Leonardo and self-loathing

Let's face it, Leonardo da Vinci had everything going for him: tortured genius, Renaissance manhood and homosexuality to boot. And did it bring him happiness? No, it did not. As this show of 73 of his drawings of faces from the Royal Collection suggests, Leonardo was not a content chap.

Put it down to bad self-image. Leonardo had a male friend who was 30-odd years younger than him: a liar and thief known as Salai, or little devil. Salai was as young and beautiful as Leonardo had once been - the ageing artist looked at his lover and saw divinity; he looked in the mirror and saw only hideousness.

And so, after 1510 or so, his world became divided into two camps, the beautiful and the grotesque. Both are represented in this show at Buckingham Palace: the impossible Grecian perfection of The Head Of A Youth In Right Profile, allegedly modelled on Leonardo's Little Devil; the self-loathing frighteningly manifested in the jowled and wattled old men.

Some of these tortured studies are for the faces of Christ and the Apostles in Leonardo's Last Supper: which makes you wonder whether there isn't more going on in that great picture than meets the eye.

Leonardo Da Vinci: The Divine And The Grotesque, showing until Nov 9, The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace SW1, 10pm to 5.30pm, £6.50, £3 to £5 concs. Tel: 020 7766 7301. Tube: Victoria