Leonardo da Vinci

(Anchiano, 1452 - Amboise, 1519)

Circle of

Oil on panel

cm. 45x36. Framed

This devotional panel is a refined product of Leonardo's close circle in Milan. It depicts the Virgin in a half-length pose, holding hyacinth and clover flowers to the Child with her right hand. Supported by his mother's left hand, the infant Jesus bends down to pick the flowers, symbols of man's salvation through his sacrifice: a gesture that manifests awareness of his destiny, as confirmed by his turning his face towards the viewer.
The painting develops the theme of the Madonna dei Fiori, already elaborated by Leonardo in his youthful Madonna del Garofalo. Various details lead the work in question back to Leonardo's Milanese period and directly implicate his formidable atelier. In fact, the panel is part of a group of replicas of the same subject attributable to the closest followers of Leonardo, the highest quality version of which can perhaps be considered the Madonna con Bambino in the Datrino collection, attributed by Carlo Pedretti to Marco d'Oggiono. Three other draftings of the Madonna dei Fiori are mostly referred by specialists to Bernardino de' Conti.
A comparison of the multiple versions of the theme reveals some useful elements for circumscribing the work in question here: stylistic reasons lead one to exclude a derivation of the panel from either Boltraffio's or Marco D'oggiono's manner, and it is also quite distant from the versions attributed to Bernardino de Conti. Instead, it deserves to be emphasised that in our painting the little Jesus seems to be in direct relation with the child head of the sheet in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (inv. Inf. 100), a drawing on paper depicting the little Francesco Sforza, generally attributed to Ambrogio de' Predis.
Our painting seems to respond to the typical genre ambiguity offered by Leonardo's models of St. John of the Ultima Cena by Vinci or the second version of the Vergine delle Rocce, a work that saw the extensive involvement of Ambrogio de' Predis. Also associated with this master are works such as the San Sebastiano of the Cleveland Museum and the Fanciulla con cesto di ciliege of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which present clear elements of physiognomic assonance with our Madonna dei Fiori. The combination of these clues would lead one to attribute our panel to Ambrogio de' Predis or to a painter gravitating in his circle, in which painters such as Francesco Galli and Bernardino de Conti worked: like the latter, our painter elaborated the fortunate iconographic model of the Madonna dei Fiori according to his own sensibility.