Sant’Anna, la Vergine e il Bambino con l’agnellino (c.1503-1519)

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

Sant’Anna, la Vergine e il Bambino con l’agnellino (Virgin and Child with St Anne)
c.15031519
Oil on poplar, 168 x 130 cm
Musée du LouvreParis

This painting was started around 1503 at least, in Florence, then was kept by Leonardo da Vinci until his death to slowly continue its pictorial execution, still unfinished in 1519; the work was most probably acquired by François I in 1518.

A Florentine creation

Several documents allow us to place the conception of Saint Anne in Florence, at the very beginning of the 16th century. On March 27, 1501, the Marchioness Isabella d’Este wrote to the Carmelite Fra’ Pietro da Novellara, who was then residing in Florence, to ask him for information about Leonardo, whom she requested for various projects: “Reverend Father, if Leonardo Florentine finds himself in Florence, we ask you to find out about his life, that is to say if he started any work, as we have been told, and what work it’s about.” Obviously, the fame of a new work by Leonardo had reached Mantua and Isabella therefore wanted to know more, no doubt in the hope of still obtaining works from the master that she ardently desired. Fra’ Pietro replied to him on April 3: “Leonardo‘s life is changeable and so very indeterminate that he seems to live from day to day. Since he has been in Florence, he has only made a sketch for a cardboard box; This cartoon represents the Christ child aged about a year, who, almost escaping from his mother’s arms, seizes a lamb and appears to embrace it. The mother, almost rising from Saint Anne’s lap, grabs the Child to separate him from the lamb (sacrificial animal) which signifies the Passion. Saint Anne, rising somewhat from her sitting, seems to want to stop her daughter from separating the Child from the lamb, which undoubtedly means to represent the Church, which could not want the Passion of Christ to be prevented. And these figures have the size of the natural but fit on a small cardboard because they are all either seated or curved, and one stands somewhat in front of the other on the left hand. And this sketch is not yet finished. He did nothing else, except that two of his boys made copies and that he sometimes put his hand in them. He devotes himself greatly to geometry, and is very difficult to use with a paintbrush.” On April 14, Fra’ Pietro wrote a second letter to the Marquise, in which he this time mentioned the Virgin of the Spindles intended for Florimond Robertet, and an unspecified commitment to the King of France which the artist wished to fulfill in one month. This testimony should be enough to challenge the idea that Saint Anne was requested from the artist by Louis XII in 1499, a hypothesis which has widely developed in recent years. How could Fra’ Pietro, who gives a long description of the cartoon of Saint Anne, have forgotten to specify to Isabella d’Este that the work was intended for the King of France, when he informs her that the little Virgin of the spindles was designed for “a certain Robertet”? How can we also explain, a few years later, in January 1507, the reaction of Louis XII, when after admiring a small painting by Leonardo, who had barely arrived in France, he summoned the ambassador of Florence, Francesco Pandolfini, to advise him to his wish to obtain in turn a work by the master, “small paintings of Notre Dame” or his portrait? Has the king therefore forgotten that he had already requested it for Saint Anne in 1499? We must in fact definitively abandon the idea that Saint Anne was commissioned around 1499 by King Louis XII. In the current state of our knowledge, it is more reasonable to connect Saint Anne to the Florentine context, as the letter from Fra’ Pietro in 1501 and the biography of Leonardo by Giorgio Vasari, published in 1550, invite us to do: “He returned to Florence, where he discovered that the Servite friars had entrusted Filippino with the order for the painting of the high altar of the Nunziata, for which Leonardo made it known that he would have gladly undertaken such work. Where does it come from that Filippino, having learned of it, gracious as he was, withdrew from the affair and that the brothers, so that Leonardo could paint the picture, took him into their home, paying his expenses and those of all his familiar. And so he walked them for a long time, and never started anything. In the meantime, he made a cardboard showing a Virgin and a Saint Anne with a Christ, which not only amazed all the artists, but when it was finished, for two days, men and women, young people and the old people never stopped visiting the room where he was, as one goes to solemn festivals, in order to see the wonders of Leonardo, which struck everyone with amazement. For what we saw, on the face of this Madonna, all that which, simple and beautiful, can simply and beautifully clothe a mother of Christ with grace, because he wanted to show the modesty, the humility, which were those of a Virgin transported with joy at the sight of the beauty of her son, whom she carried with tenderness on her breast, while with her very chaste downcast gazes she followed a little child Saint John who was going to play with a lamb, not without the smile of a Saint Anne who, filled with joy, saw her earthly offspring become celestial. Considerations, certainly, of Leonardo‘s intellect and genius.” Since the uprising of the Florentines against Gautier de Brienne, Duke of Athens, on July 26, 1343, the feast of Saint Anne, the city devoted a particular cult to the mother of the Virgin, considered the protector of the Republic. After the exile of the Medici in 1494, the honors paid to the saint multiplied again. Leonardo‘s work fits perfectly into this context of restoration of the republican government, in which the artist participated with the execution of the Battle of Anghiari from 1503, and possibly with the Salvator mundi which is another iconography favored by the Republic of Florence. Historians have put together different hypotheses about a possible Florentine order. Formerly, Vasari‘s biography was relied upon