Madonna with a Flower, the Benois Madonna

He was in his mid-twenties, just out of Verrocchio's workshop in Florence, and everything in the picture is an experiment. The flower is a cruciferous plant with four petals in the shape of a cross, a quiet sign of the Crucifixion. Look at the way light falls on Mary's sleeves and on the baby's plump body, with soft shadows rather than lines describing the forms. This is one of the first Italian paintings in which oil paint is used to blend tones so gradually. Look also at the odd proportions: the child is enormous and the mother's head small, a sign of a young painter more interested in expression and light than in finished elegance. The unfinished window shows he simply stopped.

The painting disappeared for centuries and surfaced in Russia in the early nineteenth century, in the hands of a merchant family from Astrakhan. It passed by marriage to the wife of the court architect Leonty Benois, and in 1914, after experts confirmed the attribution, the Hermitage bought it for a huge sum, outbidding foreign collectors just before the First World War. Like the Madonna Litta it was moved from panel to canvas. Look at the baby's hand around his mother's wrist, gripping tightly, and you will understand why Leonardo spent his life drawing hands.

Did You Know? The painting was bought by the Hermitage in 1914 from the Benois family after being lost from view for three hundred years.