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Designs for a Nativity or Adoration of the Christ Child; Perspectival Projection (recto); Slight Doodles (verso), 1480–1485
Made by Leonardo da Vinci (Italian, Vinci 1452–1519 Cloux [near Amboise])
Italian
Metalpoint partly reworked with pen and dark brown ink on pink prepared paper; lines ruled with metalpoint (recto); pen and brown ink (verso); 7 5/8 x 6 3/8 in. (19.3 x 16.2 cm)
Rogers Fund, 1917 (17.142.1)
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Description
Leonardo da Vinci epitomizes the humanist genius of the High Renaissance. His painting is characterized by an unprecedented lifelikeness, mastery of light and shadow, and finely calibrated expressiveness. Leonardo's fame has endured for five centuries, although his reputation rests on only a very few paintings. It is the hundreds of notebooks filled with drawings that reveal the incredible range of this great mind, eye, and hand at work.
This sheet shows Leonardo exploring ideas for a Nativity scene. The Virgin kneels in devotion before the Christ child, who lies on the ground before her. In one sketch she folds her arms across her breast. In other views, the Virgin's arms are outstretched. In the central sketch, Leonardo has included a second, slightly larger child: John the Baptist. The theme of the Virgin and John the Baptist adoring the Christ child together would emerge, fully developed, in Leonardo's two versions of Madonna of the Rocks (Musée du Louvre, Paris, and National Gallery, London). In the paintings, the Virgin kneels with one arm extended around John the Baptist's shoulders and the other raised above the infant Jesus.
Note: When you visit the Museum, you may not see this particular work, although other wonderful drawings from the Renaissance will be on view. This is because prolonged exposure to light can be damaging to works on paper. Therefore, the installation in the galleries for drawings and prints is rotated every few months.
View more highlights from the Museum's Department of Drawings and Prints.
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