Madonna and Child with Flowers (Benois Madonna)

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Madonna and Child with Flowers (Benois Madonna): Leonardo da Vinci

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Leonardo da Vinci Oil Painting - Madonna and Child with Flowers (Benois Madonna)

Keywords: Madonna, Child, Flowers, Benois, Madonna

Work Overview: Artist Leonardo da Vinci
Year 1478
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 49.5 cm × 33 cm (19.5 in × 13 in)
Location Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

Madonna and Child with Flowers, otherwise known as the Benois Madonna, could be one of two Madonnas Leonardo da Vinci had commented on having started in October 1478. The other one could be Madonna of the Carnation from Munich.

It is likely that the Benois Madonna was the first work painted by Leonardo independently from his master Verrocchio. There are two of Leonardo's preliminary sketches for this piece in the British Museum.[1] Studies of these sketches and the painting itself suggest that Leonardo was concentrating on the idea of sight. At that time it was thought that human eyes exhibited rays to cause vision with a central beam being the most important. The child is thought to be guiding his mother's hands into his central vision.[2]

The composition of Madonna and Child with Flowers proved to be one of Leonardo's most popular. It was extensively copied by young painters, including Raphael, whose own version of Leonardo's design (the Madonna of the Pinks) was acquired in 2004 by the National Gallery, London.

For centuries, Madonna and Child with Flowers was considered lost. In 1909, the architect Leon Benois sensationally exhibited it in Saint Petersburg as part of his father-in-law's collection. The painting had been apparently brought from Italy to Russia by the notable connoisseur Aleksey Korsakov in the 1790s. Upon Korsakov's death, it was sold by his son to the Astrakhan merchant Sapozhnikov for 1400 roubles and so passed by inheritance to the Benois family in 1880. After many a squabble regarding attribution, Leon Benois sold the painting to the Imperial Hermitage Museum in 1914. The purchase was made by Ernst Friedrich von Liphart who was the curator of paintings who had correctly identified the artist.[3] (Ernst's father Karl was an expert on da Vinci).[4]

Since 1914 the painting has been exhibited in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.

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Mary and her child are naturally engrossed in their game, and their gazes make them appear lifelike to a degree that can be found in no contemporary Italian painting of the Madonna. Leonardo achieved this quality by means of nature studies. In 1478, he noted that he was working on two Madonnas. The Benois Madonna can be dated to that period. The painting has in its present condition been overpainted in some places and has lost some of the paint layer.

The painting was also called the Madonna Benois because of the family who owned it. This canvas demonstrates the newly developed method of chiaroscuro - a lighting/shading technique that made the figures appear three dimensional. It entered the Hermitage in 1914.

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