1483 "Our Lady of the Rocks", the Louvre, Paris
This image depicts the first meeting between the Virgin and Child and John the Baptist. Leonardo da Vinci obviously wanted to present realistic scenes, so he painted the figures in nature, with no buildings, no thrones, and the figures just sitting on the stone steps inside the desolate grotto. The composition centers on the Virgin Mary, forming a sedate pyramid flanked by an elegant angel in addition to the Holy Child and the infant John the Baptist. This pyramid composition had a profound influence on lombard painters and later Raphael. The relationship between the characters also seems to have been reorganized by Leonardo da Vinci: in the past portraits of the Virgin and Child, the Holy Child was always next to the Virgin, where the Virgin and Child were separated, and Mary wrapped her right hand around the young child John, asking John to know Jesus, and John prayerfully prayed to the Holy Child. Surrounded by the arms of the angel, the Holy Child raised his tender little hand to bless little John. The angel pointed at John; his eyes inexplicably turned beyond the frame, as if communicating with the viewer, asking him to pay attention to what was happening in front of him. There is a mysterious connection and interaction between the eyes, limbs, and gestures of the four people, and even the eyes of the angels bring the audience into this interaction. It is conceivable that the painting brought the viewer a completely new experience at that time. Did Leonardo da Vinci want to express something? To this day, it still provokes speculation. Impeccable is the beauty of the characters: the Virgin is kind and gentle, the angels are beautiful and elegant, Johan is pious and humble, and the Holy Child is innocent and transparent. This warm theme and beautiful image are deliberately arranged in a cold, rugged, crisis-hidden atmosphere. The dark background was leonardo da Vinci's preference, one to make chiaroscuro more layered, and the other to highlight the theme of the character. This dark and rugged rock also metaphorically depicts the dangers of the dark forces and the hardships and bumps in Jesus' future path to salvation. The grotto is connected to the distant mountain from a near-up structure and was created by leonardo da Vinci after observing the natural rock texture. A cold spring in front of the painting aggravates the cold in the painting; the surrounding plants are also delicate and vivid like the painter's usual treatment. Leonardo da Vinci created a grotto cave sky that is completely different from the human scene, reminiscent of the free creation of Chinese landscape painters. No wonder Leonardo da Vinci likened the painter to a creator in his theory of painting. The work was completed slightly later than scheduled, and because Leonardo da Vinci's unconventional methods of painting caused dissatisfaction in the church, and the two sides quarreled over remuneration. In 1491 Leonardo da Vinci and the Depledean brothers filed a complaint with Sforza to mediate the pricing of the paintings, which was finally resolved in 1494. However, in order to meet the requirements of his employer, Leonardo da Vinci later completed a second work with the same theme and composition in 1505, resulting in the London version of The Virgin of the Rocks.
The Virgin of the Rocks, National Gallery, London, 1505, 189.5cm x 120cm,
Born in 1452 in a small town in Florence, Leonardo da Vinci liked to hide in a cave, to watch the scenery of nature with great interest, and through careful observation, the forms of those animals and plants were deeply imprinted in his mind, and he returned home to depict them according to memory. He was a thoughtful, knowledgeable and versatile painter. Throughout his life, with infinite curiosity and creativity, he became the most perfect representative of the entire European Renaissance, and together with Michelangelo and Raphael, he was called the "Three Masters of the Renaissance"
In 1483, he was commissioned by the Church of Milan to paint the Virgin of the Rocks. The painting depicts the young Virgin Mary in a dark cave, on the left is the baptism of Christ to the young child by "John the Baptist", and the angel on the right indicates the divine care for Jesus. However, the church at the time rejected da Vinci's painting because it lacked the aura of a divine figure and did not reflect the characteristics of John the Baptist, so the first version of the Virgin of the Rocks, painted in 1483, is now in the Louvre. In 1505, leonardo da Vinci painted a second edition, and the biggest difference between the two works was:
In version two, John on the left holds a cross and adds a halo on his head. As can be seen from version one, the addition of this cross was not da Vinci's intention, perhaps the symbol was deliberately added by the church to require him to clearly distinguish young children on the picture. In addition, there is a fundamental difference in the color of the two drawings, and this work (version two) is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in the United Kingdom.
