The mystery behind Leonardo da Vinci’s lost masterpieces and what historians say

Leonardo da Vinci remains one of history’s most fascinating figures, an artist, engineer, and relentless observer of the natural world. His notebooks brim with designs for flying machines, anatomical dissections and mechanical systems that feel astonishingly modern. Yet only a small number of his paintings survive today, and even fewer were ever brought to a firm, finished state. That imbalance has long fuelled rumours: Did Leonardo deliberately erase parts of his own legacy? Was he concealing ideas too radical for his time? Most historians now think the answer is far less theatrical. What disappeared was not so much destroyed as left behind, victims of experimentation, abandonment and the sheer vulnerability of art over half a millennium. Scroll down to read more.

Popular accounts often cast Leonardo as a ruthless perfectionist, supposedly destroying works that displeased him. Early writers noted how frequently he abandoned commissions, and later storytellers transformed that habit into claims of secret bonfires and missing canvases. Modern scholarship is more restrained. There is no reliable evidence that he systematically burnt completed paintings. What documents and contemporaries do confirm is that he:

• Left many commissions unfinished
• Endlessly revised compositions
• Experimented with unstable materials
• Carried projects with him for decades

Those tendencies alone go a long way toward explaining why so little has survived.

Leonardo’s greatest strength may also have caused problems: his endless curiosity. He was rarely happy following standard methods. Instead, he mixed his own paints, changed ingredients, and tried new ways of putting oil and tempera onto walls and wooden panels. Sometimes these experiments worked beautifully. Other times, they failed badly.

One of his most ambitious wall paintings began to fall apart within just a few years because he used an experimental method instead of the standard fresco. When this happened, the damaged areas were often repaired by others, painted over, or gradually disappeared with age, rather than being deliberately destroyed by Leonardo himself. He was also notorious for moving on to new fascinations: hydraulics, anatomy, optics, flight. A half-finished painting could easily be sidelined when a new scientific puzzle caught his imagination.

Another reason so little of Leonardo’s art survives is simple: five hundred years is a very long time. Europe went through wars, political upheavals, church reforms, fires, and floods. Palaces were rebuilt, collections were scattered, and monasteries closed. Paintings on wooden panels cracked, wall murals crumbled, and drawings faded.

Leonardo’s notebooks lasted only because students and collectors protected them. Many other works, practice studies, design sketches, or workshop pieces likely disappeared without record. For historians, absence usually signals accident and decay, not deliberate destruction.

The more dramatic theory, that Leonardo destroyed works to hide dangerous discoveries, usually focuses on two areas: human anatomy and unusual religious ideas.

Leonardo studied bodies at a time when such work could be controversial, though not outright illegal in all contexts. His anatomical drawings were extremely accurate and centuries ahead of their time. Some have guessed that paintings using this knowledge might have been hidden.

Others point to small changes from religious tradition, unclear expressions, unusual layouts and pictures of a careful artist removing images that went too far.

Yet most historians reject the idea of any hidden cleanup. Leonardo did not appear scared of writing bold ideas; he filled thousands of pages with backwards-written notes about bodies, sex, rocks and machines. If he had been trying to hide knowledge, his actions do not really support that idea.

In fact, many of those notebooks circulated among students after his death, suggesting he was not attempting to erase them from history.

Where scholars mostly agree is this: Leonardo abandoned works constantly.

Patrons complained about long delays. Contracts stretched on. Some paintings stopped at the first sketch stage, while others had colour added but were never completed. When he moved to new cities, he sometimes carried panels with him, adjusting them years later or sometimes never returning to them at all.

A few incomplete works that survive today give a clue to how many more may once have existed. For every masterpiece hanging in a museum, there were likely several others that stalled mid-process and quietly disappeared.

Did Leonardo ever scrape a panel to reuse it or abandon a failed attempt? Very likely, artists have always recycled materials. But the idea that he deliberately destroyed important works to hide secrets has little support among historians.

The small number of paintings that survive has kept rumours alive. When only a handful of works remain from such a celebrated artist, every absence invites speculation: What was it like? Was it daring? Did it push boundaries too far? In reality, these gaps likely say less about hidden plots and more about a mind that was perpetually ahead of its moment, experimenting with unstable materials, pursuing radical ideas, and leaving numerous projects unfinished. Historians increasingly argue that Leonardo’s greatest mystery was not something he erased but the sheer speed of his imagination, which often outpaced what he could bring to completion on canvas.