During his life Leonardo da Vinci, the very embodiment of the Renaissance ideal of the ‘uomo universale’, was famous for his unique ability to convincingly depict human emotions and personalities. ​Leonardo was fascinated by the expressiveness of the human face, whether deformed and ugly or beautiful and idealized, and particularly by the relation between its exterior and the interior mind. He had an obvious affinity with the ‘science’ of physiognomy – popular in his day – which claimed that the human face reflected the personality inside. ​One of the exhibition’s highlights is Leonardo’s 'Head of a Young Woman', sometimes called the Mona Lisa of drawings. The drawing is now on display in the Netherlands for the first time.