The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (Leonardo da Vinci)
| Madonna and Saint Anne | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Artist | Leonardo da Vinci |
| Year | circa 1503 |
| Medium | Oil on wood |
| Dimensions | 168 cm × 112 cm (66 in × 44 in) |
| Location | Louvre, Paris |
| Accession | INV 776 |
The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne is an oil painting by Leonardo da Vinci depicting St Anne, her daughter the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. Christ is shown grappling with a sacrificial lamb symbolizing his Passion as the Virgin tries to restrain him. The painting was commissioned as the high altarpiece for the Church of Santissima Annunziata in Florence and its theme had long preoccupied Leonardo.
In 1498, Leonardo probed into incorporating these figures together by drawing the Burlington House Cartoon (National Gallery). In 2008, a curator at the Louvre discovered several faint sketches believed to have been made by Leonardo on the back of the painting. Infrared reflectography was used to reveal a "7-by-4 inch drawing of a horse's head", which had a resemblance to sketches of horses that da Vinci had made previously before drawing The Battle of Anghiari. Also revealed was a second sketch 6 1⁄2 inch-by-4 inch depiction of half a skull. A third sketch showed the infant Jesus playing with a lamb, which sketch was similar to that which is painted on the front side. The Louvre spokesperson said that the sketches were "very probably" made by Leonardo and that it was the first time that any drawing had been found on the "flip side of one of his works". The drawings will be further studied by a group of experts as the painting undergoes restoration.
Leonardo's painting is at once both pleasing, calm yet confusing upon closer examination. The composition of the three figures is fairly tight, with the Virgin Mary clearly interacting actively with the infant Jesus. Upon closer examination of their positioning it is apparent that Mary is sitting on St Anne's lap. It is unclear what meaning this could have and what meaning Leonardo intended to project with that pose. There is no clear parallel in other works of art and women sitting in each other's lap are not a clear cultural or traditional reference that the viewer can relate to. Additionally, although the exact sizes of neither the Mother Virgin nor St Anne are known, it can be extrapolated from the painting that St Anne is a significantly larger person than Mary. This subtle yet perceptible distortion in size was utilized by Leonardo to emphasize the mother daughter relationship between the two women despite the apparent lack of visual cues to the greater age of St Anne that would otherwise identify her as the mother. The child is holding a lamb. we also see that Mary is staring into her child's eyes but st Anne is staring at Mary. As Mary is sitting on her lap and St Anne is staring at the virgin Mary Leonardo was maybe trying to point a message across about their relationship and personalities.
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