The story of one painting. "Madonna with a Flower (Benois Madonna)"

And you have icons in the darkness
With the smile of the Sphinx they look into the distance
Semi-pagan wives, -
And their sadness is not without sin.

Prophet, or demon, or magician,
Keeping the eternal riddle,
Oh Leonardo, you are the harbinger
Another unknown day.
Dmitry Merezhkovsky

Madonna with a Flower (Benois Madonna)
Leonardo da Vinci
1478
Oil on canvas
State Hermitage Museum

Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519): “Prophet, or demon, or magician”

The small Tuscan town of Vinci was once home to one of greatest geniuses humanity. At the age of ten, Leonardo, the son of a notary and a peasant woman, moved to Florence - the epicenter of economic, industrial and cultural life Renaissance. Here he learned the first basics artistic creativity, and even then he showed an extraordinary diversity of interests. Among other things, Leonardo was seduced by science, but his contemporaries believed that it only distracted him from serving the high ideals of art. They were partly right, because the genius’s excessive enthusiasm for all spheres of existence served as an indirect reason for his modest pictorial heritage, which today numbers just over ten works. But on the other hand, it was scientific research that contributed to the fact that each of the paintings created by Leonardo is an invaluable example of how high a person can soar. human spirit striving to understand the world. The painting “Madonna with a Flower” is one such evidence.

Portrait of yourself in old age
Leonardo da Vinci (?)
Red chalk, paper
Royal Library, Turin (Italy)

“Madonna with a Flower (Benois Madonna)” (1478) in the Hermitage collection

Most researchers date this painting to 1478, which means Leonardo da Vinci painted it when he was only 26 years old. In 1914, “Madonna with a Flower” was acquired for the collection of the Imperial Hermitage from the private collection of the Benois family. Shortly before this, the keeper art gallery Hermitage Ernst Karlovich Lipgart suggested that the work belongs to the brush of the great Leonardo, and in this he was supported by leading European experts. It is known that already in the first thirds of the XIX century, “Madonna with a Flower” was in Russia with General Korsakov, from whose collection it later ended up in the family of the Astrakhan merchant Sapozhnikov. Maria Alexandrovna Benois, née Sapozhnikova, inherited this painting, and when she decided to sell it in 1912, a London antique dealer offered 500 thousand francs for it. However, for a much more modest sum, the owner gave up the “Madonna” to the Hermitage - she wanted Leonardo’s creation to remain in Russia.

Self-portrait
Ernst Friedrich Liphart - Russian artist and decorator, chief curator of the Hermitage art gallery in 1906-29
1883

“Semi-pagan wives look into the distance with the smile of the Sphinx, and their sadness is not without sin.”

Quite modest and unpretentious at first glance, “Madonna with a Flower” is surprising in that it does not reveal its charm immediately, but gradually, as one immerses oneself in this special inner world. The Mother of God and the baby Jesus are surrounded by twilight, but the depth of this space is clearly indicated by a bright window. The Virgin Mary is still just a girl: plump cheeks, an upturned nose, a perky smile - all these are features not of an abstract divine ideal, but of a very specific earthly girl who once served as a model for this image. She is dressed and combed in the fashion of the 15th century, and every detail of her costume, every curl of her hair is examined closely by the artist and conveyed in Renaissance detail. The love and joy of motherhood was reflected on her face, focused on playing with her child. She hands him a flower, and he tries to grab it, and this whole scene is so vital and convincing that it’s time to forget about the upcoming tragedy of Christ. However, the flower with its cruciform inflorescence is not just the compositional center of the whole picture, but also a sign, a symbol, an omen of the coming Passion. And it seems that in this conscious and concentrated face of a baby reaching for a flower, the future Savior is already visible, who accepts his destined cross. But on the other hand, this gesture also contains a symbol of the Renaissance with its boundless desire to understand the world, discover its secrets, go beyond its borders - in general, everything that Leonardo himself strove for.

