The genius of the Italian intellectual and humanistLeonardo da Vinci is universal and mysterious. No less mysterious and his famous painting "Madonna Litta." Riddles begin with the dating of the canvas and end with the doubts of some critics in the fact of the authorship of the great Italian artist. But first things first.
This is a common theological story,dedicated to the Mother of God and the Child-Christ. According to the early Christian tradition, the artist showed Mary entirely focused on the child, while the look of the little Jesus was fixed on the viewer. The work of Da Vinci "The Madonna of Litta" is also compositionally solved. The Virgin Mary is depicted against the background of two windows in the form of arches, from which flows a blue transparent light, reinforcing the dark background behind her. From the front, the figure of the Mother of God with the child is lit by a soft light, the source of which is located as if in front of the image. Mother lovingly and gently holds, hugging, the baby. The boy gently pried to her. With his right hand he grabbed his mother's breast, and in the left he holds a scheck.
It is embedded in the plot, and in the composition of the picture.The soulful view of the Mother of God is emphatically concentrated on the son, because for her He is the center of the universe. The look of the baby opens the closed composition of the picture. Christ looks at the audience and as if he says: "I am always with you." Such symbolism was present in early Christian frescoes found in Roman catacombs. She was very impressed by Leonardo da Vinci. "Madonna Litta" was the result of the creative comprehension of this symbolic promise of Christ to mankind, as well as the image of the process of feeding. God incarnated in man and nourished by mother's milk. Through this feeding He accepts the human soul. And here a significant detail is the image of a schelin. Historians know the fact that Leonardo often came to the bird market, bought and released birds in the sky. The artist believed that the bird's soul through feeding copies the human soul. A figurine in the picture seems to confirm the idea that in the infant feeding scene the mother's milk is a different sacrament - spiritual feeding.
Before the work wasin the halls of the Hermitage, it was stored in the collection of the Milanese Duke of Litt. Hence the name of the picture. Before that, it was called "Madonna and Child". In 1865, the Duke sold the painting to the Hermitage for a hundred thousand francs. The work was in such a deplorable state that an urgent restoration was required. The picture was transferred from the tree to the canvas, using a unique technology. The peculiarity of the restoration of the canvas was also that the author at his creation himself experimented a lot, creating new compounds of coloring pigments, mixing oil and tempera and using a special glue synthesized from tiny particles of goat parchment and having crystal transparency. The artist sought accuracy in the transfer of his design on the canvas, because he was convinced that the result of the work of the master is akin to the creation of God. Leonardo da Vinci believed that in the air the images and similarities are hovering, and the artist's task is to catch and translate them. The concepts of imago and similitude in medieval theology also meant the Body and Blood of Christ. That's what the great Leonardo coded in his art creations.
Traditionally, it is believed that Leonardo's pictureVinci "Madonna Litta" was started in 1480 and rewritten in 1495. However, some researchers believe that the canvas was created in the early 1500s. This assumption is related to the data that Leonardo received in 1506 an order for the image of the Madonna from the French King Louis XII and from Pope Leo X, who asked to write Madonna with the baby in her arms. And just in the picture "Madonna Litta" (photo - in the article) the child does not sit on his mother's lap, as Leonardo drew on other canvases, but rests in her hands.
Intrigue with the authorship of the picture is also allowed for a long time.Of course, the author of it is Leonardo da Vinci. This is indicated by his records evidencing the elaboration of the composition, the inimitable hand of the master in creating the head of the Virgin, some parts of the body of Jesus, Leonardo's painstaking work on chiaroscuro. Specially not written folds of clothes and details of a background at careful study of persons on a picture - too is not the certificate of that the work has been created not by the master, and its pupils as it was supposed earlier. Leonardo da Vinci deliberately sinks the background into darkness, so that the face of the Mother of God with the child mysteriously and protrudingly protruded from it, moved forward towards the viewer, striking with unearthly grandeur and monumentality.
