

Madonna with a Flower
(Benois Madonna)
Leonardo da Vinci
1452-1519
Oil on canvas; 49.5 x 33 cm
This painting is one of the few
surviving works by the young
Leonardo. He presents the traditional
subject as a genre scene, in which a
young mother, shown with the dress
and hairstyle fashionable in
Leonardo's time, is playing with her
son. She holds out a four-petalled
flower to her child. This traditional
symbol of the Cross is taken by the
Child as an innocent toy, which he
seeks to grasp in his first attempts to
know the world. The warmth and
charm of the mother's feelings are
represented with realistic
expressiveness and the painting has a
sense of freshness and spontaneity.
The use of the oil painting technique
- still new in Italy - enabled the artist
to achieve depth and intensity of
colouring and transparency in the
effects of light and shade.
This work came from the M.A. Benois
collection.
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