Madonna with a Flower (Benois Madonna) - fragment
Leonardo da Vinci
1478
Oil on canvas
State Hermitage Museum

"Oh Leonardo, you are the harbinger of a yet unknown day"

In addition to high spiritual aspirations, the painting represents a certain result of the pictorial achievements that were made by Florentine masters during the 15th century, and at the same time it is a springboard for the future evolution of art. Leonardo's harmony of the whole is created through the synthesis of particulars: mathematically verified composition, anatomical construction of bodies, light and shadow modeling of volumes, soft contours and warm sounding colors. The traditional plot is rethought here: the image of the Madonna is more human than ever, and the scene itself is more ordinary than religious. The figures are voluminous and almost tangible due to the subtle play of light and shadow. Each fold of clothing lies according to the volume of the body and is filled with movement. Leonardo was one of the first in Italy to use the technique oil painting, which allows you to more accurately convey the texture of fabrics, nuances of light and shade, and the materiality of objects. In order to even more clearly imagine how far all these discoveries extended at that time, it is enough to simply compare Leonardo’s Madonna with the work of his predecessor and teacher, the painter Andrea Verrocchio.

Madonna and Child
Andrea Verrocchio
Around 1473-1475
Wood, tempera
State Museums, Berlin

Technological study of the painting

The Madonna of the Flower was originally painted on wood, but for greater preservation it was transferred to canvas in 1824. In a photograph taken in our time in reflected infrared rays, a second outline is visible above the back of the baby’s head, which suggests that Leonardo intended to make the child even larger than he is now. Maria's hairstyle is slightly different - in the photo it is fluffier and covers her right ear. IN final version in Madonna’s left hand there is a bunch of blades of grass, and in the picture there is a flower. All these changes are not significant, but very interesting, since they allow you to look into the picturesque kitchen of the creator. In 1978, the film celebrated its 500th anniversary. A major restoration was timed to coincide with this date, during which surface stains and late recordings were removed, and the old varnish was restored. At the completion of this work, the “Benois Madonna” was placed in a glass case specially made for it.

Madonna Benoit
Photo in reflected IR radiation

© project SpbStarosti

She is from two works by Leonardo da Vinci located in the Hermitage MADONNA BENOIS.

Leonardo da VinciMadonna Benoit , 1478— 1480

The small canvas “Madonna with a Flower,” or, as it is often called, “Benois Madonna,” is one of the early works of Leonardo da Vinci. He made a number of sketches and preparatory drawings for this composition. A note from the artist himself has been preserved, from which it is clear that he began painting the picture in October 1478 at the age of twenty-six. Abandoning the traditional appearance of the Madonna, Leonardo depicted her as very young, admiring the Child with a gentle smile. The artist’s life observations are undoubtedly felt in the picture.

The strictly thought-out composition is simple and extremely generalized. Mother and child are united into an inseparable group. The work uses the rich possibilities of chiaroscuro to sculpt forms, to give them special volume and expressiveness. The subtlety of the light-and-shadow transitions produces an effect characteristic of Leonardo’s works, when the entire image seems shrouded in an airy haze.

The high pictorial merits of the “Benois Madonna” allow us to judge the great skill that the artist possessed in his young years. Leonardo's painting surprises with its external lightness, behind which is hidden thoughtfulness. the smallest details. It is known that the master took a long time to create each of his works, sometimes forcing customers to wait several years for the paintings they ordered.

He chooses for his Madonna a simple face, not sparkling with beauty, emphatically youthful, laughing cheerfully; firmly sculpts a figure that clearly stands out against the background of the twilight of the room, and makes the folds of clothing outline the structure of the body. At the same time, freeing himself from the usual rigidity of old paintings on this topic, Leonardo gives the “Madonna of the Flower” the character of a genre scene. The young mother hands the child a flower, he anxiously reaches out to it with his hands, but cannot immediately grab it, and she laughs at his awkward movements, at the same time admiring the charm of her son.

Achieving the impression of life reality, Leonardo carefully develops the rendering of relief and volume of figures. He notes many gradations of illumination: penumbra, deep but transparent shadow, and where the veil of shadow thickens most - on the cheek, on the child's hand - he interrupts it with a light stripe of reflex, reflection. The light also plays on the silk lapel of the cloak, on the brooch decorating the mother’s dress; In the span of the window, the transparent sky creates the impression of an endless distance.

In this early work Leonardo da Vinci already uses a painting technique that was new for that time: the picture was painted using oil paints, allowing for greater transparency and greater variety of textures than tempera.

