Madonna Litta
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) · about 1490 to 1491
A young mother in a red dress and blue mantle nurses her child, her head bowed toward him with a tenderness so private that you feel like an intruder. The baby feeds while turning his eyes toward you, one small hand holding a goldfinch, a bird that was a common symbol of the Passion because it was said to feed on thorns. Behind them two arched windows open onto a pale mountain landscape. The painting is small, not much bigger than a sheet of paper, but it holds the room.
Leonardo painted it in Milan around 1490, at the court of Ludovico Sforza, and his preparatory drawing of the Virgin's head is in the Louvre. Some scholars think a pupil, perhaps Boltraffio, finished parts of the panel, but the design and the quiet intensity are Leonardo's. Look at the modelling of the Virgin's face, where the light seems to gather in the smooth skin of her cheek and forehead, and at the softness of the shadow around her downcast eyes. The child's body is more firmly drawn, with a hard little outline that differs from Leonardo's usual haze. Notice the tiny slit in the Virgin's dress, neatly stitched, that has been opened for feeding, a domestic detail that grounds the sacred scene.
The painting takes its name from the Litta family of Milan, from whom Tsar Alexander the Second bought it in 1865 for the Imperial Hermitage. Shortly afterwards it was transferred from its cracked wooden panel onto canvas, a common but risky practice at the time, which is why the surface looks a little flatter than Leonardo's other works. Together with the Benois Madonna in the same room it makes the Hermitage one of only a handful of museums with two paintings by Leonardo. Look last at the goldfinch: the baby holds it lightly, as if he has forgotten it, while he looks at you.
Did You Know? The Louvre holds Leonardo's silverpoint drawing for the Virgin's head, made years before the painting.
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