Leonardo da Vinci's Masterpiece 'The Lady With the Ermine'

Richard Cork explains this work, hanging in Krakow, Poland.

After mounting a steep staircase at the ancient Wawel Castle in Krakow, Poland, I am permitted to enter a room containing only one mesmeric painting. The guard looks at me with a stern expression, and his vigilance is understandable. For the portrait displayed on the wall has long been venerated as one of Leonardo da Vinci's most consummate achievements. He executed it, with outstanding finesse, in 1490. And the patron who probably commissioned it was the powerful Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza.

The painting enjoys a mysterious title: "The Lady With an Ermine." But historians now feel confident that she is Cecilia Gallerani, a beautiful and talented young woman whose father served at Ludovico's court. Still a teenager when this portrait was painted, she had just become the Duke of Milan's mistress. Even so, Leonardo had no desire simply to produce a glamorous painting of a youthful beauty showing off her allure. He shows her in a relatively simple dress, and Cecilia's necklace does not glisten with expensive jewels. Nor is her hair coiffured in a conventionally seductive manner. Far from it: A center part divides Cecilia's hair into two smooth bands confined very tightly to the sides of her face. The sheathed plait at the back is difficult to detect, and a severe black band runs round her head as if to control the fine gauze veil holding her coiffure in place.

Cecilia seems determined to ensure that no one mistakes her for a flamboyant noblewoman. She was admired not just as a beauty but as a scholar, a wit and a poet. Ludovico must have been impressed by her precocious intelligence and creativity. Doubtless bored with the brainless charm of so many ambitious ladies, who continually dressed up to compete for his attention at court, he had become captivated instead by Cecilia's far cooler and more perceptive individuality. Leonardo, who began working for the duke in 1482, must likewise have admired her thoughtfulness. Cecilia does not stare out directly at the viewer. Unlike the Mona Lisa, she turns her gaze away from us completely.

Leonardo invites us to decide on Cecilia's mood, because his discerning imagination knew that the workings of the human brain should not be reduced to a simple formula. Rather than looking at someone or listening intently, Cecilia may well be lost in her own thoughts. As the duke's mistress, she might even be recalling her emotional distress after a young nobleman called Stefano Visconti proposed to her. About 10 years old at that time, Cecilia was duly betrothed to him. Yet the marriage was called off in 1487. So by the time Leonardo painted this portrait she had every reason to feel guarded about Duke Ludovico's attentions.

When regarded solely as a symbol of honor and purity, the ermine's prominent appearance in this painting of a mistress may seem surprising. The presence of this carnivorous animal, whose brown fur turns white in winter, undoubtedly adds to the work's richness of meaning. The creature Cecilia holds in her arms may well have been kept as a pet by the duke and his mistress. But Ludovico had a special reason to cherish the ermine. In 1488, just before this portrait was painted, he was awarded the insignia of the chevalric Order of the Ermine by the King of Naples. As a result, the Duke of Milan was known as "l'Ermellino," and Cecilia Gallerani herself would have appreciated the fact that the Greek for ermine (or weasel) is galay. The animal's presence in this painting may therefore have been seen as a visual pun on her surname.

Since Leonardo was also obsessed with drawing, his image of the ermine surely benefits from his sensitive yet systematic study of the animal from life. It comes alive in paint, burrowing into the folds of Cecilia's dress yet at the same time twisting its head, raising a militant paw and staring out at the world with as much avidity as its mistress. She does not acknowledge the ermine's presence with her eyes. But she makes sure that the animal is supported securely within the fold of her left arm. As for her right hand, it stretches across the ermine's back and touches the fur in a very protective way. Fascinated by anatomy, Leonardo is able to give Cecilia's elongated fingers an extraordinary amount of representational and emotional conviction. She almost seems to be prodding the animal's neck with her index finger, as if bent on directing the ermine's attention in the firmest way possible.