“Benois Madonna” as a work by Leonardo became known only in our century. IN early XIX century, it was sold in Astrakhan to one of the Russian collectors by a traveling Italian musician. It then belonged to the Benois family (whose name is preserved in the title of the painting). People first started talking about this work in 1908, when it was exhibited at an exhibition organized by the magazine “Old Years”. Soon the painting was almost unanimously recognized as the work of Leonardo da Vinci, and in 1914 it took pride of place in the Hermitage collection.

HISTORY OF THE PICTURE.

In 1914, it was acquired by the Imperial Hermitage from Maria Alexandrovna, wife of the court architect Leonty Nikolaevich Benois.

In 1912, the owners decided to sell the Madonna of the Flower and, for this purpose, took it to Europe for examination, where London antiquarian Joseph Duveen valued it at 500 thousand francs. The attribution of the painting to Leonardo was reluctantly confirmed by the largest authority of the time, Bernard Berenson:

The public wanted the painting to remain in Russia. M.A. Benoit wanted the same thing, and therefore lost “Madonna” for 150 thousand rubles. The amount was paid in installments, and the last payments were made after the October Revolution.

M.A. Benois, nee Sapozhnikova, the painting was inherited. There was a legend in the family that the painting was bought from traveling Italian musicians in Astrakhan. There was no other information about the fate of the painting at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1908, E. C. Lipgart wrote:

The painting was part of ancient collection Princes Kurakins, and now belongs to M.A. Benoit, the wife of a famous architect.

Only in 1974 Documentary data were made public about when and under what circumstances the “Madonna with a Flower” came to the Sapozhnikovs. IN State Archives Astrakhan region The “Register of paintings of Mr. Alexander Petrovich Sapozhnikov, compiled in 1827” was discovered.

In the inventory, the first number is listed“The Mother of God holding the eternal Child on her left hand... At the top with an oval. Master Leonardo da Vinci... From the collection of General Korsakov". Thus, it turned out that the painting came from the collection of a collector and senator Alexei Ivanovich Korsakov (1751/53-1821).

Madonnas by Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael Santi

M a d o n s

Leonardo da Vinci and Rafael Santi

Leonardo da Vinci- one of the largest representatives of art High Renaissance, an example of a “universal man.”

He was an artist, sculptor, architect, scientist (anatomist, naturalist), inventor, writer, musician.
His full name is Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, translated from Italian language it means "Leonardo, son of Mr. Piero of Vinci."
IN modern sense Leonardo did not have a surname - "da Vinci" simply means "(originally) from the town of Vinci."
Our contemporaries know Leonardo primarily as an artist.

Mona Lisa - 1503-1506 Leonardo da Vinci

Who doesn't know "La Gioconda" - famous masterpiece Leonardo da Vinci?! The face of Gioconda is familiar to the whole world; her image is still the most frequently reproduced image. However, despite its popularity and circulation, La Gioconda remains a mystery to us.

This picture is shrouded in mystery, and every time we look at it, we experience an amazing feeling of discovering something new, previously unexplored - just as we rediscover a landscape well known from the summer, seeing it one autumn immersed in a mysterious foggy haze...

At one time, Vasari claimed that “Mona Lisa” (short for “Madonna Lisa”) was painted by the third wife of a Florentine rich man named Francesco di Bartolomee del Giocondo, hence the second name of the painting, “La Gioconda.”

The “sfumato” typical of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting style here emphasizes the mysterious power of nature, which a person can only see, but cannot comprehend with his mind.

This conflict between the visible and the existing gives rise to a vague feeling of anxiety, intensified by helplessness before nature and time: a person does not know where to go, because his life - like that winding road from the gloomy landscape behind Mona Lisa - comes out of nowhere and rushes to nowhere...

Leonardo is concerned about the question of man's place in this world, and it seems that he expresses one of the possible answers in the smile of the incomparable Mona Lisa: this ironic smile is a sign of full awareness of short-termism human existence on earth and submission to the Eternal order of nature. This is the wisdom of Gioconda.

As noted German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), La Gioconda “relieves the tension between personality and nature, and also blurs the lines between life and death.”

