Benois Madonna Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

Description of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Madonna and Flower (Madonna Benoit)

The Madonna with a Flower is one of Leonardo’s first works of art. Da Vinci depicted the Madonna in a room with a semi-dark view, in which the only source of light is an image in the depths of a double window. The window is presented in a complement of greenish light, which cannot completely absorb the semi-darkness, but at the same time it was more than enough to make the figure of the Madonna and the young Christ clearly visible.

The main manifestation of the figure of the Madonna and Christ was made by the light that pours in from the upper left. With this light, the master was able to give the painting more animation in the form of a play of light and give the two figures a combined volume. In the nineteenth century this work was successfully transferred from board to canvas, as evidenced by a corresponding reminder in Mr. Alexander Sapozhnikov’s Register of Paintings, which was compiled in one thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven.

"The Madonna" by Leonardo De Vinci became widely known among the painters of that epoch. And not only the majority of Italian masters adopted in their works techniques of the young artist, but also the majority of painters from the Netherlands. According to art historians, at least ten works of art with a similar theme were carried out under his direct influence.

Among these works it is worth noting the work of Lorenzo de Kredi "Madonna with Child and John the Baptist", which is currently in the Dresden Art Gallery, and "Madonna with carnations" which is a work of Raphael.

However, one of Leonardo’s most unique works was subsequently lost, and for several centuries the work of Leonardo de Vinci had the status of a lost painting.