to assert that Leonardo had designed his Saint Anne for the high altar of the church of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence. Not only is this proposition based on an erroneous reading of the text, but it is also invalidated by the dimensions of the altarpiece built in the church from 1500 and which was to accommodate paintings twice as high as Leonardo‘s. It was also imagined that the artist had painted Saint Anne for the Grand Council room at the Palace of the Signature. The idea is hardly convincing because it would be surprising if such a prestigious order had left no trace in the city’s archives. In addition, the painting started in 1510 by Fra’ Bartolomeo for this place is on the scale of the immense space and measures three meters higher than Saint Anne. Fra’ Pietro’s silence on the sponsor invites us to think that the artist undertook this work on his own initiative. On his return to Florence in 1500, Leonardo enjoyed an extraordinary reputation, after the execution of the monumental Last Supper painted in Santa Maria delle Grazie. To demonstrate his genius and mark his place on the artistic scene, he would have judiciously chosen this subject celebrating the Republic restored since the departure of the Medici in 1494. The London cardboard and the Louvre painting, a historiographical debate. The Saint Anne is one of the artist’s compositions for which we keep the largest number of preparatory sheets, which makes it possible to specify the different stages of the project. Three composition drawings, the large London cartoon and thirteen detailed studies are preserved. There has been some confusion over the dating of these preparatory drawings, such as cardboard and paint. In 2012, on the occasion of an exhibition dedicated to the barely restored painting, we offered a reconstruction of this long gestation which is based on archival documents, the classification of preparatory drawings, the scientific study of the panel of the Louvre and analysis of the copies. We provide a summary here. From Leonardo‘s reflections on the theme of Saint Anne, we know today two main compositions: the cartoon in the National Gallery in London and the painting in the Louvre. The first represents Saint Anne, the Virgin holding in her arms her Son who blesses little Saint John the Baptist. Dominating the exchange between the two children, Saint Anne’s left hand points to the sky. Through this sign, it reveals the deep meaning of the blessing: Jesus’ acceptance of his sacrifice, the announcement of which he entrusts to Saint John the Baptist, the last of the prophets, who prepares the coming of the Messiah. The grandmother observes her daughter and smiles at her to encourage her to approve of this tragic fate. Because Mary supports Jesus in an ambiguous way which can be interpreted as a gesture of offering as well as of restraint. Only her smile indicates that she accepts the death of her Son for the salvation of humanity. In the Louvre painting, Saint John the Baptist disappears. The Child Jesus is now on the ground and grabs a lamb, an animal intended for sacrifice which symbolizes his own end. The Virgin’s movement is once again undecided, between offering and withholding her offspring. Historiography has always held that the London cartoon constituted a project linked to the Louvre painting, even if there is nothing to prove it. This is entirely likely because the scale, lighting and meaning of the two compositions are similar. For a long time, the letter from Fra’ Pietro da Novellara describing, in April 1501, a composition very close to that of the painting in the Louvre provided a benchmark around which the two diagrams were very logically placed: before the letter, the London cartoon, of different composition and never painted; after the letter, the Louvre painting, which was considered the culmination of the cartoon described by Fra’ Pietro. But in 1950, Arthur E. Popham and Philip Pouncey cautiously put forward the hypothesis that the Burlington House cartoon could be a “subtle development” of the one described in 1501. They proposed to place the execution still in Florence, but between 1501 and 1505. They based their argument mainly on the analysis of the preparatory drawing for the London cartoon, preserved in the British Museum. Both authors pointed out that the technical drawings of wheels in this drawing were similar to those found on folio 165 r of the Arundel Codex and on Windsor sheet RL 12328, which they date to around 1505 due to the presence of sketches linked to the Battle of Anghiari. In their hypothesis, the painting in the Louvre still remained the conclusion of the story, since they placed its execution in Milan around 1510. Carlo Pedretti developed this idea, going so far as to date the drawing in the British Museum and the London cardboard around 15081509, as does the painting. He insisted on comparing the technical sketches of the British Museum sheet with the Arundel Codex and with other scientific studies of Manuscript F including the date 1508. These connections have been rightly contested, because Leonardo could very well have added the technical sketches to the drawing in the British Museum at a later stage. Furthermore, we cannot precisely determine the years during which he was interested in the question of gear wheels. Even historians convinced by the late dating of the British Museum drawing and the Burlington House cartoon have recognized the refutable nature of the argument from the technical annotations and preferred to justify their position by stylistic analysis of the work, which, this time again, did not lead to any consensus. The unfolding of the story of Saint Anne proposed by Popham and Pouncey then Pedretti and by those who followed their advice presents a particularly complex succession of projects: Leonardo would have designed in 1501 a cartoon with a composition very close to that of the painting of Louvre. He would then have abandoned it for a new diagram, the London cartoon, developed between 1501 and 1509. And finally, he would have discarded it in favor of the first idea, painted from 15081510 in the panel of the Louvre.

