The Virgin of the Rocks

The Virgin of the Rocks (French: La Vierge aux rochers - Italian: La Vergine delle Rocce), sometimes called The Virgin, the Child Jesus, Saint John the Baptist and an Angel, is a painting by the artist Leonardo da Vinci, painted between 1483 and 1486. This work bears the same name as another version also painted by Leonardo da Vinci and is intended to occupy the central part of the altarpiece of the Immaculate Conception, which has now disappeared. This version was rejected by the sponsor: the Milanese secular brotherhood of the Immaculate Conception, which came from the Franciscan order. According to the most common hypotheses, this work was sold by Leonardo da Vinci to Ludovico the More and ended up, through a set of donations, in the King of France's collections. The painting is now on display at the Louvre Museum.

The work recounts the encounter between Mary, the child Jesus and Saint John the Baptist in a cave during the episode of the escape of the Holy Family to Egypt, at the time of the massacre of the Innocents. This story is told in a passage from the Gospel according to Matthew (Mt 2:13-23). King Herod I, informed by the Magi of the birth of the "King of the Jews" in Bethlehem, sent to kill all the children under two years of age who were in the city. Joseph, warned by a dream, fled with the child Jesus and his mother to Egypt, where they stayed until Herod's death.

Description The composition is at the centre of a legal conflict between the painter and his clients for nearly 25 years: the refusal of this painting would be due to its heterodox character because Leonardo da Vinci would have exaggeratedly put forward the figure of John the Baptist to the detriment of that of Christ.

Moreover, according to the text, this meeting takes place in the desert, unlike the staging of the painting: it is possible that Leonardo da Vinci was inspired by a medieval tradition to justify the cavernous haven in which the characters took refuge. It may also be, for a painter who does not know the desert, the most relevant representation to represent the isolation and lack of hospitality of the place.

The work presents a group of four full-length characters. A woman identified as the Virgin Mary is located at the centre of the composition - which establishes her as the main character of the work. She is kneeling and facing the spectator. His right hand is placed on the shoulder of a very young child, John the Baptist, seen in profile, praying and kneeling. The Virgin tilts her face towards the child and her left hand is stretched out over another child seen in profile and seated: Jesus. Jesus waves a blessing with his right hand towards John. Behind and to the right of Jesus stands a winged figure - identified as the Archangel Uriel - also kneeling, in slight contrapposto, seen from behind and with his face turned towards the spectator.

Around the characters unfolds a cavernous landscape within which grows a rich and varied flora. The cave has two galleries: the one on the left opens onto a body of water at the foot of misty mountains; the one on the right shows only a rocky outcrop.

The composition is called a pyramid, at the top of which is the Virgin Mary, whose sides are highlighted by her gestures and looks. The looks and gestures also construct the composition of the scene and give a strong dynamic to the painting.

Leonardo da Vinci's use of more neutral and nuanced colours than his contemporaries - pale and greyish colours, shades of ochre - gives the work a twilight atmosphere. Moreover, Leonardo da Vinci plays on shadows and not on the contour - which the artist theorized under the term "sfumato". Through this practice, he broke with the practice in vogue in Florence: the Leonardian model by means of shadows and tonality took precedence over the line - the Florentine "feeling".

Leonardo da Vinci displays all the originality and mastery of his talent: the composition, the treatment of light and the care given to a perfect reproduction of nature make La Vierge aux rochers a work unanimously recognized as revolutionary. In fact, the iconography, which was resolutely new, immediately met with immense success, as evidenced by the large number of contemporary copies of the painting.

Collection: Department of Paintings of the Louvre