Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (Lady with an Ermine)

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Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (Lady with an Ermine): Leonardo da Vinci

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Leonardo da Vinci Oil Painting - Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (Lady with an Ermine)

Keywords: Portrait, Cecilia, Gallerani, Lady, Ermine

Work Overview: Artist Leonardo da Vinci
Year 1489–90
Type Oil on wood panel
Subject Cecilia Gallerani
Dimensions 54 cm × 39 cm (21 in × 15 in)
Location National Museum, Kraków, Poland

Lady with an Ermine (Italian: Dama con l'ermellino [ˈdaːma kon lermelˈliːno], literally "Lady with the Ermine") is a painting by Leonardo da Vinci from around 1489–1490. The subject of the portrait is Cecilia Gallerani, painted at a time when she was the mistress of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and Leonardo was in the service of the duke. The painting is one of only four portraits of women painted by Leonardo, the others being the Mona Lisa, the portrait of Ginevra de' Benci, and La belle ferronnière. The painting was purchased in 2016 from the Czartoryski Foundation by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage for the National Museum in Kraków and has been on display in the museum's main building since 2017.

The small portrait generally called The Lady with the Ermine was painted in oils on wooden panel. At the time of its painting, the medium of oil paint was relatively new to Italy, having been introduced in the 1470s.

The subject has been identified with reasonable certainty as Cecilia Gallerani, who was the mistress of Leonardo's employer, Ludovico Sforza.[3]

Cecilia Gallerani was a member of a large family that was neither wealthy nor noble. Her father served for a time at the Duke's court. At the time her portrait was painted, she was about 16 years old and was renowned for her beauty, her scholarship, and her poetry. She was married at approximately age six to a young nobleman of the house of Visconti, but she sued to annul the marriage in 1487 for undisclosed reasons and the request was granted. Cecilia became the mistress of the Duke and bore him a son, even after his marriage to another woman 11 years previously, Beatrice d'Este.[4] Beatrice was promised to the Duke when she was only 5, and married him when she was 16 in 1491. After a few months, she discovered the Duke was still seeing Cecilla, and forced the Duke to break off their relationship by marrying her off to a local count named Bergamino.

The painting shows a half-length figure, the body of a woman turned at a three-quarter angle toward her right, but her face turned toward her left. Her gaze is directed neither straight ahead, nor toward the viewer, but toward a "third party" beyond the picture's frame. In her arms, Gallerani holds a small white-coated stoat, known as an ermine. Gallerani's dress is comparatively simple, revealing that she is not a noblewoman. Her coiffure, known as a coazone, confines her hair smoothly to her head with two bands of hair bound on either side of her face and a long plait at the back. Her hair is held in place by a fine gauze veil with a woven border of gold-wound threads, a black band, and a sheath over the plait.[5]

There are several interpretations of the significance of the ermine in her portrait. The ermine, a stoat in its winter coat, was a traditional symbol of purity because it was believed an ermine would face death rather than soil its white coat.[6] In his old age, Leonardo compiled a bestiary in which he recorded:

MODERATION The ermine out of moderation never eats but once a day, and it would rather let itself be captured by hunters than take refuge in a dirty lair, in order not to stain its purity.[7]

He repeats this idea in another note, "Moderation curbs all the vices. The ermine prefers to die rather than soil itself."[8] Ermines were kept as pets by the aristocracy and their white pelts were used to line or trim aristocratic garments. For Ludovico il Moro, the ermine had a further personal significance in that he had been in the Order of the Ermine (Naples) in 1488 and used it as a personal emblem.[9] The association of the ermine with Cecilia Gallerani could have been intended to refer both to her purity and to make an association with her lover. Alternatively, the ermine could be a pun on her name because the Ancient Greek term for ermine, or other weasel-like species of animals, is galê (γαλῆ) or galéē (γαλέη).[10] This would be in keeping with Leonardo's placement of a juniper bush behind the figure in his portrait of Ginevra de Benci in reference to her name. Given that Gallerani gave birth to a son acknowledged by Lodovico in May 1491, and the association of weasels and pregnancy in Italian Renaissance culture, it also is possible the animal was a symbol of Cecilia's pregnancy.[11] In addition, it has been speculated that the animal in the painting appears not to be an ermine,[12] but a white ferret, a colour favoured in the Middle Ages because of the ease of seeing the white animal in thick undergrowth.

