The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (Leonardo)

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Madonna and Saint Anne
Leonardo da Vinci - Virgin and Child with St Anne C2RMF retouched.jpg
Artist Leonardo da Vinci
Yearcirca 1503
Medium Oil on wood
Dimensions168 cm× 112 cm(66 in× 44 in)
Location Louvre, Paris
AccessionINV 776

The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne is an oil painting by Leonardo da Vinci depicting St Anne, her daughter the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. [1] Christ is shown grappling with a sacrificial lamb symbolizing his Passion as the Virgin tries to restrain him. The painting was commissioned as the high altarpiece for the Church of Santissima Annunziata in Florence and its theme had long preoccupied Leonardo.[ citation needed ]

Oil painting process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil

Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. Commonly used drying oils include linseed oil, poppy seed oil, walnut oil, and safflower oil. The choice of oil imparts a range of properties to the oil paint, such as the amount of yellowing or drying time. Certain differences, depending on the oil, are also visible in the sheen of the paints. An artist might use several different oils in the same painting depending on specific pigments and effects desired. The paints themselves also develop a particular consistency depending on the medium. The oil may be boiled with a resin, such as pine resin or frankincense, to create a varnish prized for its body and gloss.

Leonardo da Vinci 15th and 16th-century Italian Renaissance polymath

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, more commonly Leonardo da Vinci or simply Leonardo, was an Italian polymath of the Renaissance whose areas of interest included invention, drawing, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. He has been variously called the father of palaeontology, ichnology, and architecture, and he is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time. Sometimes credited with the inventions of the parachute, helicopter, and tank, he epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal.

Saint Anne mother of Virgin Mary in Christian and Islamic traditions; unnamed in the New Testament or Quran

According to apocryphal Christian and Islamic tradition, Saint Anne was the mother of Mary and grandmother of Jesus. Mary's mother is not named in the canonical gospels nor in the Qur'an. In writing, Anne's name and that of her husband Joachim come only from New Testament apocrypha, of which the Gospel of James seems to be the earliest that mentions them.

Contents

History

It is likely that the painting was commissioned by King Louis XII of France following the birth of his daughter Claude in 1499, but it was never delivered to him. [1] Leonardo probed into incorporating these figures together by drawing the Burlington House Cartoon (National Gallery). [1] In 2008, a curator at the Louvre discovered several faint sketches believed to have been made by Leonardo on the back of the painting. [2] [3] [4] Infrared reflectography was used to reveal a "7-by-4 inch drawing of a horse's head", which had a resemblance to sketches of horses that da Vinci had made previously before drawing The Battle of Anghiari . Also revealed was a second sketch 6​1⁄2 inch-by-4  inch depiction of half a skull. A third sketch showed the infant Jesus playing with a lamb, which sketch was similar to that which is painted on the front side. [2] The Louvre spokesperson said that the sketches were "very probably" made by Leonardo and that it was the first time that any drawing had been found on the "flip side of one of his works". The drawings will be further studied by a group of experts as the painting undergoes restoration. [2]

Louis XII of France King of France

Louis XII was King of France from 1498 to 1515 and King of Naples from 1501 to 1504. The son of Charles, Duke of Orléans, and Maria of Cleves, he succeeded his cousin Charles VIII, who died without a closer heir in 1498. Louis was the eighth French king from the House of Valois, and the first from the Orléans branch of that dynasty.

Claude of France Duchess of Brittany; queen consort of France

Claude of France was a queen consort of France by marriage to Francis I. She was also ruling Duchess of Brittany from 1514. She was a daughter of the French king Louis XII and Anne of Brittany.

<i>The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist</i> cartoon by Leonardo da Vinci

The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist, sometimes called The Burlington House Cartoon, is a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. The drawing is in charcoal and black and white chalk, on eight sheets of paper glued together. Because of its large size and format the drawing is presumed to be a cartoon for a painting. No painting by Leonardo exists that is based directly on this cartoon.

Content and composition

Leonardo's painting is at once both pleasing, calm yet confusing upon closer examination. The composition of the three figures is fairly tight, with the Virgin Mary clearly interacting with the infant Jesus. Upon closer examination of their positioning it is apparent that Mary is sitting on St Anne's lap. It is unclear what meaning this could have and what meaning Leonardo intended to project with that pose. There is no clear parallel in other works of art and women sitting in each other's lap are not a clear cultural or traditional reference that the viewer can relate to. Additionally, although the exact sizes of neither the Mother Virgin nor St Anne are known, it can be extrapolated from the painting that St Anne is a significantly larger person than Mary. This subtle yet perceptible distortion in size was utilized by Leonardo to emphasize the mother–daughter relationship between the two women despite the apparent lack of visual cues to the greater age of St Anne that would otherwise identify her as the mother. The child is holding a lamb. We also see that Mary is gazing into her child's eyes, while St Anne is looking at Mary. As Mary is sitting on her lap and St Anne is looking at her, it is possible that Leonardo was trying to make a point about their relationship and personalities.

