La Vierge aux rochers

In a grotto of tumbling rock and whirling water, a mother, two infants and an angel kneel in a quiet circle. Leonardo da Vinci turned a church commission in Milan into one of his most mysterious paintings.

The story behind the painting

Leonardo da Vinci, born in 1452 in or near the Tuscan town of Vinci, moved to Milan around 1482. He had written to the city's ruler, Ludovico Sforza, listing what he could achieve in engineering and weapon design, and mentioning that he could also paint. He stayed until 1499, and among his commissions was the Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. The work, to be made with the help of the de Predis brothers, was meant to fill a large and complex altarpiece. Wikidata dates this version to the 1480s; Leonardo's Wikipedia biography gives c. 1483-1493. This is the version now in the Louvre.

What to look for

The panel is tall, about 199 by 122 centimetres, yet it holds only four figures. Find the Virgin Mary at the centre, the Christ Child and the infant John the Baptist, and the angel who watches over John; Wikidata identifies the angel as Uriel. The figures kneel gracefully in adoration around the infant Christ. Behind and above them rises a wild landscape of tumbling rock and whirling water; compared with an earlier commission Leonardo took on from the monks of San Donato, with about fifty figures, this one is far simpler. Notice how the rocks frame the group like a natural chapel. Leonardo's careful study of an angel's head for this painting survives as one of his famous drawings.

Meaning and intent

Leonardo chose an apocryphal moment from Christ's infancy: the infant John the Baptist, protected by an angel, meets the Holy Family on the road to Egypt. The Wikipedia biography speaks of an eerie beauty, created by graceful figures in a wild setting. The same source counts this painting, with the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, among the works where Leonardo's knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and geology, and his subtle gradation of tone, come together.

Legacy

The commission had a long and tangled ending. Two versions were finished: one remained at the chapel of the Confraternity, while Leonardo took the other to France. According to the source, the brothers of the Confraternity did not receive their painting, nor the de Predis their payment, until the following century. The version described here belongs to the Department of Paintings of the Louvre in Paris; the other is in the National Gallery, London. Preparatory studies for the work survive among Leonardo's drawings, letting us glimpse how carefully he built this calm, mysterious scene.

Le saviez-vous ?

Commissioned in Milan by the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception.
Dated to the 1480s by Wikidata; c. 1483-1493 in Leonardo's Wikipedia biography.
Two versions exist; this one is in the Louvre, the other in the National Gallery, London.
About 199 × 122 cm.

Wikipedia (Leonardo da Vinci) · Wikidata