The discovery of Agostino Vespucci’s note

The discovery in 2005 in the Heidelberg library of an unpublished document attesting that the painting had already begun in October 1503 undermined the hypothesis of a late dating of the London cartoon. This is a handwritten note from Agostino Vespucci, Machiavelli‘s collaborator at the chancellery of Florence. Vespucci certainly knew Leonardo, for whom he translated a Latin text on the Battle of Anghiari. Reading a passage from Cicero‘s Familiar Letters where reference is made to the ancient painter Apelles, who had left a painting of Venus unfinished, he noted in the margin of his book: “So does Leonardo da Vinci in all his paintings. As is the Head of Lisa del Giocondo, and that of Anne, mother of the Virgin. We will see what he will do for the Grand Council room which he has already agreed with the gonfalonier. October 1503.” This annotation revealed essential information for the history of Saint Anne, the very early start of its execution, at the latest in October 1503. This made it possible to refute the idea then long accepted according to which the work would date from the artist’s second Milanese period, from 1508. From now on, we understand that the master spent more time painting his picture than searching for the ideal composition through drawing. It had in fact often been assumed that he had hesitated for a long time between different schemes before painting the Louvre panel. With this new document, we can persist, for stylistic reasons, in dating the London cartoon around 1508, but we must then believe that, while continuing the pictorial execution of the Louvre painting, the master would have imagined a new composition on the same theme, and that he would only have developed it at the stage of an unfinished cartoon. The London cartoon would thus be linked to a completely different project than that of the Saint Anne in the Louvre. In the current state of our knowledge, it seems more reasonable to us to think that the London carton is indeed the first idea implemented by Leonardo, probably around 1500, after his arrival in Florence and before April 1501, date on which he designs a box of different composition.

