Lady with an Ermine

Lady with an Ermine

Italian: Dama con l'ermellino, Polish: Dama z gronostajem
Artist	Leonardo da Vinci
Year	1489–90
Type	Oil on wood panel
Subject	Cecilia Gallerani
Dimensions	54 cm × 39 cm (21 in × 15 in)[1]
Location	Czartoryski Museum, Kraków

Lady with an Ermine (Italian: Dama con l'ermellino [ˈdaːma kon lermelˈliːno], literally "Lady with the Ermine") is a painting by Leonardo da Vinci from around 1489–1490. The subject of the portrait is Cecilia Gallerani, painted at a time when she was the mistress of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and Leonardo was in the service of the duke. The painting is one of only four portraits of women painted by Leonardo, the others being the Mona Lisa, the portrait of Ginevra de' Benci, and La belle ferronnière. It is currently displayed at Wawel Royal Castle whilst renovations are carried out at the painting's home, Czartoryski Museum, Kraków, Poland.

Subject and symbolism

The small portrait generally called The Lady with the Ermine was painted in oils on wooden panel. At the time of its painting, the medium of oil paint was relatively new to Italy, having been introduced in the 1470s.

The subject has been identified with reasonable certainty as Cecilia Gallerani, who was the mistress of Leonardo's employer, Ludovico Sforza.^[2]

Cecilia Gallerani was a member of a large family that was neither wealthy nor noble. Her father served for a time at the Duke's court. At the time her portrait was painted, she was about 16 years old and was renowned for her beauty, her scholarship, and her poetry. She was married at approximately age six to a young nobleman of the house of Visconti, but she sued to annul the marriage in 1487 for undisclosed reasons and the request was granted. Cecilia became the mistress of the Duke and bore him a son, even after his marriage to another woman 11 years previously. Beatrice d'Este.^[3] Beatrice was promised to the Duke when she was only 5, and married him when she was 16 in 1491. After a few months, she discovered the Duke was still seeing Cecilla, and forced the Duke to break off their relationship by marrying her off to a local count named Bergamino.

The painting shows a half-length figure, the body of a woman turned at a three-quarter angle toward her right, but her face turned toward her left. Her gaze is directed neither straight ahead, nor toward the viewer, but toward a "third party" beyond the picture's frame. In her arms, Gallerani holds a small white-coated stoat, known as an ermine. Gallerani's dress is comparatively simple, revealing that she is not a noblewoman. Her coiffure, known as a coazone, confines her hair smoothly to her head with two bands of hair bound on either side of her face and a long plait at the back. Her hair is held in place by a fine gauze veil with a woven border of gold-wound threads, a black band, and a sheath over the plait.^[4]

There are several interpretations of the significance of the ermine in her portrait. The ermine, a stoat in its winter coat, was a traditional symbol of purity because it was believed an ermine would face death rather than soil its white coat.^[5] In his old age, Leonardo compiled a bestiary in which he recorded:

MODERATION The ermine out of moderation never eats but once a day, and it would rather let itself be captured by hunters than take refuge in a dirty lair, in order not to stain its purity.^[6]

He repeats this idea in another note, "Moderation curbs all the vices. The ermine prefers to die rather than soil itself."^[7] Ermines were kept as pets by the aristocracy and their white pelts were used to line or trim aristocratic garments. For Ludovico il Moro, the ermine had a further personal significance in that he had been in the Order of the Ermine in 1488 and used it as a personal emblem.^[8] The association of the ermine with Cecilia Gallerani could have been intended to refer both to her purity and to make an association with her lover. Alternatively, the ermine could be a pun on her name because the Ancient Greek term for ermine, or other weasel-like species of animals, is galê (γαλῆ) or galéē (γαλέη).^[9] This would be in keeping with Leonardo's placement of a juniper bush behind the figure in his portrait of Ginevra de Benci in reference to her name. Given that Gallerani gave birth to a son acknowledged by Lodovico in May 1491, and the association of weasels and pregnancy in Italian Renaissance culture, it also is possible the animal was a symbol of Cecilia's pregnancy.^[10] In addition, it has been speculated that the animal in the painting appears not to be an ermine,^[11] but a white ferret, a colour favoured in the Middle Ages because of the ease of seeing the white animal in thick undergrowth.

