Exhibition Article – The Lost Altarpiece: How Would Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks Looked in its Original Setting? (2019)

As co-curator of the National Gallery exhibition Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece (2019-20), Professor Amanda Lillie (University of York) contributed accompanying text, published online on the Gallery’s website: most notably the article ‘The Lost Altarpiece: How Would Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks Have Looked in its Original Setting?’.

The article examines the artistic context of the painting as part of an altarpiece contracted for the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin in the Church of San Francesco Grande in Milan, all since destroyed. The research shared in the article was key to the reconstruction of the altarpiece in the final section of the exhibition, ‘The Imagined Chapel’.