Flora

Francesco Melzi was Leonardo da Vinci's favourite pupil and companion, a young nobleman who joined the workshop around 1508 and stayed to the end, at Leonardo's side when he died in France in 1519. He inherited the master's notebooks and drawings. Around then he painted this figure, a bare-shouldered young woman holding flowers, long known as La Colombina after the columbine bloom in her hand before she was identified as Flora, the Roman goddess of spring. The soft modelling and the smoky shadows come so close to Leonardo's own hand that for years the picture passed as the master's work. A recent cleaning at the Hermitage brought back the deep ultramarine blue of her cloak.