Virgin of the Rocks became the subject of a lawsuit

Like so many pictures in the Renaissance, the Virgin of the Rocks became the subject of a lawsuit. Leonardo and Predis, though they were paid the full sum agreed with the Confraternity, found themselves out of pocket and applied for a supplementary payment. The surviving legal documents contain much that is problematical but also throw light on the history of the picture and on Renaissance workshop methods in general. We learn first that the picture--including apparently the angels at the sides--was finished before the death of Evangelisto Predis in 1490; and that in the whole work Leonardo's part was valued at 100 lire whereas the frame was valued at 700. No doubt it was the expenditure on gold-leaf and the payments to craftsmen ( del Maino had left the carving incomplete) that ran away with Leonardo's and Predis's profits. The partners estimated that their work was worth 1200 lire, and put down Leonardo's picture at 400. But when finally, in April 1506, a compromise was reached and the Confraternity agreed to pay an extra 200 lire, the money was made over to Predis. He thus appears as a sort of craftsman--contractor, like Chippendale in England, who need never have touched the work himself, but sub-contracted it to the best or cheapest men he could find: among whom had been the young Florentine virtuoso, then recently arrived in Milan. In fairness to Predis I must add that he seems to have executed with his own hand the panels of music-making angels which stood either side of Leonardo's picture. One of these survives and is in the National Gallery beside the second version of the Virgin of the Rocks. It is in an oldfashioned Lombard technique, unmodified by Leonardo's influence save in the drawing of the draperies. The other was evidently moved when the first version of Leonardo's picture was taken to France, and a substitute by one of Leonardo's pupils put in its place. This angel is lost and the substitute now hangs in the National Gallery, where it long passed as the work of Predis, although technically it has nothing in common with the Predis angel opposite to it. It is apparently by the pupil who painted the greater part of the second Virgin of the Rocks, but without Leonardo's original to help him he has produced a poor piece of work.

Apart from the Virgin of the Rocks, Leonardo's time seems to have been entirely taken up with work for the court. We know from various. contemporary references that he practically held the post of court limner, and painted portraits of two of Ludovico's mistresses, Cecilia Gallerani and Lucrezia Crivelli. Several portraits dating from this period have survived with ancient ascriptions to Leonardo, but their authenticity has. always been open to doubt, chiefly on account of a prosaic quality which the amateur is reluctant to associate with him. Leonardo's drawings show that he could be prosaic, or rather objective, if occasion demanded, and these portraits need a liberal and patient examination.

Of these court portraits I believe that the picture at Cracow, of a Lady with an Ermine, represents Cecilia Gallerani, and is Leonardo's original. This picture was celebrated in a sonnet by the court poet Bellincioni (who died in 1492), in which he describes the sitter as seeming to listen and not to speak. It is also referred to in a letter from Cecilia Gallerani to Isabella d'Este written on 2 9 April 1498. Isabella had asked her to send her portrait by Leonardo; but Cecilia Gallerani replies that she would rather not do so as it no longer resembles her, not through any shortcoming in the master but because it was done when she was still immature and her appearance had since changed completely. Cecilia became Ludovico's mistress in 1481, and to judge from her letter to Isabella d'Este the portrait must have been painted soon afterwards. All this evidence fits very well with the picture at Cracow. Knowing how Renaissance women contrived to look middle-aged before they were twenty, we can say that the sitter can have been no more than a girl. Her attentive expression is exactly that described by Bellincioni, and the beast which she holds on her arm is doubly symbolical of her identity: first, because the ermine was frequently used as Ludovico's emblem, and secondly, because its Greek name had a punning reference to her own name. Finally, the Cracow picture must date from the first years after Leonardo's arrival in Milan. Those parts which are well preserved are still in the clear colours of the Florentine quattrocento tradition. Parts of the picture are in bad condition. The whole background is new and the left side of the figure has been repainted. But certain parts are intact--the ermine, the lady's face and her hand, all but the tips of the two lower fingers. These parts alone are sufficient evidence that the picture is by Leonardo. The face has lost a little subtlety through the repainted background sharpening the original outline, but the drawings of the eyes and nose still have the beautiful simplification which we find in the early silverpoint drawings. Although the outline of the shoulder has been hardened, we can still recognise Leonardo's sense of form, which we find again, twenty years later, in a red chalk drawing for the Madonna with the Yarn Winder ( Windsor 12,514). The hand shows an understanding of anatomical structure and a power of particularisation none of Leonardo's pupils possessed. But most convincing of all is the beast. The modelling of its head is a miracle; we can feel the structure of the skull, the quality of skin, the lie of the fur. No one but Leonardo could have conveyed its stoatish character, sleek, predatory, alert, yet with a kind of heraldic dignity. The serpentine pose of the ermine gives, in epigrammatic form, the motive of the whole composition, and it is this movement, quite apart from details, which distinguishes it from the other portraits of this date attributed to Leonardo, such as the Belle Ferronnière in the Louvre.