The iconography of Saint Anne Third

During the 13th and 14th centuries, the intensification of debates on the nature of Mary’s conception encouraged the growth of the cult of her mother, Saint Anne. In addition to the episodes from the life of the Virgin in which she appears, an image also appears bringing together the Child Jesus, his mother and his grandmother. According to the different known traditions, Saint Anne died before the birth of Christ. This iconography is therefore not historical but symbolic. It places the Incarnation of God within a lineage whose holiness is in some way revealed by the formal analogy with the celestial Trinity composed of God the Father, his son Jesus and the Holy Spirit, hence the name “Saint Anne Trinitarian” which is however the subject of debate, with some favoring the expression “Saint Anne third”. The first representations of Saint Anne the third adopt a very strict vertical diagram, with the three figures nested one behind the other, which constitutes a visual theological demonstration of a miraculous conception over two generations. Over time, the rigor of composition of the first Trinitarian Saint Anne softens, to enrich the subject with new content. By moving the Virgin slightly to one side, the Child can now have direct contact with his grandmother. A narration can thus intrude into the image and transforms the concept of the terrestrial Trinity into a family scene. The introduction of an action results in a second compositional scheme, horizontal this time, which pushes to the end the tendency to misalign the Virgin in relation to Saint Anne. Attention is often focused on a seemingly anecdotal event in the daily life of little Jesus, which in reality hides a symbolic message: learning to read is an opportunity to reveal to him his future Passion, the apple or the grape, grapes that are handed to him to feed him are symbolic fruits of his necessary sacrifice.

Around 1500, the London cardboard experience

Leonardo is initially seduced by the clarity of a horizontal layout. In the London cartoon, the bodies and heads of the two mothers are placed at the same height, but the artist has seated the Virgin half on the legs of Saint Anne, as in the vertical compositions. This experimental renewal of traditional iconography by merging the two usual patterns strangely transforms the two mothers into Siamese sisters, especially since their faces also appear youthful. We detect in the structure of this composition the memory of the holy conversations of the Quattrocento. The whirling movements of the Virgin, the Child Jesus and the Baptist are in fact organized around the stable and central figure of Saint Anne. The pose of the Child Jesus blessing and lying above the legs of his grandmother is also characteristic of these ancient models. We find it, for example, in the Pala Sforzesca, commissioned in 1494 by Ludovico il Moro for the Milanese church of Sant’Ambrogio ad Nemus. The gestures of the characters in the cardboard, very present and very demonstrative, are in perfect continuity with the figures of the Virgin of the Rocks or the Last Supper, while, in the Louvre painting, the meaning of the image is revealed more naturally, by the movement of bodies and the expression of faces. This cardboard was neither perforated nor incised and was therefore not used. Its composition was even excluded from any use in the workshop. Unlike other compositions of the artist’s maturity, it was never reproduced by his assistants with the aim of making copies. Only Francesco Melzi took up the figure of the Virgin in his Vertumnus and Pomona (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie). The only real known revival is that of Bernardino Luini, much later, around 1530, in a work kept at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan.

In 1501, a second, more accomplished cartoon

The master’s second project is known from the description of Fra’ Pietro da Novellara dating from April 3, 1501. We know of two preparatory studies for this new arrangement, which should be dated between 1500 and 1501, just after the first test of the cardboard from London. A first sheet kept in the Louvre still preserves the memory of the London cartoon, with the Child in the arms of his Mother, but Leonardo adopts a vertical and no longer horizontal composition. He hesitated about the action of Jesus, through an exercise of componimento inculto, which explains why historians have not seen the same things on this sheet. However, ultraviolet photography revealed that he was grabbing a lamb. A second drawing, kept in Venice, is even closer to the solution ultimately adopted. A doubt remains about the cardboard described by Fra’ Pietro: is it the one used for the painting in the Louvre or is it not rather a previous experiment which would have inspired several copies, including paintings by Brescianino (Madrid, Prado museum)? The second hypothesis is plausible because Fra’ Pietro specifies that Mary is almost on the verge of getting up to separate her Son from the lamb, just like Saint Anne, who seems to want to prevent her, two attitudes imperceptible in the final work . Fra’ Pietro also notes that the figures are arranged “on the left hand”, which seems to be the opposite of the meaning of the painting. With this new scheme, the composition now appears more natural and above all more fluid. The unity of the action is supported by the continuity of the gestures of the three characters. The movement is initiated by the position of the bodies, slightly offset from each other, in order to create a subtle gyrating movement to the left. And it is amplified by the connection of the limbs of the protagonists: the left shoulder of Saint Anne continues in the left arm of the Virgin, which itself finds continuity in the forearm of Christ. A large diagonal descends from the head of Saint Anne to the body of the lamb, passing through the arm of the Virgin. The artist finally returns to the vertical and hierarchical structure of the group, and he takes advantage of this to increase the dramatic force of his composition. The symbolic image is thus transformed into a true historical scene, where the succession of generations reveals the ultimate design of God, the Incarnation for the sacrifice of Christ and the salvation of humanity. This mystery is told with simplicity and naturalness, like a family genre scene where a grandmother and her daughter observe the Child’s seemingly innocent play.

