Léonard de Vinci « Le sourire et l’entrelacs, La Vierge, l’enfant Jésus et Sainte Anne » (1989)

Overview

On the right, a very dark tree clings to the slope of a hill. At the center stands Saint Anne. She wears her hair in braids, her eyes lowered, smiling. Seated on her knees is the Virgin Mary, dressed in a low-cut, billowing pink gown. She leans toward the Child Jesus, a two- or three-year-old baby. Naked and very curly-haired, he is stepping over a rearing lamb. Behind them, the landscape reveals mountain peaks and glaciers from which roaring waters emerge. Anne seems to envelop Mary; Mary wraps her arms around Jesus, yet he escapes from his mother’s embrace, as if symbolizing a new birth. Painted between 1500 and 1515, The Virgin, the Child Jesus, and Saint Anne accompanied Leonardo da Vinci when he settled in Amboise in 1517 at the invitation of Francis I. The painting never returned to Italy and entered the Louvre in 1801.