The Virgin of the Rocks

First the list shows a predominant interest in the human figure. Among the sketches are misure d'una figura, molti nudi integri, molte bracci, gambi, piedi e attitudine; among the subjects are those beloved of the Florentine anatomical painters such as Castagno and Pollajuolo--ottoS. Sebastiani, and certi S. Girolami. Of the eight St Sebastians there remains only a hint in two slight drawings. Of the St Jeromes there exists the unfinished monochrome in the Vatican, which on grounds of style alone should be placed in this period. Both in pose and treatment it is close to the Uffizi Adoration, and like the Adoration, it may have been unfinished when Leonardo left Florence. If so, the entry on the list may refer to studies for this picture.

The Vatican St Jerome is one of the few works by Leonardo whose authenticity has never been questioned. But although he alone could have invented this magnificent image, the original makes less impression than it should. This is probably due to the fact that it has been badly damaged. The two halves of the panel are said to have been discovered by Cardinal Fesch in two different places, and one was being used as a table-top. As a result the nervous drawing has been overlaid with retouchings, and some of Leonardo's magic has evaporated; but we are still able to appreciate the composition as a whole, dominated by the grandiose gesture of the Saint. Both as an embodiment of passion and as what Roger Fry would have called a plastic sequence, this figure is a great invention. It stands midway between Signorelli and Michelangelo, recalling the former in the sharply defined planes of the torso, the latter in the rhythmic continuity of the pose. The concentration on a single theme is unusual for Leonardo. More characteristic are the accessories of the composition, the snarling lion, the landscape, and the dark cave foreshadowing the Virgin of the Rocks.

Finally, we reach the two consecutive items, una nosstra donna finjta: un altra quasi che n proffilo, "our lady finished; another almost, who is in profile". Of the first picture we know nothing, but the second I have always believed to be the Madonna Litta in the Hermitage. It is the only one of Leonardo's Virgins which could be called "in profile and we know from drawings that the design must date from about 1480. Unfortunately, the Madonna Litta has been totally repainted at least twice, once when it was finished by a Milanese artist about 1495, and once in the nineteenth century, when it was transferred from panel to canvas. It now looks like an oleograph. But even in this ruined condition it has qualities which are not found in shop work. The Virgin's head is still close to Leonardo's exquisite drawing in the Louvre, and the Child's body is based on one of the studies of babies at Windsor. The Child's head, on the other hand, is quite unlike Leonardo, and cannot even have been designed by him. And of this we have a proof in a drawing for the head which is certainly not by Leonardo, but is perhaps an early work of Boltraffio. We can therefore give some meaning to the expression quasi finita. The pose, the Virgin's head and part of the Child's body were finished; the Child's head, details of costume and landscape were left at a stage which we can deduce from the Uffizi Adoration.

One reason for dating this list in 1482 is that it makes no mention of an important work which Leonardo undertook in the following year. On 25 April 1483, Leonardo and the brothers Evangelisto and Ambrogio Preda (now generally known as da Predis) received a commission from the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. The subject of this commission was an elaborate carved frame by the sculptor del Maino which had been left on the Confraternity's hands for two years. The frame was to be gilt with fine gold in all its parts--cioé figure, e composizioni di figure, casamenti e paese, pilastri e capitelli, cornicioni e predella. It was to be a marvellous frame. And in the frame, for the sake of appearances, there was to be a picture of the type usually put in elaborate frames, that is to say Our Lady and her Son with two prophets, and in two panels on each side, four angels: the whole painted to perfection in oil with fine colours. Strange as it seems, and stranger as it must have seemed to the Confraternity, this picture was the Virgin of the Rocks, now in the Louvre.

The Virgin of the Rocks belongs essentially to Leonardo's first Florentine period. By its twilit tones and delicate naturalism it is connected with the sequence which began with the Uffizi Annunciation. In conception, too, it sums up a series of projects and experiments which go back to the period of the early Adoration. The motive of the Virgin kneeling before the holy children can be traced back to the drawings in the Bonnat Collection and the Venice Academy. But in them she is surrounded by adoring shepherds, and above her head is a ring of flying angels. Immediately on his arrival in Milan Leonardo returned to the subject of the kneeling Virgin and children, this time without shepherds and angels. A drawing in the Metropolitan Museum shows him searching for a motive which would give unity to the group, and finding it in the protective gesture of the Virgin, who spreads her arms above the children like the Madonna della Misericordia of traditional iconography. This sheet is often considered as preparatory to the Virgin of the Rocks, but before arriving at the final composition, Leonardo took one of the groups--that in the bottom left-hand corner--and made it into a separate picture, known in several replicas, the best of which must give a clear idea of Leonardo's original. 1 The Virgin kneels with hands stretched over the two children, who are playing around her; the infant John grasps his lamb, while the infant Jesus peeps at him from behind the sleeve of His mother's mantle.