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Health & Fitness

Leonardo Da Vinci And Genevra De'Benci! An Inspiring Visit!

Art…Leonardo Da Vinci And Ginevra de’ Benci

In the last column we talked about The Borgias and Borgia, two shows with 16th Century Renaissance themes. Classes are ready to take their ‘beginning of the year’ class trips to Washington. The National Gallery of Art and its “multiple buildings of amazing” have to be a stop on any trip to Washington, D.C.

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The National Gallery’s museums are now showing Albrecht Durer, Small Impressionist Art, Russian Art/Music, and their normal extensive collections. Our top suggestion is to see the two sides of one of a kind Leonardo Da Vinci painting called the Ginerva de’ Benci. This painting has to be researched and has to be seen.

Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452. There isn’t much information about the first 22 years of his life on any Internet research stop. Leonardo da Vinci painted Ginevra de’ Benci, a young 16 year old Florentine noblewoman circa 1474. She was about to marry Luigi Niccolini and it is uncertain who commissioned the painting.

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This seems to be one of Da Vinci’s first recorded works and it is a gem. The painting is an oil on panel. The work was purchased for the National Gallery of Art by the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund. Research says Generva is missing a six-inch piece at the bottom of the painting that may have been the subject’s folded hands.

Ginevra de’ Benci is the only Da Vinci painting in North America. The painting is one of only four female portraits painted by Leonardo. Cecilia Gallerani, the Mona Lisa, and La belle ferronnière round out the four.

Leonardo Da Vinci titled the Ginevra painting “Beauty Adorns Virtue.”

Karen, our local art historian, says the three Da Vinci paintings in The Louvre are better. She claims they have three that were worthy of viewing… Mona Lisa, St. John the Baptist, and the Virgin and Child with St. Anne.

She says her personal favorite is at the Galleria Nationale in Parma…”La Scapigliata.” That painting, you will remember, is the opening for the Drew Barrymore movie Ever After.

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