La Vierge aux rochers

Leonardo had recently moved from Florence to Milan when, in 1483, a confraternity of monks hired him to paint the centerpiece of an altarpiece for their church. What he gave them was this: the Virgin, the infant John the Baptist, the Christ child and an angel, gathered not in a golden heaven but in a damp grotto of overhanging rock, with strange plants and pools receding into a bluish haze. Leonardo and the monks then argued about money for more than 20 years, and a second version was eventually made, now in London. This is the earlier one. Look at how the far rocks dissolve into mist rather than ending in a hard line; that soft blurring of edges is the sfumato Leonardo was perfecting. The angel's hand points across the group toward the young Baptist.