Madonna Benois

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Madonna Benois (Leonardo da Vinci)
Madonna Benois
Leonardo da Vinci , around 1475–1478
Oil on canvas
49.5 × 31 cm
Hermitage (Inv.-No .: 2773), Saint Petersburg

The "Madonna Benois" is one of the most famous paintings by Leonardo da Vinci and the Italian Renaissance .

history

The “Madonna with the Flower” is generally referred to as “Madonna Benois” after its last previous owner. This picture became famous in 1909 when it was shown without attribution to a specific artist at an exhibition of masterpieces from Russian private collections in St. Petersburg. The exhibition was organized by the magazine “Starye Gody” (The Early Years). There the panel was discovered by Baron Ernst von Liphart , archivist of all imperial Russian museums, who published it in the same year as an autograph work by Leonardo da Vinci. Despite a few minor flaws - the empty window in the background, the high, almost bald forehead, the wrinkled neck, or the weakly set, barely visible teeth - which are probably due to the fact that the picture was not quite finished, the attribution found general Recognition.

The drawings “Madonna offers the child a bowl of fruit” in the Louvre in Paris and “The Madonna with the child hugging a cat” in the British Museum in London are considered possible preliminary work .

The "Madonna Benois" is considered to be a possible candidate for one of the two images that Leonardo mentioned in a note in 1478 ("... mbre 1478 incominicia le due Vergini Marie" - "... mber 1478 I began the two portraits of the Virgin Mary").

The image probably came at the beginning of the 19th century Russia , where it already in 1824 by his old image carrier has been dissolved, a wooden panel and transferred to canvas. It was successively found in the collections of Generals Korsakov and Kurakin before it passed into the possession of the Russian wife of the French-born painter Léon Benois . The Russian Tsar Nicholas II bought it from her in 1914 for the Hermitage at a price of around 1.5 million US dollars. It was the most expensive painting to date.

  • Details

  • Maria

  • Baby jesus

See also

literature

  • Wilhelm Suida: Leonardo and his circle, 1929, Verlag F. Bruckmann A.-G. (Munich)
  • Maria Pomilio / Angela Ottino Della Chiesa: Classics of Art - Leonardo da Vinci, 1967, Kunstkreis Luzern - Freudenstadt - Vienna
  • Svetlana Vsevolozhskaya / Albert Kostenevich: Italian Painting - The Hermitage, 1984, Aurora Art Publishers (Leningrad)
  • The Legacy of Leonardo, 1998, Skira Editore SpA (Milan), ISBN 88-8118-463-X

Web links

Commons : Madonna Benois  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Meryle Secrest: Duveen: A Life in Art . University of Chicago Press, 2005, ISBN 978-0-226-74415-5 , pp. 105 .