The Portrait of a Musician in the Ambrosiana

One other portrait of this date seems to me to be by Leonardo's own hand alone and unaided: the Portrait of a Musician in the Ambrosiana. The modelling of the head (the body is unfinished) is very similar to that of the angel in the Virgin of the Rocks, and even closer to the preparatory drawing for the angel at Turin, which was done direct from nature. It must date from about 1485-90. Comparison with other Leonardesque portraits of men, such as that in the Brera inscribed Vita si scias uti longa est, is perhaps misleading, since they reflect his later manner in a cold chiaroscuro; but even allowing for a difference of date, their waxen pallor must be due to pupils, the subtle luminous modelling of the Musician to Leonardo himself. The delicate observation of light, as it passes across the convex forms, should be considered with drawings of the same date, studies of horses for the Sforza monument or skulls in the Anatomical MS. B. They remind us how far Leonardo's naturalism had developed before he chose to abandon it. This portrait has the further distinction that it is perhaps the best preserved of Leonardo's paintings and the only one which has been recently cleaned. We are thus able to learn something of his actual use of pigment, elsewhere obscured by dirty varnish, and we see that it was less smooth and "licked" than that of his followers.

We now come to two famous portraits which I believe are largely the work of pupils, but before examining them I will recall the important fact that in 1490 we have the first records of two pupils with whose individual work we are acquainted, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Marco d'Oggiono. Boltraffio was the most respectable of all Leonardo's immediate pupils, and although his documented work dates from a later period, his style is consistent enough for us to attribute to him two beautiful pictures of the Virgin and Child which must belong to the 1490's, one in Budapest, the other in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, Milan. I believe that he was also responsible for some very fine heads in silverpoint, which are amongst the most popular works of the Milanese School; and in fact his silverpoint drawings are more than once mentioned in Leonardo's notes. It is reasonable to suppose that Leonardo, occupied in multifarious commissions for the Sforzas, allowed this promising youth to complete work from his designs, and that under his guidance the pupil achieved a delicacy absent from his later, independent work.

Some such hypothesis seems to me necessary if we are to explain the authorship of the portrait in the Louvre, known as La Belle Ferronnière. This title, the nickname of one of Henry II's mistresses, is due solely to a confusion in an early inventory, and the sitter's identity has never been established. The portrait has been frequently claimed as the portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli, who in 1495 succeeded Cecilia Gallerani as the mistress of Ludovico il Moro. Leonardo undoubtedly painted a portrait of this lady which is recorded in three epigrams, and if the Louvre picture represents her (for which there is not the least evidence) it must be by his own hand. Of this I am extremely doubtful. Mr Berenson expressed the feeling of all students of Leonardo towards this picture when he noted in the 1907 edition of his North Italian painters "one would regret to have to accept this as Leonardo's own work". 1 Could Leonardo have been content with such a commonplace pose? Not only is the relationship of head and shoulders uninteresting, but the head itself is turned to the light in such a way as to deprive it of half its plastic possibilities. Compared to the Turin drawing of an angel's head, it looks almost as tame as a Costa. An obvious defect is the insensitive drawing of the snood and necklaces, which do nothing to indicate the modelling; but it must be remembered that there was a strong tradition in Milanese portraiture by which dress and jewellery were treated with an almost heraldic stiffness, and certain details of the Belle Ferronnière's costume, notably the ribbons on her shoulder, are remarkably close to Leonardo. The face, too, has great beauty of modelling, easily appreciated when the numerous copies of the Louvre picture are compared with the original. No one who prefers truth to finality should be dogmatic about the Belle Ferronnière, but for the time being I am inclined to think that the picture is by Boltraffio, working in Leonardo's studio, and under his guidance. In that case, it can hardly represent Lucrezia Crivelli.

The other portrait in question is the well-known profile of a lady in the Ambrosiana. This is certainly not by Leonardo, and has been long attributed to Ambrogio da Predis, chiefly for the reason that the sitter is in profile. It is of very much higher quality than the only certain works by Predis, the angel in the National Gallery and the portrait of Maximilian in Vienna, which is signed and dated 1502. Yet the underlying character, stiff, cold and thin, is connected with him through a series of other profiles which, at their worst, resemble his authentic work. If the lady in the Ambrosiana is by Predis, it must have been painted under the immediate inspiration of Leonardo, who may even have touched some of the details of the head-dress, pearls and ribbons, painted with unusual skill. We thus have the curious situation that although the documents of the time imply that Predis's relation to Leonardo was that of a senior partner or even contractor, the evidence of style suggests that he was Leonardo's pupil. The dual relationship is not impossible. Predis had an established position before Leonardo came to Milan, and may have continued to be more acceptable to conservative patrons; but as Leonardo's superior accomplishments increased his favour at court, Predis may have decided to learn from him what he could. In this inspiring atmosphere he succeeded in painting the portrait of Bartolommeo Archinto in the National Gallery which bears a monogram AMPRE and the date 1494; and the profile in the Ambrosiana is perhaps the highest point he reached at this period. We must suppose that when Leonardo was no longer there to help him Predis's skill declined, so that in 1502 he could produce the feeble portrait of the Emperor Maximilian which, out of pride in his sitter's greatness, he elected to sign.