, the painting has passed through the hands of collectors, dealers, and institutions before reaching public view — a provenance that is itself part of the object's story.

“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”