Ginevra de' Benci
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) · about 1474 to 1478
A young Florentine woman looks out at you with a steady, slightly guarded expression. Her pale face is framed by a dark spray of juniper, and beyond it a misty landscape of water and trees fades into blue. She is Ginevra de' Benci, the daughter of a wealthy banking family, painted when she was about sixteen, most likely around the time of her marriage. The juniper is a play on her name, since the Italian word for the plant is ginepro, and it was also a symbol of chastity. Leonardo was in his early twenties and still working in the studio of Verrocchio when he made this portrait.
Look closely at how the light falls on her skin, with almost no hard edges anywhere. Leonardo built the face from thin layers of oil paint, blending them so softly that the transitions between light and shadow seem to breathe. The tight ringlets of her hair are painted one curl at a time, and the sheen on her bodice and the fine gauze at her neckline show how carefully he studied fabrics. The pose itself was new for Florence, a three-quarter view instead of the usual strict profile, which lets her meet your gaze. On the back of the panel is a painted wreath of laurel and palm surrounding a juniper sprig, with a Latin motto that reads beauty adorns virtue.
The panel was cut down at some point, probably after water damage, and scholars believe it once showed her hands, perhaps folded like the hands in a silverpoint drawing by Leonardo at Windsor Castle. The painting belonged to the princely family of Liechtenstein for centuries. In 1967 the National Gallery bought it for a sum reported at the time as the highest ever paid for a painting, and it remains the only painting by Leonardo in the Americas. Stand a little to the side and notice how the juniper leaves are painted in tiny individual strokes, a hint of the obsessive observation that would fill his later notebooks.
Did You Know? The painting is displayed in a case that lets you walk around to see the emblem painted on the back of the panel.
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