Freud's interpretation

The "vulture" theorized by Freud Leonardo Freud.jpg
The "vulture" theorized by Freud

Sigmund Freud undertook a psychoanalytic examination of Leonardo in his essay Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood . According to Freud, the Virgin's garment reveals a vulture when viewed sideways. Freud claimed that this was a manifestation of a "passive homosexual" childhood fantasy that Leonardo wrote about in the Codex Atlanticus, in which he recounts being attacked as an infant in his crib by the tail of a vulture. Freud translated the passage thus:"It seems that I was always destined to be so deeply concerned with vultures—for I recall as one of my very earliest memories that while I was in my cradle a vulture came down to me, and opened my mouth with its tail, and struck me many times with its tail against my lips."

Sigmund Freud Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst.

Psychoanalysis psychological theory that was founded in 1890 by the Viennese neurologist Sigmund Freud

Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques related to the study of the unconscious mind, which together form a method of treatment for mental-health disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud and stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions, mostly by students of Freud such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung, and by neo-Freudians such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan. Freud retained the term psychoanalysis for his own school of thought.

<i>Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood</i> work

Leonardo da Vinci and A Memory of His Childhood is a 1910 essay by Sigmund Freud about Leonardo da Vinci. It consists of a psychoanalytic study of Leonardo's life based on his paintings.

Unfortunately for Freud, the word 'vulture' was a mistranslation by the German translator of the Codex and the bird that Leonardo imagined was in fact a kite, [5] a bird of prey which is also occasionally a scavenger. This disappointed Freud because, as he confessed to Lou Andreas-Salomé, he regarded Leonardo as 'the only beautiful thing I have ever written'. Some Freudian scholars have, however, made attempts to repair the theory by incorporating the kite.

Kite (bird) bird of prey

Kite is a common name for certain birds of prey in the family Accipitridae, particularly in subfamilies Milvinae, Elaninae, and Perninae.

Scavenger Organism that feeds on dead animal and/or plant material

Scavengers are animals that consume dead organisms that have died from causes other than predation. While scavenging generally refers to carnivores feeding on carrion, it is also a herbivorous feeding behavior. Scavengers play an important role in the ecosystem by consuming dead animal and plant material. Decomposers and detritivores complete this process, by consuming the remains left by scavengers.

Lou Andreas-Salomé German-Russian Psychoanalyst and author

Lou Andreas-Salomé was a Russian-born psychoanalyst and a well traveled author, narrator, and Essayist from a Russian-German family. Her diverse intellectual interests led to friendships with a broad array of distinguished western thinkers, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Paul Rée, and Rainer Maria Rilke.

Another theory proposed by Freud attempts to explain Leonardo's fondness of depicting the Virgin Mary with St Anne. Leonardo, was raised by his blood mother initially before being 'adopted' by the wife of his father Ser Piero. The idea of depicting the Mother of God with her own mother was therefore particularly close to Leonardo's heart, because he, in a sense, had 'two mothers' himself. It is worth noting that in both versions of the composition (the Louvre painting and the London cartoon) it is hard to discern whether St Anne is a full generation older than Mary.

2011 cleaning controversy

On 7 October 2011 Le Journal des arts  [ fr ], a Paris art publication, reported that the restoration posed more danger to the painting than was previously expected. [6] In late December 2011 and early January 2012 reports emerged that Ségolène Bergeon Langle, the former director of conservation for the Louvre and France’s national museums, and Jean-Pierre Cuzin, the former director of paintings at the Louvre, both of the advisory committee supervising the painting’s restoration, had resigned [7] over a painting cleaning controversy, with critics claiming that the painting has been damaged by being cleaned so it became brighter than the artist ever intended. [8] Other experts spoke out in favour of the cleaning treatment. [9]

See also

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Virgin and Child with Saint Anne is a subject in Christian art showing Saint Anne with her daughter, the Virgin Mary, and her grandson Jesus.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne". The Louvre .
  2. 1 2 3 Soltis, Andy (December 19, 2008). "Amazing sketches on flip side of Da Vinci". New York Post. Retrieved 2008-12-19.
  3. ↑ Archived December 21, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  4. ↑ Samuel, Henry (2008-12-19). "'Three da Vinci sketches' discovered in Louvre". Telegraph.co.uk. London. Retrieved 2008-12-19.
  5. ↑ Sohail, Saher. "Leonardo da Vinci depicts an actual baby Jesus, acting like a baby.", Sartle
  6. ↑ Betard, Daphe (7 October 2011). "La « Sainte Anne » de Vinci menacée". Le Journal des Arts (354). Retrieved 4 January 2012.
  7. ↑ "BBC News – Louvre experts 'quit over Leonardo da Vinci work'". Bbc.co.uk. 29 December 2011. Retrieved 2011-12-31.
  8. ↑ Sciolino, Elaine (3 January 2012). "Leonardo Painting's Restoration Bitterly Divides Art Experts". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 January 2012.
  9. ↑ Montanari, Laura (3 January 2012). "Leonardo Painting's Restoration Bitterly Divides Art Experts". Courrier International. Archived from the original on 19 January 2013. Retrieved 8 January 2012.

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