The Virgin of the Rocks
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) · c. 1483-1494
Inside a damp grotto of weathered rock, four figures form a pyramid of glances and gestures. The Virgin kneels at the apex, her right arm drawing the infant John the Baptist toward her while her left hand hovers protectively above the Christ Child, who sits opposite and raises two fingers in blessing. An angel steadies the Child and looks out, once pointing toward John, though that pointing finger is present only in the London version of the composition. The subject comes from the legend of the Holy Family meeting the young Baptist during the flight into Egypt, an encounter with no scriptural source but great popularity in fifteenth century Italy.
Leonardo builds the whole picture out of gradation rather than outline. Faces emerge from the gloom through sfumato, a smokelike transition of tone with no visible edge, achieved by laying down dozens of translucent oil glazes. The cave is not decorative geology but the product of Leonardo's own studies of sedimentary rock and erosion, and the plants at the figures' feet are botanically identifiable. Stand back and notice how the light seems to come from behind the grotto opening, silhouetting the rocks and making the flesh glow as though lit from within. The blue haze of the distant landscape demonstrates aerial perspective, another of his obsessions.
The painting was commissioned in 1483 by the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception for their chapel in San Francesco Grande in Milan. A long dispute over payment followed, and a second version, now in London's National Gallery, was eventually delivered. Which picture went where, and why, is still argued. The Louvre panel entered the French royal collection under Francis I or Louis XII and was transferred from wood to canvas in 1806.
Did You Know? There are two Virgin of the Rocks, and the long payment quarrel with the Milanese confraternity is one reason art historians still cannot agree which version was painted first.
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