Around 1503, the painting began

Infrared reflectography of the Louvre painting revealed traces of transfer of cardboard to the preparation of the panel, using the spolvero technique. In several places, the contours of this underlying composition are distinguishable from those of the final painting, but correspond exactly to those of several old copies of the Saint Anne, the differences from the original of which were incomprehensible until then. These works turn out to reproduce the cardboard used by Leonardo to begin his painting. The most precise is the cardboard that we call “Resta” because it belonged to Padre Resta in the 17th century. Compared to possible copies of the 1501 cartoon, such as the paintings by Brescianino, Leonardo has attenuated the energy of the movement of the protagonists. The Virgin no longer really gets up to hold her Son and Saint Anne therefore no longer needs to stop her daughter as much. From the index finger pointing towards the sky in the London box to the two hands holding the bust of his daughter in that of 1501, there remains little more than very discreet fingertips, hidden in the back drape of the mantle. the Virgin, a detail which will disappear during the execution of the painting. The theological reading of Fra’ Pietro da Novellara, who proposed seeing in Saint Anne a symbol of the Church preventing the Virgin from obstructing the sacrifice of Christ, is no longer so obvious. The figures now form a harmonious group which reveals both the idea of the succession of generations and the meaning of History which culminates in the sacrifice of Jesus and the salvation of humanity. And the foreknowledge of this mystery illuminates the three faces with a smile. We keep several preparatory drawings for this last cartoon, the technique of which is consistent with that used by Leonardo at this period, black chalk or red chalk on red prepared paper. Three sheets (Windsor, Royal Library, RCIN 912538 and Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia, inv. 217 and inv. 257) concern the Child Jesus: the artist studies the entire right leg, which ensures the stability of the character but which will be doomed to be half hidden in the painting. Sometimes the body is that of a boy older than the child in the painting, with more developed musculature, as if it were a work from a living model, perhaps a young apprentice of the workshop. We also know of a very beautiful study for the head of Saint Anne (Windsor, RCIN 912533) worked in black stone with subtle stump work which announces the sfumato effects of the painting. The Virgin’s mother then has her head covered by opaque veils, as in the Resta cartoon. In October 1503, when Agostino Vespucci mentioned the unfinished Saint Anne, we can assume that Leonardo had transferred the outlines of his preparatory cardboard to the preparation of his wooden support. The arrangement of the protagonists was now fixed in broad terms. The underlying drawing of Saint Anne’s head, visible in infrared reflectography, is more detailed than the other contours. We can clearly see the opaque veils provided in the box. This reinforces the precision of Vespucci’s testimony which only cites the head of the saint. As we will see, the master undoubtedly retained a certain freedom and did not necessarily confirm all the contours of his sketch, particularly for the draperies. With the ambitious undertaking of the Battle of Anghiari begun at the end of 1503, it is very possible that Leonardo suspended his work on the Sainte Anne. The table in fact presents enough differences in details with the cardboard for us to be able to imagine a stopping phase then a subsequent resumption.

Around 1507, a Saint Anne repeated for Louis XII?

It was perhaps only by abandoning Florence and the execution of the Battle in May 1506 that Leonardo resumed the work. In Milan, the artist only had a three-month residence permit issued by the Lordship of Florence, but Charles d’Amboise, governor of the duchy, withdrew him for longer, until King Louis XII demanded on January 12 1507 that he is permanently present in Lombardy. Leonardo therefore remained in Milan, but a dispute with his half-brothers over their uncle’s inheritance forced him to return temporarily to Florence. Charles d’Amboise wrote to the Lordship of Florence on August 15, 1507, to ask for Leonardo to return as quickly as possible because “he finds himself obliged to make a painting for his Most Christian Majesty”, he must therefore “can quickly finish the business he has started.” At the beginning of 1508, shortly before Easter, Leonardo began to organize his return to Milan, in anticipation of the outcome of his trial. Preserved in the Codex Atlanticus are three drafts of letters addressed to the French authorities of the duchy, in which he inquires about his accommodation in Milan and his remuneration. He also tried to finally obtain full possession of a canal granted to him by the king. And, to justify a pension, he emphasizes that he began to satisfy the sovereign by working on “two Notre Dames of different sizes”. One of the two paintings could be the unfinished Saint Anne that the master could have decided to rework, to send to the sovereign, who could only be satisfied with this theme honoring his wife Anne of Brittany.

