Lady with an Ermine Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani circa 1490 is a photograph by David Lee Guss which was uploaded on September 11th, 2016.
Lady with an Ermine Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani circa 1490
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was an Italian polymath, regarded as the epitome of the 'Renaissance Man,' displaying skills in numerous diverse areas... more
Title
Lady with an Ermine Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani circa 1490
Artist
David Lee Guss
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
"Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was an Italian polymath, regarded as the epitome of the 'Renaissance Man,' displaying skills in numerous diverse areas of study. Whilst most famous for his paintings such as the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, Leonardo is also renowned in the fields of civil engineering, chemistry, geology, geometry, hydrodynamics, mathematics, mechanical engineering, optics, physics, pyrotechnics, and zoology.
In 1939, almost immediately after the German occupation of Poland, it (Lady with an Ermine) 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 Krakow, 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 Krakow. Currently the painting is in Old Town, Krakow, on display at the Wawel Castle."
"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.
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. 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. Eugene Delacroix was suggested to have painted the background. Its previous colour was a bluish grey.
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.
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.
Leonardo's fingerprints have been found in the surface of the paint, indicating he used his fingers to blend his delicate brushstrokes."
Uploaded
September 11th, 2016
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