DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51585#0027
LIONARDO DA VINCI.
23
aside by him as unfinished sketches. Most of the
pictures now attributed to him were wholly or in
part painted by his scholars and imitators from his
cartoons. One of the most famous of these was
designed for the altar-piece of the church of the
convent called the Nunziata. It represented the
Virgin Mary seated in the lap of her mother St.
Anna, having in her arms the infant Christ, while
St. John is playing with a lamb at their feet; St.
Anna, looking on with a tender smile, rejoices in
her divine offspring; the figures were drawn with
such skill, and the various expressions proper to
each conveyed with such inimitable truth and grace,
that when exhibited in a chamber of the convent,
the inhabitants of the city flocked to see it, and for
two days the streets were crowded with people, “ as
if it had been some solemn festivalbut the pic-
ture was never painted, and the monks of the
Nunziata, after waiting long and in vain for their
altar-piece, were obliged to employ other artists.
I'he cartoon, or a very fine repetition of it, is now
m the possession of our Royal Academy, and it
must not be confounded with the St. Anna in the
Louvre, a more fantastic and apparently an earlier
composition.
Lionardo, during his stay at Florence, painted
the portrait of Ginevra Benci, already mentioned in
the memoir of Ghirlandajo, as the reigning beauty
of her time; and also the portrait of Mona Lisa
23
aside by him as unfinished sketches. Most of the
pictures now attributed to him were wholly or in
part painted by his scholars and imitators from his
cartoons. One of the most famous of these was
designed for the altar-piece of the church of the
convent called the Nunziata. It represented the
Virgin Mary seated in the lap of her mother St.
Anna, having in her arms the infant Christ, while
St. John is playing with a lamb at their feet; St.
Anna, looking on with a tender smile, rejoices in
her divine offspring; the figures were drawn with
such skill, and the various expressions proper to
each conveyed with such inimitable truth and grace,
that when exhibited in a chamber of the convent,
the inhabitants of the city flocked to see it, and for
two days the streets were crowded with people, “ as
if it had been some solemn festivalbut the pic-
ture was never painted, and the monks of the
Nunziata, after waiting long and in vain for their
altar-piece, were obliged to employ other artists.
I'he cartoon, or a very fine repetition of it, is now
m the possession of our Royal Academy, and it
must not be confounded with the St. Anna in the
Louvre, a more fantastic and apparently an earlier
composition.
Lionardo, during his stay at Florence, painted
the portrait of Ginevra Benci, already mentioned in
the memoir of Ghirlandajo, as the reigning beauty
of her time; and also the portrait of Mona Lisa