Eight-two

The Virgin of the Rocks

c1491-1508 by Leonardo da Vinci
The National Gallery

The Virgin of the Rocks is a beautiful depiction of a figure so often portrayed, and perhaps not always innovatively. Though Mary is clothed in traditional blue it is not the bright colour so typical in usual portrayals, but natural tone in its calling to the teals of the waves and sky that surround it, drawing its shadowy tones from the grey stone. The painting is full of natural formation, so much attention paid to the detail of form and crevices in the rocks, they appear almost surreal, Dali-esque. The figures themselves then mirror this stone, in the cold marble of their faces, statue-like they crowd the Virgin; frozen still, it is only this stone like density that stops them appearing as ghosts in their pale white pallor. We are reminded of da Vinci’s translucent figures in Adorazione dei Magi (postcard twenty-one) which, though encouraged by their unfinished state, possess this slighting chilling, almost deathly, presence in the cold perfection of their beauty. These surrounding figures reflect the rocks in their monotone colouring, tying them to the atmospheric darkness that dominates most of the painting; only Mary through her cloaking is bright, with a blue that deliberately draws our eye back to the liveliness of the sea and world beyond. This is a subtle distinction of status, illuminating her but not overwhelmingly; da Vinci’s palette is refreshingly restrained, gold playing little part but in the delicate halo and glimpse of creases of material beneath the cloak.

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