As in many of Leonardo's paintings, the composition comprises a pyramidic spiral and the sitter is caught in the motion of turning to her left, reflecting Leonardo's lifelong preoccupation with the dynamics of movement. The three-quarter profile portrait was one of his many innovations. Il Moro's court poet, Bernardo Bellincioni, was the first to propose that Cecilia is poised as if listening to an unseen speaker.

This work in particular shows Leonardo's expertise in painting the human form. The outstretched hand of Cecilia was painted with great detail. Leonardo paints every contour of each fingernail, each wrinkle around her knuckles, and even the flexing of the tendon in her bent finger.

According to the art-critic Maike Vogt-Luerssen the depicted lady clearly identifies herself as a member of the Royal Neapolitan House of Aragon by wearing a Catalan costume and holding the most important symbol of her dynasty, the ermine in its winter fur. Her name is Giovanna of Aragon (1478 - 1518), Queen of Naples, and she was married to Ferrandino (or Ferdinand II) of Naples.

Conservation

The Lady with an Ermine has been subjected to two detailed laboratory examinations. The first was in the Warsaw Laboratories, the findings being published by K. Kwiatkowski in 1955. The painting underwent examination and restoration again in 1992, at the Washington National Gallery Laboratories under the supervision of David Bull.^[1]

The painting is in oil on a thin walnut wood panel, about 4–5 millimetres (0.16–0.20 in) thick, prepared with a layer of white gesso and a layer of brownish underpaint.^[1] The panel is in good condition apart from a break to the upper left side of the painting. Its size has never been altered, as indicated by a narrow unpainted strip on all four sides of the painting.

The background was thinly overpainted with unmodulated black, probably between 1830 and 1870, when the damaged corner was restored. Eugène Delacroix was suggested to have painted the background. Its previous colour was a bluish grey.^[1] The signature "LEONARD D'AWINCI" (which is Polish phonetical transcription of the name "da Vinci") in the upper left corner is not original.^[12]

X-ray and microscopic analysis have revealed the charcoal-pounced outline of the pricked preparatory drawing on the prepared undersurface, a technique Leonardo learned in the studio of Verrocchio.^[13]

Apart from the black of the background and some abrasion caused by cleaning, the painted surface reveals the painting is almost entirely by the artist's hand. There has been some slight retouching of her features in red, and the edge of the veil in ochre. Some scholars believe there also was some later retouching of the hands.^[1]

Leonardo's fingerprints have been found in the surface of the paint, indicating he used his fingers to blend his delicate brushstrokes.^[14]

Provenance

The painting was acquired in Italy by Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, the son of Princess Izabela Czartoryska and Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski in 1798, and incorporated it into the Czartoryskis’ family collections at Puławy in 1800. The inscription on the top-left corner of the painting, LA BELE FERONIERE. LEONARD DAWINCI., probably was added by a restorer shortly after its arrival in Poland,^[15] and before the background was overpainted.^[16] Czartoryski was clearly aware it was a Leonardo, although the painting had never been discussed in print; unfortunately, no record exists of any previous owner. The Belle Ferronière is the Leonardo portrait in the Louvre, whose sitter bears such a close resemblance, the Czartoryskis considered this sitter to be the same. The painting travelled extensively during the 19th century; Princess Czartoryska rescued it in advance of the invading Russian army in 1830, hid it, then sent it to Dresden and on to the Czartoryski place of exile in Paris, the Hôtel Lambert, returning it to Kraków in 1882. In 1939, almost immediately after the German occupation of Poland, it was seized by the Nazis and sent to the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin. In 1940, Hans Frank, the Governor General of Poland, requested it be returned to Kraków, where it hung in his suite of offices. At the end of the Second World War it was discovered by Allied troops in Frank's country home in Bavaria. It has since been returned to Poland at the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków. Currently the painting is in Old Town, Kraków, on display at the Wawel Castle.

Reception

When exhibited in The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2003, the painting was described as "signal[ling] a breakthrough in the art of psychological portraiture".^[17]

Popular culture

Lady with an Ermine was one of the visual inspirations for Philip Pullman's concept of dæmons, appearing in the His Dark Materials series of novels.^[18]

Mike Resnick's 2005 science fiction novel Lady with an Alien was inspired by Resnick's opinion that the animal in Gallerani's arms "simply doesn't look like an ermine".^[19]

Notes

References

• Laurie Schneier Adams, Italian Renaissance Art, (Boulder: Westview Press) 2001.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lady with an Ermine.

• Czartoryski Museum
• BBC article on Lady with an Ermine
• Article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on the painting and its history
• San Francisco Chronicle on wartime threat to the work