Cecilia appears committed to looking after the pet, and the fact that it symbolizes purity must have been enormously important to her. However creatively independent she had become, this young woman realized just how carefully she ought to conduct herself as the duke's mistress in the Milanese court. It was filled with all kinds of danger, and perhaps that is why the ermine appears to twist around with alarm, as if preparing to defend Cecilia from anyone who might want to attack her.

Leonardo himself, who was the illegitimate son of a wealthy Tuscan notary and a peasant woman called Caterina, knew a great deal about the perils of human relationships. And Cecilia, who bore a son acknowledged by Ludovico in 1491, never became the duke's wife. He chose in the end to reject her. Eerily enough, Leonardo's portrait succeeds in prophesying this melancholy outcome. Along with her poise and intelligence, Cecilia appears in this subtle, multilayered painting to be isolated by the ominous darkness around her. In March 1491 the Duke of Ferrara was informed that Ludovico "no longer wished to touch [Cecilia] or have her nearby, since she was so fat, ever since giving birth."

Her plight was echoed by the subsequent fate of Leonardo's painting. After its acquisition in 1798 by Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, it remained in this Polish family's collection. But in 1939, the portrait was seized by the Nazis when they conquered Poland, and sent off as booty to Berlin. A year later Hans Frank, the brutal governor general of Poland, ordered its return to Krakow. Leonardo's painting was displayed as a prized item in Frank's office until, at the end of World War II, he fled—taking Cecilia's image to his house in Bavaria, where the Allied troops rescued it. Eventually, "The Lady with an Ermine" was returned to Poland and now belongs to the Czartoryski Foundation in Krakow. Here, safely preserved in the castle, this spellbinding portrait can be scrutinized by visitors fortunate enough to discover it for themselves.

—Mr. Cork is a British art historian and critic. His latest book is "The Healing Presence of Art: A History of Western Art in Hospitals" (Yale, 2012).

A version of this article appeared October 4, 2013, on page C19 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A Mistress And a Scholar.

"The Lady With an Ermine" on display in “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan” at the National Gallery in London

"The Lady With an Ermine" is one of the works on display in “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan” at the National Gallery in London (9 Nov 2011 - 5 Feb 2012)

• Exhibition focuses on Leonardo’s years as court painter to Ludovico Maria Sforza, the duke of Milan, in the 1480s and 1490s. 
• Because the works are so fragile, the show cannot travel and is on view only through Feb. 5.
• Only 500 tickets are available each day

The advance tickets, which went on sale online in May, sold out the first week the show opened, prompting box-office Web sites to start scalping $25 tickets for up to $400. Luke Syson, the exhibition’s curator, said he knew the show would be a hit, but he was still amazed by the public’s response. “I am struck by how we invent this figure for the 21st century,” he said one recent morning, sipping a cappuccino in the National Gallery’s cafeteria. “These pictures communicate something that’s just out of reach. There’s always more than meets the eye.”

On view are 7 of Leonardo’s 14 extant paintings, along with works by artists in the school of Leonardo da Vinci as well as Giampietrino’s reproduction of “The Last Supper,” on loan from the Royal Academy in London. There are also 60 Leonardo drawings, 33 of which are from the Royal Collection. (About 10 of the show’s drawings relate to the apostles depicted in “The Last Supper.”)

Five years in the making, the exhibition is not only a feat of scholarship but also of diplomacy, with loans from museums in St. Petersburg, Krakow, Paris, New York, Rome and Milan.

Only 500 tickets are available each day

Even though the exhibition has been billed as a once-in-a-lifetime event and has received rave reviews, Mr. Syson said he “wanted to make sure this wouldn’t be a Marx Brothers moment where we tried to cram as many people into the show as possible.” Adamant that there be crowd control so people can actually see the works properly, officials have limited the visitors admitted to 180 every half-hour, although people may stay as long as they like. That figure is under the 230-person maximum capacity of the galleries.