The general theme of "Our Lady of the Rocks" paints the Virgin in the "Prophet" according to the wishes of the Church, and leonardo da Vinci divides the four into three parts to form a triangular relationship. Placing Mary in the top corner, the angel's finger pointing to Mary, the Virgin reaching out in a gesture of caressing protection, the Holy Child (the infant Christ) raising one hand to express blessing and the other to the ground to maintain its own balance. The movements and gestures of these characters reflect the mental activity of different characters. The painter also uses nature as a background to place the figures in a dark environment. The theme of this painting comes from the biblical "Fugitive Egypt" and the legend that "Road Meets John" leonardo Vinci settled them in a beautiful and mysterious rock landscape, where the virgin, child and angel sat directly on the mountain rock, and the fading light smoke mist presented a hazy picture, and the whole scene was like a distant dream, full of poetic warmth, peace and elegance.
Unlike other works of religious subject matter, this painting does not emphasize Jesus and the Virgin, but John, who is just in a corner. In addition, the necessary way to depict divinity in the Middle Ages was to add halos to the characters, and in the first edition of The Virgin of the Rocks, da Vinci indulged in this method, focusing on the noble demeanor of the characters to depict the divinity. And in the early Renaissance works, the figures seem to be separated from each other, but in this work, the movements and demeanors of all the characters depicted are closely linked and influence each other, forming a perfect whole of pyramid structure. The choice of this location, Leonardo da Vinci, was also deliberate, and the 1483 edition of Our Lady of the Rocks is full of symbolism, with palm leaves on the left of the painting resembling a sword, symbolizing the pain that pierced the heart after the death of Jesus. Surrounded by flowers and plants covered with religious symbols, the viewer is guided to imagine the symbolic significance of megaliths and cliffs. By this time, da Vinci's painting technique was no longer as outward as he had been in his early days, but from the heart, indicating that he had bid farewell to the early Renaissance and begun to move towards the peak of his creation.
The beautiful and mysterious smile of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa has continued to attract many people over the centuries and will continue forever. Every brushstroke, every layer of halo and every shadow in the painting contains a timeless charm that transcends time, and people are amazed by the model's fan-like smile, and her expression always seems to make us uncertain. This charm actually comes from the "fading method" used by leonardo da Vinci, which renders a subtle hazy feeling in the corners of mona Lisa's eyes, corners of the mouth, nose and around her chin, blurring them gradually into the soft shadows, thus exuding a surprising effect that contemporaries could not achieve with tempera.
It would be too much to describe Leonardo da Vinci as a brilliant artist, whose outstanding contributions in the fields of astronomy, engineering, science, botany, geography, optics, mechanics, geometry, anatomy and aeronautics were only a small part of his great achievements, and painting was only an interest to him. Leonardo da Vinci was a recognized genius and a true Renaissance. Not only did he possess brilliant skills, but he was also a representative of the adventurous innovation of that era, ignoring rules and traditions and always trying to explore new areas in new ways.
His countless sketches and sketches have been preserved, and he has made notes and plans every day of his life, and written in reverse letters in a personal and unique mirror, and his notes are filled with hundreds of inventions and discoveries: he discovered the function of blood, believed that blood plays a metabolic role in the human body, and believed that blood is constantly circulating; he held a negative view of the traditional "center of the earth theory", predates Copernicus's "heliocentric theory"; he was a former military engineer, and his notes also contained the design of several military machinery. Gliders, helicopters, robots, etc. are also included. With a never-ending spirit of exploration, he studied all the mysteries of nature and science, and these resources will become a precious treasure for mankind. He melted art and science, intellect and emotion, image and spirit, and pushed art to an unprecedented height, his vision beyond his time, and at the same time made great contributions to the development of natural science.
(From the network: Leonardo da Vinci [Italian: Leonardo da Vinci; 15 April 1452 (23 April 1519) – 2 May 1519]. Italian Renaissance painter, scientist and inventor. [1] Modern scholars have called him "the most perfect representative of the Renaissance", a unique all-rounder in human history, whose greatest achievements were paintings, and his masterpieces such as the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper reflect his superb artistic attainments.
Leonardo da Vinci was a deep intellectual, knowledgeable man who excelled in painting, sculpture, invention, architecture, and mathematics, biology, physics, astronomy, geology, and other disciplines. The survived manuscript is about 6,000 pages long. Leonardo da Vinci believed that the most beautiful object of study in nature is the human body, the human body is the wonderful work of nature, and the painter should take man as the core of the painting object.
Da Vinci was born near the town of Vinci in Tuscany. He had already shown his artistic talent at a young age, and at the age of 15 he went to Florence to learn art and grew into a painter and sculptor with scientific literacy. and became a military engineer and architect. After being recruited to Milan in 1482, he created and studied in the court of the nobility, and from 1513 he wandered in Rome and Florence. He emigrated to France in 1516 and died on 2 May 1519. ）