Written in Italy, La Gioconda remained forever in France - probably as a kind of bonus for the hospitality shown to its author.

Leonardo da Vinci: Madonna Litta

Litta - Milanese aristocratic surname XVII-XIX centuries The painting was in the private collection of this family for several centuries - hence its name. Original title paintings - “Madonna and Child”. The Madonna was acquired by the Hermitage in 1864.
It is believed that the painting was painted in Milan, where the artist moved in 1482.
Her appearance marked new stage in Renaissance art - the establishment of the High Renaissance style.
The preparatory drawing for the Hermitage painting is kept in Paris in the Louvre.

"Madonna of the Rocks" (1483-1486) Tree transferred to oil on canvas. 199x122 cm. Louvre (Paris)

Madonna in the Grotto

"Madonna in the Grotto" is the first of Leonardo da Vinci's works. Milanese period his creativity. Initially, this painting was supposed to decorate the altar of the brotherhood chapel Immaculate Conception in the Milan Cathedral of San Francesco Grande and is an excellent testimony to the unsurpassed skill of Leonardo da Vinci in the field of light and shadow modeling of figures and space.

Leonardo da Vinci: Lady with an Ermine

Leonardo da Vinci: Madonna Benois

Leonardo da Vinci: Ginevra de' Benci

"Beautiful Ferroniere" - woman portrait in the Louvre, considered to be the work of Leonardo da Vinci or his students.

"Madonna of the Carnation" is a painting that many art historians attribute to young Leonardo da Vinci. Presumably, it was created by Leonardo when he was his student in Verrocchio’s workshop. 1478-1480

This collection contains the most famous paintings Raphael, dedicated to the image of the Mother of God (Madonna).

Following your teacherPerugino artist Rafael Santi(1483-1520) created an extensive gallery of imagesMary and Child , which are very diverse compositional techniques and psychological interpretations.

Raphael's early Madonnas follow famous modelsUmbrian painting quattrocento . Idyllic images are not without constraint, dryness, and hieraticity. Interaction of figures on Madonnas Florentine period more directly. They are characterized by complex landscape backgrounds. The universal experiences of motherhood come to the fore - Mary’s feeling of anxiety and at the same time pride for the fate of her son. This beauty of motherhood is the main emotional emphasis in the Madonnas made after the artist moved to Rome. The absolute peak is considered "Sistine Madonna "(1514), where triumphant delight and notes of awakening anxiety are harmoniously woven together.

Madonna and Child" (Madonna di Casa Santi) is Raphael's first appeal to the image that will become the main one in the artist's work. The painting dates back to 1498. The artist was only 15 years old at the time of painting. The painting is now in the Raphael Museum Italian city Urbino.

"Madonna Connestabile" was painted in 1504 and was later named after the owner of the painting, Count Conestabile. The painting was acquired by Russian Emperor Alexander II. Now "Madonna Conestabile" is in the Hermitage (St. Petersburg). "
Madonna Conestabile" is considered last job, created by Raphael in Umbria, before moving to Florence.

"Madonna and Child with Saints Jerome and Francis" (Madonna col Bambino tra i santi Girolamo e Francesco), 1499-1504. The painting is now in the Berlin Art Gallery.

"Little Madonna of Cowper" (Piccola Madonna Cowper) was written in 1504-1505. The painting was named after its owner, Lord Cowper. The painting is now in Washington (National Gallery of Art).

"Madonna Terranuova" was written in 1504-1505. The painting received its name from one of the owners - the Italian Duke of Terranuva. The painting is now in the Berlin Art Gallery.

Raphael's painting Holy family under the palm tree" (Sacra Famiglia con palma) is dated 1506. As on last picture, depicting the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ and St. Joseph (this time with a traditional beard). The painting is in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh.

"Madonna in Greenery" (Madonna del Belvedere) dates back to 1506. The painting is now in Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum). In the painting, the Virgin Mary holds the infant Christ, who grabs the cross from John the Baptist.

"Madonna Aldobrandini" dates back to 1510. The painting is named after the owners - the Aldobrandini family. The painting is now in the London National Gallery.

"Madonna with Candelabra" (Madonna dei Candelabri) dates from 1513-1514. The painting depicts the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child surrounded by two angels. The painting is in Art Museum Walters in Baltimore (USA).

