In the period just before or after leonardo finished his portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci, that is, the late 1470s or early 1480s, he may have turned his attention, for a brief time, to sculpture. A growing consensus of scholars believes that he was probably responsible for the pensive, terracotta Bust of the Young Christ in an Italian private collection (fig. 50). Although the attribution to Leonardo must remain tentative, because no other sculpture by him survives for comparison and the piece is completely undocumented, certain aspects of the work point to his hand. The facial type and handling of the hair suggest that the sculpture comes from someone trained in the Verrocchio shop; comparisons can be made to Verrocchio's terracotta bust of Christ in a private collection in London and to the physiognomies of the master's David (Bargello Museum), Christ and Saint Thomas, and, especially, in the pronounced asymmetry of the eyes and queerly bulging eyelids, his Christ of the Crucifixion (c. 1470–75; fig. 51), also in the Bargello.

Yet, typical of Leonardo, the Young Christ has been invigorated in a novel way – the head is turned, breaking the usual symmetry of such busts (as Verrocchio would do in his terracotta portrait of Giuliano de’ Medici of c. 1478), and Christ's expression has been “humanized,” made momentary and unquiet. With eyebrows raised and eyes lowered, he seems to be intellectually assimilating something he has just observed or mulling over a response to something that he has just heard, as if caught up short in his discussion with the elders in the temple, recounted in the Gospel of Luke (2:46–50). In his personal reflection on Christ, Leonardo, as one might expect, imagines him to be similarly thoughtful and questioning, as much the reasoning philosopher, the Old Testament teacher as Savior or healer.