Lady with an Ermine

It is one of only four portraits of women by Leonardo and the only one outside Paris and Washington. Look at the hand: every knuckle and tendon is drawn from the artist's anatomical studies, and it is the most carefully painted hand of the fifteenth century. The ermine was a symbol of purity, a pun on Cecilia's name in Greek, and the emblem of the duke himself, who had been given the Order of the Ermine. The dark background is a later repainting; Leonardo's original was a soft grey blue. The twist of the body, with the shoulders turning one way and the head another, was new in portraiture and gives the picture its sense of a living moment.

Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski bought the panel in Italy around eighteen hundred as a gift for his mother, Izabela, who was building Poland's first museum at Pulawy. It was hidden from the Russians, taken to Paris, brought to Kraków, seized by the Nazis for Hans Frank's residence at Wawel, found in Bavaria in nineteen forty five and returned. In twenty sixteen the Polish state bought the whole Czartoryski collection, and the painting now has a room of its own. Stand in front of it and notice how Cecilia does not look at you, but at something you cannot see.

Did You Know? The Nazi governor Hans Frank hung the painting in his apartment at Wawel Castle, and it was found in his Bavarian villa by American soldiers in nineteen forty five.