Women in leonardo da vincis portraits

Maria Frazzoni 30 April min Read. Art History Artist Stories. European Art. The life and work of Leonardo da Vinci have been dissected and analyzed in detail by the sharp eye of art critics and historians. Yet, the biography of the Renaissance genius still offers mysteries, one of them being the fact that four out of five surviving portraits show feminine figures.

Why did leonardo da vinci paint the lady with an ermine

During his entire life, the artist was passionately moved and inspired by women, at least this is what his canvases tell us. This particular attraction has perhaps more to do with the way he chose to portray them, as the art critic Jonathan Jones explains in his article for The Guardian. We must remember that before Da Vinci, the artists of the Renaissance had painted portraits deeply dominated by men, trapping women in the superficiality of external beauty.

He demonstrated how they were not just symbols of beauty, but also human beings. Hence, it is not the beauty that interests Leonardo, but the moti della mente. His innovative and poetic technique that introduces this complex female representation which focuses on the expression of the face, the intensity of the look, and the body language, is explained in his Treatise on Painting , where Leonardo gives specific guidelines on how to portray the female figure:.