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Leonardo
da Vinci - The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St
John the Baptis
The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the
Baptist, sometimes called The Burlington House Cartoon,
is a full-size cartoon by Leonardo da Vinci. It is
a combination of two themes popular in Florentine
painting of the 15th century: the Virgin (Mary) and
Child with St John the Baptist (son of Mary's relative
Elizabeth) and the Virgin and Child with St Anne (Mary's
mother). It currently hangs in the National Gallery
in London.
There is a subtle interplay between the gazes of the
four figures, with St Anne smiling at her daughter
Mary, while Mary's eyes are fixed on her son, as are
St John's. There is little in the way of clear delineation
between the four bodies; the heads of the two women,
in particular, look like growths on the same body.
St Anne's enigmatic gesture of pointing her index
finger towards the heavens recurs in two of Leonardo's
last paintings, his St John the Baptist and his Bacchus,
and is regarded as the quintessential Leonardesque
gesture.
The drawing, in charcoal and black and white chalk,
covers eight sheets of paper glued together. Unusual
for a cartoon, the outlines have never been pricked
or incised, indicating that the stage of transferring
the design to the panel that would then be painted
was not reached. The composition is markedly different
from Leonardo's only other surviving treatment of
the subject, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne in
the Louvre, in which the figure of the Baptist has
been eschewed.
The work's alternative title, The Burlington House
Cartoon, refers to its home at the Royal Academy until
1962, when it was put on sale for £800,000.
Amid fears that it would find an overseas buyer, the
cartoon was put on show in the National Gallery where
it was seen by over a quarter of a million people
in a little over four months, many of whom made donations
in order to keep it in the United Kingdom. The price
was eventually met, thanks in part to contributions
from the National Art Collections Fund. Ten years
after its acquisition, John Berger derisively wrote
in his book Ways of Seeing that "It has acquired
a new kind of impressiveness. Not because of what
it shows – not because of the meaning of its
image. It has become impressive, mysterious because
of its market value". In 1987, it was attacked
in an act of vandalism with a sawn-off shotgun. The
blast caused significant damage despite not fully
penetrating the canvas after shattering the glass
covering, but it has since been restored.
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