Of Leonardo’s studies for the Battle of Anghiari I must in the first place point to five, on three of which—­Pl.  LII 2, Pl.  LIII, Pl.  LVI—­we find studies for the episode of the Standard.  The standard bearer, who, in the above named copies is seen stooping, holding on to the staff across his shoulder, is immediately recognisable as the left-hand figure in Raphael’s sketch, and we find it in a similar attitude in Leonardo’s pen and ink drawing in the British Museum—­Pl.  LII, 2—­the lower figure to the right.  It is not difficult to identify the same figure in two more complicated groups in the pen and ink drawings, now in the Accademia at Venice—­Pl.  LIII, and Pl.  LIV—­where we also find some studies of foot soldiers fighting.  On the sheet in the British Museum—­Pl.  LII, 2—­we find, among others, one group of three horses galloping forwards:  one horseman is thrown and protects himself with his buckler against the lance thrusts of two others on horseback, who try to pierce him as they ride past.  The same action is repeated, with some variation, in two sketches in pen and ink on a third sheet, in the Accademia at Venice, Pl.  LV; a coincidence which suggests the probability of such an incident having actually been represented on the cartoon.  We are not, it is true, in a position to declare with any certainty which of these three dissimilar sketches may have been the nearest to the group finally adopted in executing the cartoon.

With regard, however, to one of the groups of horsemen it is possible to determine with perfect certainty not only which arrangement was preferred, but the position it occupied in the composition.  The group of horsemen on Pl.  LVII is a drawing in black chalk at Windsor, which is there attributed to Leonardo, but which appears to me to be the work of Cesare da Sesto, and the Commendatore Giov.  Morelli supports me in this view.  It can hardly be doubted that da Sesto, as a pupil of Leonardo’s, made this drawing from his master’s cartoon, if we compare it with the copy made by Raphael—­here reproduced, for just above the fighting horseman in Raphael’s copy it is possible to detect a horse which is seen from behind, going at a slower pace, with his tail flying out to the right and the same horse may be seen in the very same attitude carrying a dimly sketched rider, in the foreground of Cesare da Sesto’s drawing._

If a very much rubbed drawing in black chalk at Windsor—­Pl.  LVI—­is, as it appears to be, the reversed impression of an original drawing, it is not difficult to supplement from it the portions drawn by Cesare da Sesto.  Nay, it may prove possible to reconstruct the whole of the lost cartoon from the mass of materials we now have at hand which we may regard as the nucleus of the composition.  A large pen and ink drawing by Raphael in the Dresden collection, representing three horsemen fighting, and another, by Cesare da Sesto, in the Uffizi, of light horsemen fighting are a further contribution which will help us to reconstruct it.