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The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne...
Leonardo da Vinci April 15, 1452 May 2, 1519
Saint Anne, the Virgin Mary and the Infant Jesus three generations, two the fruit of immaculate conception are portrayed in a landscape. The picture was very probably commissioned as an ex-voto to Saint Anne in gratitude for the birth of Louis XIIs daughter, but Leonardo worked too long on the picture to deliver it. The composition is a fine example of his experimentation with figure composition and greatly inspired artists of the following generation.
The little-known circumstances of a prestigious acquisition:
The picture is thought to have been commissioned by Louis XII of France to celebrate the birth of his only daughter, Claude, in 1499 Anne was the name of his wife and of the patron saint of infertile and pregnant women. But the picture was never delivered to Louis XII since an observer noted its presence in Leonardos workshop in 1517 the artist was then lodged by Franois I at Cloux, near Amboise. The Virgin and Child with Saint Annes reported presence in the Palais Cardinal (the present-day Palais Royal) in 1651 has fuelled the hypothesis that the picture entered the royal collection via Richelieus ministrations. But in all likelihood it was Franois I who acquired it from Leonardos assistant, Salai, for a considerable sum recorded in archives. However, prior to Le Bruns 1683 inventory, no record of such a picture at the Chteau de Fontainebleau confirms this.
The symbiosis of form and meaning:
Several preparatory works the cartoon in the National Gallery in London and several drawings including the one in the Louvre (RF 460) retrace the works gradual development. Leonardo replaced the young Saint John the Baptist in the first sketch by a symbol, the Lamb of God, and slid the Infant Jesus off his mothers knees towards the ground. He gave more importance to Saint Anne, who becomes the axis of a triangular composition. The figures natural gestures interlock with one another: Annes right arm blends with Marys, whose head conceals her mothers shoulder, and Marys left arm is prolonged by Christs. This interplay conveys meaning: the idea of lineage and the Incarnation of Christ, whose destiny, the Passion, is foreshadowed by the Lamb at the precipices edge. Leonardos originality here lies in his iconography (the addition of the Lamb) and his geometric yet dynamic composition.
A fascinating and typically Leonardesque composition:
As he did in The Virgin of the Rocks, Leonardo set a religious scene in a fantastic landscape and placed an abyss between viewer and figures. The mountainous distance is conveyed by atmospheric perspective with bluish and crystalline highlights and reflects his interest in geology and meteorological phenomena.
The sfumato, Leonardos trademark painterly effect, unifies the composition by enveloping the figures and landscape in a diffuse, evanescent and poetic haze. This imbues the highly expressive faces with great gentleness. The work exudes an aura of strangeness which, combined with the subtle expressions and the pictures unfinished state has given rise to a number of psychoanalytical interpretations since Freud.
The picture decisively influenced subsequent generations of artists, both classically-inspired painters such as Raphael and Solario, and Mannerists such as Andrea del Sarto (Charity, INV 712).
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, April 15, 1452 May 2, 1519, was an Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, a man whose unquenchable curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci points out, however, that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.
Born the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by Francis I.
Leonardo was and is renowned primarily as a painter. Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, are the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious paintings of all time, respectively, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on everything from the euro to text books to t-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.
Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.
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