"Sistine Madonna"(Madonna Sistina) is dated 1513-1514. The painting depicts the Virgin Mary with the infant Christ in her arms. To the left of the Mother of God is Pope Sixtus II, to the right is Saint Barbara. The "Sistine Madonna" is located in the Old Masters Gallery in Dresden (Germany).

"Madonna in an Armchair" (Madonna della Seggiola) dates from 1513-1514. The painting depicts the Virgin Mary with the baby Christ in her arms and John the Baptist. The painting is in the Palatina Gallery in Florence.

Original post and comments at

Italy |Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)|"Benois Madonna"|1478|canvas|State. Hermitage| St. Petersburg

Among Leonard's early works, dating back to the 70s, at the time when he had just left the master's workshop, are several images of Madonnas. Different authors delimit Leonardo's authorship in different ways. The most reliable attribution is to Leonardo in the famous Hermitage “Benois Madonna,” named after the previous owners.

"Madonna Benoit" proves originality artistic thinking Leonardo on early stages the formation of his creativity. There is a lot here that is fundamentally new for Florentine painting - in composition, in relation to chiaroscuro, and color. ... It is also remarkable that the figures are given on dark background. Instead of a landscape or conventional architectural motif, a calm, shaded depth is given here, the spatiality of which is emphasized by the image of the window. Somehow we sense that the window is far enough back.
The shading of this room suggests the most delicately designed chiaroscuro. Already in this work Leonardo outlines those famous principles sfumato, which will be characteristic of his method of modeling form with chiaroscuro. Sfumato in Italian means “vague, scattered, soft.” This is chiaroscuro, but not active, the one that stereometrically sculpts the form, with the contrast of dark and lightened, snatching the volume out of the darkness and sharply illuminating it, but almost indescribable gradations of shading. Moreover, we note that for Leonardo in his sfumato the shadow is more important than the light. Subsequently, it will rarely produce dazzlingly illuminated areas of volume. Over time, taking into account all his future experience, this light shading will attack the entire figure, the entire composition. This is both good and bad. On the one hand, this gave him the genius, to the keen eye the ability to trace the subtlest movement of air in the composition, the movement and state of the atmosphere in all areas of the depicted space. Figuratively speaking, under every fold. On the other hand, having established itself in Leonardo’s painting, passing from him to his students, this practice of light shading among less keen-sighted, less talented artists turned into a certain light-and-shadow heaviness, into a kind of shading, gloominess of the overall tone. Subsequently, Leonardo will be reproached for the fact that he taught painting to be funereal, gloomy black, that he delayed for centuries the development of color, the development of color in the direction of greater lightening of tone, lightening of color in general. After all, Leonardo in his notes, in his so-called “Treatise on Painting” (which is not a treatise, it was compiled into a whole at a later time) sometimes says amazingly bold things, including about color. For example, parsing color shades which should be read in a white dress female figure, illuminated by the sun on a green lawn, he talks about blue shadows, about warm and cold reflexes, he says that only in the 19th century. the impressionists obtained empirically. But in his own practice this is not the case. His painting gives completely different effects, the effects of this slightly shaded space, slightly humid air through which we see the figures. And although in “The Benois Madonna” this chiaroscuro as a system has not yet taken shape, here you can already see the first signs of its presence. And chiaroscuro also dictates the subtlety of coloristic relationships in details, in the color of fabrics, in his favorite yellowish-golden and vague violet-blue with light green.
The almost childlike fragility of the Madonna and the large, heavy forms of a well-fed baby are wonderfully contrasted. Is there some special equivalent to this? psychological state characters. Already in the very physical opposition of the mother-girl and the large child there is some additional grain of the plot.
Easily and naturally, Leonardo focuses the attention of the Mother of God and little Jesus on playing with a flower. This motif in itself is far from new - Christ playing with a flower. And the Dutch in the 15th century. it was written many times, and the Italians - a flower or a bird in the hand, sometimes a flower with symbolic meaning. But here Mary’s childish joy is very fresh; she seems to equally rejoice at her son’s play and at the beauty of the flower itself. And as much as the mother is cheerful, the baby is so serious. Some kind of huge inner work happens in him when he examines the petals of a flower with his little hands. And this is also a somewhat unexpected psychological comparison. The thing, despite its apparent chamber size, is quite complexly organized both plastically, spatially, and emotionally and psychologically.

