Newly identified Leonardo portrait on show in London

A 500-year-old sketch of a bearded man was on Thursday revealed to be one of only two surviving portraits of Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci made during his lifetime.

The drawing, believed to have been made by an assistant, is part of the Royal Collection and will be displayed in an exhibition at Buckingham Palace marking 500 years since Leonardo's death.

It was a quick sketch on a double-sided sheet of studies, most of them made by the Florentine master himself of a horse's leg, in anticipation of a monument that was never completed.

Martin Clayton, Head of Prints and Drawings at the Royal Collection Trust, compared it with the only other contemporary image of Leonardo by his pupil, Francesco Melzi.

Both were produced shortly before the artist's death in 1519, and reveal his well-kept and "luxuriant" beard that was relatively rare at the time, Clayton said.

"The elegant straight nose, the line of the beard rising diagonally up the cheek to the ear, a ringlet falling from the moustache at the corner of the mouth and the long wavy hair are all exactly as Melzi showed them in his portrait," he said.

He added: "Alongside Melzi's portrait, this is the only other contemporary likeness of Leonardo. In the sketch, he is aged about 65 and appears a little melancholy and world-weary. However, the presence of the portrait alongside studies for another grand equestrian monument shows that Leonardo's ambitions remained undimmed in later life."