Benois-Madonna

Leonardo began this small panel in October 1478, and it is very likely the first painting he made entirely on his own, having just left the workshop of his teacher Verrocchio in Florence. You can feel him testing what he can do without a master looking over his shoulder. He gives the young mother the round, slightly awkward face of a real Florentine girl, laughing softly as she plays with her baby, and he lets the light fall from a single window at the back so the two figures glow against a dark room. Look at what the child is reaching for. The Virgin holds out a little sprig of flowers from the cabbage and mustard family, and its four petals form a cross. The baby grabs at it with real infant clumsiness, not yet understanding that the plant is a quiet reminder of the death waiting for him. For centuries the picture was almost forgotten. It travelled from Italy to Russia in the 1790s and ended up with the family of the architect Leon Benois, whose name it still carries. When he showed it publicly in Saint Petersburg in 1909, specialists realised what it was, and in 1914 the Hermitage bought it as a genuine Leonardo.