"MADONNA LITTA"

There are so many paintings depicting the Virgin Mary that the most famous ones are usually given nicknames. Often the name of one of the previous owners sticks to them, as happened with the “Madonna Litta”.

The painting, painted in the 1490s, remained in Italy for many centuries. Since 1813, it was owned by the Milanese Litta family, whose representatives knew very well how rich Russia was. It was from this family that the Maltese knight Count Giulio Renato Litta came, who was in great favor with Paul I and, having left the order, married his nephewItse Potemkin, becoming a millionaire. However, it has nothing to do with Leonardo’s painting. A quarter of a century after his death, in 1864, Duke Antonio Litta turned toHermitage, recently became a public museum, with an offer to buy several paintings from the family collection.

Angelo Bronzino. Competition between Apollo and Marsyas. 1531-1532. State Hermitage Museum

Da Vinci's painting arrived in Russia in very poor condition; it had to not only be cleaned, but also immediately transferred from board to canvas. So the first one appeared in the Hermitage« Leonardo» .

By the way, here is an example of disputes over attribution: did Leonardo create the “Madonna Litta” himself or with an assistant? Who was this co-author - his student Boltraffio? Or maybe Boltraffio wrote it entirely, based on Leonardo’s sketch?
This issue has not yet been finally resolved, and the Madonna Litta is considered a little dubious.

Leonardo da Vinci had many students and followers - they are called "Leonardeschi". Sometimes they interpreted the master’s legacy in a very strange way. This is how the type of nude “Mona Lisa” appeared. There is one of these paintings in the Hermitage unknown author— “Donna nuda” (“Naked woman”). It appeared in Zimny ​​during the reign of Catherine the Great: in 1779, the Empress acquired it as part of the collection of Richard Walpole. In addition to her, the Hermitage also contains large collection other Leonardesques, including a copy of the dressed Mona Lisa.

"MADONNA BENOIS"

Previously, the painting was owned by her father, the Astrakhan merchant-millionaire Alexander Aleksandrovich Sapozhnikov, and before him, by her grandfather Alexander Petrovich (grandson of Semyon Sapozhnikov, for his participation in Pugachev revolt hanged in the village of Malykovka by one young lieutenant named Gavrila Derzhavin). The family said that “Madonna” was sold to the Sapozhnikovs by wandering Italian musicians who somehow ended up in Astrakhan.

Vasily Tropinin. Portrait of A.P. Sapozhnikov (grandfather). 1826; portrait of A.A. Sapozhnikov (father), 1856.

But in fact, Sapozhnikov’s grandfather purchased it in 1824 for 1,400 rubles at an auction after the death of the senator, president of the Berg College and director of the Mining School Alexei Korsakov (who apparently brought it from Italy in the 1790s).
Surprisingly, when after Korsakov’s death his collection, which included Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt and other authors, was put up for auction, the Hermitage bought several works (in particular, Millet, Mignard), but neglected this modest “Madonna”.

Having become the owner of the painting after Korsakov’s death, Sapozhnikov began restoring the painting; at his request, it was immediately transferred from board to canvas.

Orest Kiprensky. Portrait of A. Korsakov. 1808. Russian Museum.

The Russian public learned about this painting in 1908, when the court architect Leonty Benois exhibited the work from the collection of his father-in-law, and the chief curator of the Hermitage, Ernst Lipgart, confirmed the hand of the master. This happened at the Exhibition Western European art from the collections of collectors and antiquarians of St. Petersburg,” which opened on December 1, 1908 in the halls of the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts.

In 1912, the Benois couple decided to sell the painting; the painting was sent abroad, where experts examined it and confirmed its authenticity. London antique dealer Duveen offered 500 thousand francs (about 200 thousand rubles), but in Russia a campaign began for the state to purchase the work. The director of the Hermitage, Count Dmitry Tolstoy, addressed Nicholas II. The Benois couple also wanted “Madonna” to remain in Russia, and eventually lost it to the Hermitage in 1914 for 150 thousand rubles, which were paid in installments.