Leg of a Dog, from a Da Vinci by Jean-Michel Basquiat draws on warm Okawara paper in the same spirit as the Leonardo portfolio — the title written twice, the source acknowledged directly, the image organised like a page from a working sketchbook rather than a finished print. A human foot occupies the lower left, carefully rendered with the detail of a genuine anatomical study. To its right, an arrow points to LEG OF A DOG FROM A DAVINCI — the canine leg drawn with segmented vertebral-like joints, placed in explicit comparison with the human foot beside it. Above, a jaw study and a row of teeth complete the page.

Leonardo's anatomical notebooks included comparative studies of human and animal anatomy — the leg of a horse set against the leg of a man, the structural parallels between species used to understand function through comparison. Basquiat adopts that method directly, placing the human foot and the dog's leg in the same image and letting the arrow between them do the analytical work. The comparison is not decorative. The dog leg appears in Untitled (Dog Leg Study) the same year, annotated with notes on leverage, ball joints, and the mechanics of force — the animal limb as a model for thinking about how bodies are built to bear weight and absorb pressure.

This screenprint was published by New City Editions in 1983 in a lifetime edition of 20, making it among the rarest prints Basquiat authorised during his lifetime — produced in the same year and through the same publisher as Academic Study of the Male Figure, the two works sitting together as his most direct engagements with the Leonardo source material outside the formal portfolio.

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