Arcadópolis
Ginevra de' Benci
Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1474–1478
What you see
Ginevra de' Benci appears from the waist up, almost facing us, with a serious face and heavy eyelids; she does not quite meet our gaze. Behind her head, a dark bush of needle-like leaves forms a kind of halo. On the right, the background opens onto a landscape of golden trees, a still lake and slender towers far away.
Her nearly white skin glows against the dark bush, and the chestnut of her curls echoes the leaves and her dress. Each curl is painted individually, coiled like a spring. Seek out the blue laces closing her neckline, the small gold pin on her chest and the fine cracks in the paint across her face and neck.
About Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo was born in Vinci, near Florence, and was a painter, inventor, engineer and scientist all at once. He filled thousands of notebook pages with flying machines, studies of the human body and mirror-written notes. He finished only a few paintings, but almost all of them changed the history of art.
More by Leonardo da Vinci
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