As in many of Leonardo's paintings, the composition comprises a pyramidic spiral and the sitter is caught in the motion of turning to her left, reflecting Leonardo's lifelong preoccupation with the dynamics of movement. The three-quarter profile portrait was one of his many innovations. Il Moro's court poet, Bernardo Bellincioni, was the first to propose that Cecilia is poised as if listening to an unseen speaker.

This work in particular shows Leonardo's expertise in painting the human form. The outstretched hand of Cecilia was painted with great detail. Leonardo paints every contour of each fingernail, each wrinkle around her knuckles, and even the flexing of the tendon in her bent finger.

According to the art-critic Maike Vogt-Luerssen the depicted lady clearly identifies herself as a member of the Royal Neapolitan House of Aragon by wearing a Catalan costume and holding the most important symbol of her dynasty, the ermine in its winter fur. Her name is Giovanna of Aragon (1478 - 1518), Queen of Naples, and she was married to Ferrandino (or Ferdinand II) of Naples.

The Lady with an Ermine has been subjected to two detailed laboratory examinations. The first was in the Warsaw Laboratories, the findings being published by K. Kwiatkowski in 1955. The painting underwent examination and restoration again in 1992, at the Washington National Gallery Laboratories under the supervision of David Bull.[1]

The painting is in oil on a thin walnut wood panel, about 4–5 millimetres (0.16–0.20 in) thick, prepared with a layer of white gesso and a layer of brownish underpaint.[1] The panel is in good condition apart from a break to the upper left side of the painting. Its size has never been altered, as indicated by a narrow unpainted strip on all four sides of the painting.

The background was thinly overpainted with unmodulated black, probably between 1830 and 1870, when the damaged corner was restored. Eugène Delacroix was suggested to have painted the background. Its previous colour was a bluish grey.[1] The signature "LEONARD D'AWINCI" (which is Polish phonetical transcription of the name "da Vinci") in the upper left corner is not original.[13]

X-ray and microscopic analysis have revealed the charcoal-pounced outline of the pricked preparatory drawing on the prepared undersurface, a technique Leonardo learned in the studio of Verrocchio.[14]

Apart from the black of the background and some abrasion caused by cleaning, the painted surface reveals the painting is almost entirely by the artist's hand. There has been some slight retouching of her features in red, and the edge of the veil in ochre. Some scholars believe there also was some later retouching of the hands.[1]

Leonardo's fingerprints have been found in the surface of the paint, indicating he used his fingers to blend his delicate brushstrokes.

The painting was acquired in Italy by Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, the son of Princess Izabela Czartoryska and Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski in 1798, and incorporated it into the Czartoryskis’ family collections at Puławy in 1800. The inscription on the top-left corner of the painting, LA BELE FERONIERE. LEONARD DAWINCI., probably was added by a restorer shortly after its arrival in Poland,[16] and before the background was overpainted.[17] Czartoryski was clearly aware it was a Leonardo, although the painting had never been discussed in print; unfortunately, no record exists of any previous owner. The Belle Ferronière is the Leonardo portrait in the Louvre, whose sitter bears such a close resemblance, the Czartoryskis considered this sitter to be the same. The painting travelled extensively during the 19th century; Princess Czartoryska rescued it in advance of the invading Russian army in 1830, hid it, then sent it to Dresden and on to the Czartoryski place of exile in Paris, the Hôtel Lambert, returning it to Kraków in 1882. In 1939, almost immediately after the German occupation of Poland, it was seized by the Nazis and sent to the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin. In 1940, Hans Frank, the Governor General of Poland, requested it be returned to Kraków, where it hung in his suite of offices. At the end of the Second World War it was discovered by Allied troops in Frank's country home in Bavaria. It has since been returned to Poland at the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków. Since May 2017, the painting may be found in a branch of the National Museum in Kraków, just outside the Old Town.

