La Belle Ferronnière

This article deals with the portrait painting by Leonardo da Vinci who, for the mistress of the same name of the French King Francis I see La Belle Ferronière .

La Belle Ferronnière
School of Leonardo da Vinci , 1495–1499
oil on wood
63 × 45 cm
Louvre (INV 778), Paris

La Belle Ferronnière (also: La Belle Ferronière ) is a painting that is attributed to the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) or his school . It is dated around 1495 to 1499 and is in the holdings of the Louvre in Paris.

history

The painting was mentioned for the first time in 1642 in a catalog of the royal collection of the Castle of Fontainebleau , as a work by Leonardo da Vinci representing "a Duchess of Mantua". In Leonardo da Vinci's notes and manuscripts, there are no references to the origin of the unsigned and undated picture, as is the case with many of his pictures, and what also here leads to the usual controversies among experts about authorship and the involvement of the workshop and students has led. The portrait is in the Musée du Louvre in Paris, which holds it as an autograph work by Leonardo.

The painting apparently got its current title as a result of a mix-up. The same catalog also mentions a portrait of " La Belle Ferronière ", a mistress of the French King Francis I who is not known by name . It is possible that the mistress was the wife or daughter of an iron trader (French: ferronnier ) or the wife of a lawyer called Féron or Le Ferron .

The portraits were probably confused in the early 18th century. Since then, the portrait painting by Leonardo has mostly been referred to as "La Belle Ferronnière", sometimes also as "Portrait of an unknown lady". The confusion was apparently supported by the headdress of the person depicted: The model wears a narrow headband set with a jewel. As early as the 16th century, pieces of jewelery of this kind were named after the king's mistress, "Ferronière".

The person depicted

In addition to the mistress of the French king, other identifications of the model were proposed: Lucrezia Crivelli (1452–1508), Cecilia Gallerani (1473–1536), both mistresses of Ludovico Sforza (1452–1508), the Duke of Milan and Beatrice d'Este ( 1475–1497), whom Ludovico married in 1491.

literature

• Martin Kemp : Leonardo (= Beck'sche Reihe , Volume 1839), CH Beck, Munich 2008 (original title: Leonardo , translated by Nikolaus G. Schneider), ISBN 978-3-406-56821-3 .
• Charles Nicholl : Leonardo da Vinci - The biography . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 978-3-10-052405-8 .
• Carlo Pedretti : Leonardo; a study in chronology and style . University of California Press, Berkeley 1973, ISBN 0-520-02420-6 (English).

Web links

Commons : La Belle Ferronnière  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• La Belle Ferronnière on the Musée du Louvre website , in French, accessed June 12, 2011
• La Belle Ferronnière at Zeno.org .
• La Belle Ferronnière in the Base Joconde of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
• "Ferronnière" in: The large art lexicon by PW Hartmann.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Heinrich Bodmer (Ed.): Leonardo, the master's paintings and drawings in 360 illustrations . In: Volume 37 of Classics of Art in Complete Editions . Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, Stuttgart - Berlin 1931, p. 368
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Musée du Louvre
3. ^ Rudolf Köster : Proper names in the German vocabulary . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2003, p. 49, ISBN 978-3-11-017702-2
4. ↑ Jacob Heinrich Kaltschmidt : The latest and most complete foreign dictionary to explain all words and expressions borrowed from foreign languages . F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1870, p. 371