The
Madonna of Laroque, a painting by Vinci?
After
its official baptism in the church of the Holy Cross of Vinci (
Today
we unfortunately have to admit that Leonardo's entire works are sublime, unfinished
and incomplete. So
when the chance puts a painting with a "léonardian phrasing" on our
way, why not listen to what it has to say to us?
What one sees: The
Madonna of Laroque, named after the village of the
is supporting Christ, while she is laying her left hand on the shoulders of the former
one. The latter is
holding a needle in his senestre which eye is penetrated by a gold wire, an
extention of Anna's daughter's hair. His dextral is holding his emblem resting on his
shoulders:a cross of
reed which horizontal axis is asymmetrical and slightly inclined, forming a
kind of L in italic.
Bringing together the attributes referred to above, we can be in the presence
of a spindle.
If
the Child is naked, the Virgin is wearing a "transparent" blouse, a red dress
may be, and a blue coat with a yellow lining.
As for John, he is dressed in a
simple blue-gray frock.
Behind
them, on the left, the ruins of a shelter, on the right a "window" shows a mountain lake
bathed in a twilight glow. At this stage the work evokes a combination of several
"léonardian" compositions :The Virgin of the rocks, Virgins with a spindle and the
Litta Madonna ("diss" attributed to the Master(contested), the draft
of a nursing Virgin preserved at Windsor (Royal Library 12776).
A
leonardian work? How
will the specialists, (4 or 5, at the most, in the world), determine the
autography of this painting?
Their
responsibility is huge, their reputation is concerned and science in this case
is only one crutch.First
they will rely on the dating analyses. Those carried out with the CNRS/CNEP of
The
The
eye and knowledge: When
the expert holds the painting in his hands, for the first time he notices that
it has suffered the damage of time; he also notices that man has not always
been very cautious with it. The
one board panel of poplar of 0,48 X 0,59 cm is cut, worn, repainted and
ovalized. To affix
his painting "a tempera" the artist chose to cover the wood with a
fine fabric of flax, it is a "leonardian" sign.
To
continue in this vein, the nimbus of the Virgin, a diadem-crown made of very
refined interlacings, concerns what one names the nodi vinciani, the
"vincian nodes ", an element of an extraordinary interest for
the experts in Tuscan genius. By scanning this painting anybody can see
that the hand of a virtuoso was delayed
on the face of
Many studies of
drafts and works duly attributed to the Master will be convened to establish
whether it is a work carried out by the
one we are thinking of, or if it is necessary to seek among his most gifted
pupils, Giampetrino or Boltraffio etc… the "léonardeschi" ones. In any case the
realization betrays several hands and a partial autography could not satisfy us
nor to pay homage to the memory of its creators!
The
camera lens, a modern "camera oscura" reveals a "new" smile
of the Madonna. It
is "Verrocchiesque" and by extension so much Vincian!
The
literary sources are less eloquent. Obviously one knows, according to the notebooks of
Leonardo, that in 1478 he had painted two Virgins with the Child, of which we
have lost track, but our Madonna is more recent. Obviously we are still looking for the
Madonna made for Florimond Robertet, a senior civil servant of Louis XIIth and
François 1st, but our Madonna does not correspond to the description given by
an agent of Isabella of Este. Then the specialists will have to study all the available notes,
in the wills, that of Salaï for example, to re-imagine a certainly chaotic
course between