Behind the scenes: Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery outlining the latest scientific research on Leonardo’s “Virgin of the Rocks”.

The format of the event was an interview with Marta Melchiorre of the gallery’s scientific department by Carlo Corsato from the learning department, leading her though some of the newest scientific techniques to analyses painting in a non-invasive way and what they have shown us about this painting.

I’m not sure I understood all the science but I was intrigued by the results. Most fascinating were new ways of mapping the chemicals in pigments across a painting and, in this case, a zinc map showed up the underdrawing more clearly as the drawing material contained the chemical. This showed more of a very different composition under the one we see now which had been partly discovered in 2004.

Melchoirre discussed how this drawing of the virgin looking down at the child supported by an angel closely follows a drawing in the Metropolitan Museum which also had a sketch of the version we now know.

Discussion then broadened out to speculate why the image changes possibly because it was for a chapel of the Immaculate Conception which was a new idea at this point in the 1480s and the change might be following changes in the theological ideas. I did like Melchoirre’s approach of saying that she was a scientist and that it was now up to the art historians to argue! I’m not sure I’d be able to stop there.

 

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