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

Online text for ‘Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece’ Exhibition, National Gallery, London

Bonacina, Giovanni Battista, Detail of a Map of Milan, 1640:

Giovanni Battista Bonacina, Map of Milan (detail), 1640, engraving; photo: Private Collection/Bridgeman Images.

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'.

Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin of the Rocks (c.1492-1507), National Gallery

Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin of the Rocks (c.1492-1507), oil on poplar; National Gallery, London, https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/leonardo-da-vinci-the-virgin-of-the-rocks, reproduced under CC licence BY-NC-ND 4.0

Main image: Giovanni Battista Bonacina, Map of Milan (detail), 1640, engraving; photo: Private Collection/Bridgeman Images.

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