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This young Renaissance lady – more tricked-out girl than lady – is cradling something savage, and this fact rather troubles us. Is she at ease with this creature? What is it there for? We think forward immediately to Holbein's great portrait of a woman with a squirrel and a starling, painted almost 40 years after this one, and we ponder upon the fact that Holbein's tenderly preoccupied red squirrel, also perched on the forearm, looked so much more benign than this perkily rampant creature, whose head is rearing up and away from the upper arm of this rather taut looking young woman.

And then we think of yet another artwork, a photograph this time, by the outrageous Robert Mapplethorpe, snapped in 1982. It shows a very cheeky old lady called Louise Bourgeois, half-cradling, half trapping beneath her arm, a giant penis called Fillette. Fillette her (his?)self was a work of 1982. What a smirk she has on her face! But is it appropriate to set these two images, hundreds of years apart, side by side? Is the lithe, muscular body of Leonardo's creature penile at all? Would Leonardo have gone in for this sort of a joke at the expense of a famous man whose court painter he would shortly become? Perhaps not.

And yet there must be more to this than a beautiful young woman and a risqué pet of sorts. Leonardo, being the subtle and clever man that he was, would not have been satisfied with a paucity of symbolic associations. Cecilia Gallerani was about 15 years old and already the mistress of Ludovico Sforza, when Leonardo, recently arrived with his lyre in Milan, painted her. The familiar name of this painting tells us that this rampant, heraldic-looking creature is an ermine – which is, of course, a stoat in its white winter jacket.

That name, ermine, lullingly bi-syllabic, sounds more precious and cherishable than the word stoat, which is rougher, more cruel, more trenchantly out of doors, swifter with tooth and claw. Ermine fur was precious stuff, soft to the touch. Painters sometimes depicted the Virgin Mary in an ermine-lined cloak. There were also of course other beguiling tales swirling around this creature that Leonardo would surely have known and taken satisfaction in. The ermine lived in horror of soiling its winter jacket, it was said. In fact, it died if it did so. It was therefore regarded as an emblem of purity and even chastity. And so we easily shift from the idea of ermine to the idea of the purity of the young lady herself. She too was pure as the driven snow, hem hem. And then there is her own surname to take into account. Its first two syllables are the same as the Greek word for weasel or ermine...

Is this really only an ermine though? It looks more composite than that, as if Leonardo has assembled it from bits and pieces of others animals that he has been busy drawing over the years. We can see some of those wonderful drawings in the current exhibition at the National Gallery – the head of a boar, the paw of a dog. (We can also see an ermine being beaten to death by a hunter).

The pleasing shock is to look from one to the other, from girl to ermine and back again. From the restless, squirming rampancy of the wild creature to the composure of the beautifully adorned girl. The girl's bony right hand, just a little too large than it ought to be, seems to be holding the creature back, to be pinching it in by the neck. How secure is its body, curled back as it is along her forearm? The creature looks heraldic, as if it is in part a device on a shield or a coin. It sprawls, strains somewhat. Its body seems to be swimming gracefully backwards, turning as it goes, against the thrust of her – again, slightly over-large - forearm. The girl, by comparison, looks perfectly self-contained within herself.

She is the mistress of all she surveys. Which is what, exactly? We do not know what it is she is looking at askance, head twisted to the side, so intently, with just a hint of a smile. We admire the quality of her attentiveness. It is as if she is being presented to us a female model of perfectly settled intellectual engagement. Perhaps Leonardo is hinting at this: that such an intellect is well placed to tame the savagery that forever paws at one's sleeve. Has she spoken? Could she be about to speak? Those lips might suggest as much. The way in which her hair has been contained within, and curiously shaped by, no less than two thin veilings of fabric helps to define the near-perfect shape of her skull.

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Cecilia Gallerani is holding the heraldic animal of Ludovico il Moro in her arms. She was his favourite and gave birth to his child in the same year as he married Beatrice d'Este. The charming and vivid impression Cecilia makes gained Leonardo the reputation of being a talented portrait painter. The movement of this beautiful girl turning slowly from the shadow into the light is mirrored by the small animal she is holding.

The inscription in the upper left corner - La Feroniere Leonard d'Awinci - is a mistaken addition at the end of the 18th century.

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