Between 1507 and 1519, a slow improvement

Leonardo remained in Lombardy for several years, from 1508 to September 1513, during which time he received payments of money from the sovereign. Around 15071508, the Saint Anne must still have been simply sketched. The forms were undoubtedly now too defined to allow him to envisage a profound transformation of the composition, but he could nevertheless modify the ornaments, in particular by revising hairstyles and draperies, and also the gestures of the protagonists. Around ten drawings illustrate this phase of renewal of the invention of the initial cardboard. These sheets are distinguished by a very complex and very original technique. Leonardo gives them color and refines the light transitions, in order to produce a sfumato effect close to that which he wishes to obtain in painting. To do this, he combines black stone with red chalk and highlights of white, sometimes merging everything using washes. In certain cases, he uses colored papers to better work on light contrasts or transparency effects. These very pictorial drawings have a fundamentally experimental character, and each sheet constitutes a particular attempt aimed at mixing materials. In a sheet from the Metropolitan Museum, Leonardo imagines for the Virgin a hairstyle of braids and transparent veils, arranged in gathered folds or assembled into a turban on the top of the head. He also modifies his clothing, now more sophisticated. He designed for the sleeve of the dress, at the level of the right arm which occupies a central place and structures the diagonal movement, a light and transparent fabric animated with numerous circular folds rendered with virtuosity (Windsor, RCIN 912532). For the coat (Paris, Louvre museum, inv. 2257), it takes up the fold at the top of the thigh and falls at the back, vividly animated by clever rounded folds which give the impression of a winding continuous fabric. It was perhaps during this revival of the work that Leonardo painted the vast landscape of mountains bordered by lakes, as well as the rock stratification bathed by water in the foreground. Several drawings of mountains and rocks were perhaps made on this occasion to study the clever effect of atmospheric perspective in the distance and the structure of the rock. This new state of the composition will be copied by several assistants in the workshop. The most beautiful and most famous of all these covers is the one kept in Los Angeles (Hammer Museum), which was not made from the cardboard of the Louvre painting, but which reproduces the contours modified by the new drawings. In this modernized image of the cardboard, Leonardo has removed any gesture of restraint from Saint Anne. From now on, the latter is passive and lets her daughter accept for herself the tragic destiny of her Son. Leonardo wants to represent the precise moment of the Virgin’s conversion, from her anguished and melancholy restraint to her joyful submission. Other copies allow us to understand the final changes imagined later by the artist. That of the Uffizi in Florence shows, for example, a new arrangement of the Virgin’s mantle prepared by a drawing by Windsor which constitutes the final solution included in the painting. The latest studies, simpler and drawn in black chalk, were made in France, as evidenced by the watermark found on the paper (Windsor, RCIN 912526, 912527). They concern the latest modifications: the puffy drapery of the Virgin’s dress behind her back and the dress of Saint Anne which remained as an underlay.

At Clos-Lucé

Saint Anne was admired by the Cardinal of Aragon in October 1517 at the Château du Clos-Lucé, and then entered the collection of Francis I, according to the biography by Paolo Giovio written around 15251526. In 1519, Leonardo died, leaving his masterpiece unfinished, the fruit of nearly twenty years of meditation and refinements. The last brushstrokes placed on Saint Anne’s dress were discovered during the 20102012 restoration. Leonardo had not finished Mary’s head either, in the center of the painting and at the heart of the action. His complexion lacks the most refined transitions from shadow to light which were to animate his infinitely subtle expression, between melancholy and joy, this fleeting moment of transition of feelings, the essence of life that he sought to recreate in all his works by the power of his mind and the magic of his brush. (Text by Vincent Delieuvin, July 2021) (Louvre)

See also:

• François I, King of France (1494-1547)