Taking a page from the Met, the National Gallery has extended the show’s hours. It now stays open until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays (it generally closes at 6 p.m.) and two more hours on Sundays, now closing at 7. For the show’s last two weeks the museum will be open until 10 every night, Michelle Gonsalves, a National Gallery spokeswoman, said. And for the first time ever it will be open on New Year’s Day.

“We advised people to book early,” Ms. Gonsalves said. And while the museum is aware of the frenzy to get the remaining tickets, it was surprised to learn that they were being scalped. She said the National Gallery’s security officers could tell if tickets had been scalped, and that visitors found with such tickets would not be allowed into the show. “We can’t say how we can tell, but we are doing spot checks,” she explained.

Despite all the madness Mr. Syson, who is leaving the National Gallery to become curator of European sculpture and decorative arts at the Met in January, has a message he hopes the exhibition is delivering: Realizing that Leonardo has recently been prized more as a scientist than as an artist, he wants the public to see how painting was actually central to the master’s way of thinking. Judging by the show’s popularity, that point is getting across.

“I don’t mean to sound like a mystical priest, but on some level these paintings communicate soul to soul,” he said. “Great art does work on people in mysterious ways.”

Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa (also known as La Gioconda or La Joconde, or Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo) is a portrait by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. It is a painting in oil on a poplar panel, completed circa 1503–1519. Property of the French State, it is on permanent display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris.

Scientists Unlock Dreamy Mystery of 'Mona Lisa'

It's one of the things about the "Mona Lisa" that's long baffled art historians and viewers alike -- how Leonardo da Vinci used rudimentary pigments in the year 1503 to create such subtle shadows and light on the mysterious woman's face.
And it's taken scientists more than 400 years to come up with technology to figure out how.

Now French researchers are using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, a noninvasive technique, to isolate and study each ultra-thin layer of paint and glaze da Vinci used on the "Mona Lisa" and six other paintings at Paris' Louvre Museum. Scientists from the Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France brought their high-tech machine into the museum while it was closed, and zeroed in on faces depicted in the paintings, which have a dreamy, hazy quality about them.

Specialists from the Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France found that Leonardo da Vinci painted up to 30 layers of paint on his works to meet his standards of subtlety.

Da Vinci used a renaissance painting technique called "sfumato," mixing thin layers of pigment, glaze and oil intricately to yield the appearance of lifelike shadows and light. The technique is well known and has been employed by other artists over the years. But only now have scientists been able to analyze just how intricate da Vinci's layers are.

They believe da Vinci used up to 30 layers of paint on his works. But altogether they only add up to a thickness of less than 40 micrometers of paint -- about half the width of a human hair. Details were reported Friday by several news agencies.

The scientists were able to beam X-ray technology at the paintings without even removing them from the museum wall.

"This will help us to understand how da Vinci made his materials... the amount of oil that was mixed with pigments, the nature of the organic materials," senior scientist Philippe Walter told CNN. "It will help art historians."

The new analysis also shows that da Vinci was constantly trying out new mixes and methods. In the "Mona Lisa," he mixed manganese oxide with his paints, but in others he used copper, Walter also told The Associated Press. Da Vinci used glazes in some paintings but omitted them altogether in others, he added.

"We realize when glazed over, for instance on the 'Mona Lisa,' that he managed to place layers as thin as one or two micrometers, which means one or two thousandths of a millimeter," Walter told EuroNews. "By super-imposing the layers very progressively and slowly, he managed to create the effect he was seeking."

The research was published in Wednesday's issue of a chemistry journal, Angewandte Chemie International Edition. In addition to the 'Mona Lisa,' scientists also studied Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks, Saint John the Baptist, Annunciation, Bacchus, Belle Ferronniere, Saint Anne and the Virgin and the Child, Agence France-Presse reported.

While this research solves one mystery about the "Mona Lisa," others persist, like who the enigmatic woman is, and why she holds that subtle half-smile. Many experts believe she's Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a prominent merchant from Florence. Da Vinci is believed to have started the painting in 1503, and worked on it for four years.

Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Virgin of the Rocks’ Returns to National Gallery

Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin of the Rocks, about 1491 - 1508. National Gallery, London

Sometimes even a Renaissance man needs to clean up. Yesterday, London’s National Gallery rehung Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic “The Virgin of the Rocks” after putting the painting through an 18-month cleaning.

A glossy varnish applied to the work around 1948 was removed because it had been to yellow, crack and overshadow some of the artist’s subtle shading technique known as “sfumato,” according the museum. The “Virgin” also got a new gilded frame that includes cornice portions from a 1500 Italian frame.

Curators also used the time to further study the work and have concluded that the entire piece was created by Da Vinci alone, rather than with help from assistants as some scholars previously asserted. Their findings will be published in a museum bulletin next fall.

Scholars have long agreed that the work is a masterpiece. In 1483, the Milanese Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception asked Da Vinci to paint a work for their chapel’s altarpiece, but it took the artist 25 years to deliver the final product.

The work focuses on a legend in which Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, introduces her infant son to a toddler John the Baptist. Christ is shown on the right, his hand giving a gesture of blessing. An earlier version of the same work now hangs in the Louvre; the National Gallery bought this version in 1880.

Lady with the Ermine

Like many paintings thought to be by Leonardo, controversy surrounds this picture. Some question whether it was painted by Leonardo at all.

Art historians also disagree over who the subject of the portrait was. One theory suggests it shows a young lady named Cecilia Gallerani, who would have been just seventeen when when this picture was painted. Cecilia was the mistress of Ludovico Sforza - the Duke of Milan - until Ludovico settled down and married another woman.

If the model was Cecilia, then the Ermine in the picture may have had a special meaning. The Greek for Ermine is Galee - a pun on the model's name.

Parts of this picture have been painted over at some point in its history. The background has been darkened, and X-rays show a door has been removed. The original painting showed a woman wearing a transparent veil, but this has been retouched to look like hair. The bottom two fingers have also been altered, and look less realistic than the other two.

This painting is based on curved lines, which lead the eye. From the model's face, the gaze is drawn down the sleeve, across the back of the Ermine, and then up the other arm.

The head of the Ermine in this picture is particularly lifelike. Leonardo placed emphasis on natural accuracy, and may have studied the anatomy of the creature before beginning the painting.

A new picture by Leonardo da Vinci has been discovered, the National Gallery in London has said

“ Experts think Leonardo da Vinci was probably planning a picture of an adoration of the Christ child ” -- The BBC's Rebecca Jones

It said experts using infra-red techniques found a drawing under the surface of the Virgin of the Rocks painting which hangs at the gallery.

It believes the drawing shows a woman kneeling with one arm stretched out.

Experts believe the Italian Renaissance painter was planning a picture of an adoration of the child Christ but abandoned the idea.

Leonardo was commissioned to paint the Virgin of the Rocks to decorate an altarpiece in a chapel in Milan in 1483.

The artist appears to have painted two versions.

One, which now hangs in the Louvre, was probably sold to a private client, says BBC arts correspondent Rebecca Jones.

The other, which hangs in the National Gallery, was placed in the chapel in 1508.

It is under this painting that experts believe they have found a drawing of a kneeling woman.

She is pictured with her eyes downcast and one of her hands stretched out.

Experts think Leonardo da Vinci was probably planning a picture of an adoration of the Christ child, but abandoned the idea before drawing Jesus as a baby, our correspondent says.

However, why he painted over the work may never be known, she adds.

Milan arrival

The Virgin of the Rocks was the first painting executed by Leonardo after his arrival in Milan.

Critics have argued over exactly what the painting depicts.

Some claim it shows the Immaculate Conception, while others believe it recalls the moment when the infant Christ met St John the Baptist.

Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa, considered to be among the world's most famous paintings.

His other masterpieces include the Last Supper and Adoration of the Magi.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/4639945.stm

Published: 2005/07/01 10:18:13 GMT