On Looking into the Abyss: Leonardo'sVirgin of the Rocks

Abstract

On 25 April 1483 the Milanese Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception commissioned Leonardo da Vinci and the brothers Evangclista and Gian Ambrogio de' Prédis to paint some panels in a large altarpiece intended for their chapel of the Immaculate Conception in the church of San Francesco Grande. 1 The work was to be completed by the following 8th December, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Leonardo himself painted the central panel of the altarpiece, producing the first version of the Virgin of the Rocks between 1483 and i486. Most scholars identify the painting now in the Louvre as that work (Fig. 1). It was followed by a second panel, slightly variant, painted from about 1495 to 1508 and now in the National Gallery, London (Fig. 2). 2 In a dark, rocky, cavernous place, at the edge of an unseen pool separating the sacred scene from the spectator, is set a group of the Virgin, the infants Christ and Saint John the Baptist, and an angel. Cloaked in a deep blue, the Virgin introduces the infant John to Christ for his blessing. To the right of the Virgin a stream or small river winds away, passing through a jagged opening out of the cave, then through a rocky ravine into the distance of a dawning day. The obscure iconography of this painting has never been satisfactorily explained. Until very recently the impressive, brooding landscape was neglected, and it was generally assumed that the depicted action derived from an'apocryphal story in which the Holy Family returning from Egypt encountered Saint John 'in a rocky place'. 3 Framing an interpretation within Franciscan elaborations of the medieval apocryphal tradition, augmented by the writings of the desert fathers, one scholar proposed an immaculist reading of the painting, arguing that the panel actually focusses on Saint John, an important example for the Virgin's privilege, since he had been sanctified in the womb of his mother Elizabeth at the time of the Visitation. 4 From a different perspective another commentator has propounded an esoteric reading, ultimately immaculist, based on the Apocalypsis Nova of the Blessed Amadeus Mendes da Silva; in this reading the cast of characters and setting in the painting were identified with those in the revelations of the Archangel Gabriel to Amadeus, withdrawn during his raptures to a grotto. 5 In 1992 two important philosophical interpretations of the painting appeared. One of them, drawing on Lucretius and the subsequent medieval poetic evolution of the goddess Natura, showed the Virgin assuming the role of a Lucretian mother-goddess planted amongst the springing vegetation, present and immanent in the cosmos. Considering the painting as one work in a longer sequence, the essay argued for Leonardo's consistent affirmation of a cosmic feminine generative principle. 6 The other interpretation finally recognized Leonardo's landscape as the classical underground source of all rivers and streams. 7 Each essay either suggested or developed creational readings of the landscape. Despite the historical circumstances of ...

Visualizing the Immaculate Conception: Donatello, Francesco della Rovere, and the High Altar and Choir Screen at the Church of the Santo in Padua

“…The Egyptian goddess had been interpreted in De Iside et Osiride, a treatise by Plutarch (46-120) that could have been available to theologians at the Santo, as the Egyptian goddess 36 See Baldissin Molli, 2000;McHam, 20-22. 37 Nampon,215. 38 See Stefaniak, 2006. Calore, 1993, had earlier recognized that Donatello's Virgin was intended to represent her in her immaculate state, but did not argue the point.…”

Raphael'sMadonna di Foligno: Civitas sancta, Hierusalem nova

“…The reading from Proverbs was the primary matter of the decree of the Council of Basel in favor of the doctrine and subsequently became the theme of the most important immaculist commission of the later fifteenth century, the altarpiece for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception at San Francesco in Milan for which Leonardo painted the central panel now known as the Virgin of the Rocks. 64 Whether interpreted literally as Christ or liturgically as the Virgin, Wisdom, the first-born of the most High {primagenita ante omnem creaturam; Sirach 24: 5), belonged above the altar of the Aracoeli. Building on the solar aspect of the Aracoeli great sign in the heavens, Sigismondo and the Franciscans reached back to the unfailing light which Wisdom placed in the heavens at the beginning of time (Sirach 24: 6).…”