With the famous letter addressed to Ludovico il Moro (Codex Atlanticus, f. 1082r) ideally begins Leonardo's first Milanese artistic season. The long list drawn up, with the technical and theoretical knowledge possessed, applicable above all to the fields of military and civil engineering, in the auspices of the artist was to procure him immediate involvement in the Duke's projects. And although the master's artistic skills were relegated to the bottom of the letter, the first Milanese commission that sees him involved concerns the creation of a pictorial work, the Virgin of the Rocks. Equally famous is the dispute between the patrons of this enterprise, the brothers of the Company of the Immaculate Conception, and its authors, Leonardo da Vinci and the brothers Evangelista and Giovan Ambrogio De Predis, to whom the work had been jointly entrusted. Because starting from 1483 and up to the next twenty-five years a complex web of events takes place which have as their object the acceptance, delivery and payment of the panel, as well as quarrels between the artists themselves. A real legal battle that would only end in 1508 and after Leonardo's return to Milan.

Moving away from the granary of discussions on the first commissioning of the altarpiece, which for the moment the documents still mention being made on the orders of the pupils of the Immaculate Conception, it is useful to address a particularly obscure point of the Paris panel, namely its transfer to France. If, as is known, the first French mention of the painting dates back to 1625, the problem of its transfer from Milan opens the field to various hypotheses. One of the most shared considers that the work was donated by Ludovico il Moro to Maximilian of Habsburg who, in 1493, would marry the duke's niece, Bianca Maria Sforza. The emperor, in turn, would have used the Virgin of the Rocks as a wedding gift for the nuptials between his niece Eleonora of Habsburg and Francis I, celebrated in 1530 to seal the peace between Spain and France. Instead, the fact that the panel arrived there by direct will of Louis XII - as claimed by others - today appears to be an impassable road given that, as Villata observed, until January 1507 the king of France would never have seen any painting by Leonardo. However, the significant fact remains that the Parisian version of the Virgin of the Rocks (acquistata o meno dal Moro; rifiutata o meno dai confratelli dell’Immacolata Concezione) lasciò relativamente presto Milano ed essere di lì a poco replicata in un altro esemplare, quello oggi presente alla National Gallery di Londra. 

To further complicate the problems regarding the connection, the destination, the patronage and even the dating of these two versions would also be a replica, still from the fifteenth century, and which is the main object of this exhibition, which returned to the attention of the Vincian chronicle in 1991 thanks to a long and detailed article published by Marani. It is about the beautiful editorial staff with the Virgin of the Rocks discovered by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres around 1845, and which from 1897, the year in which it was purchased by Paul Arthur Chèramy, became the object of intense critical activity. Downstream of all that has been discussed so far, the hypothesis of the existence of a version, or a replica, of the panel in the Louvre - that is to say of the painting executed by Leonardo and completed around 1486 - has often circulated among studies, until it inexorably decongested with the advent of the contributions by Marani (1991) and Pedretti (1993). Now, in order to understand and condense the reasons for the historical position of this painting, it will be advisable to isolate the parts on the most ancient provenance and on the primitive critical debate developed around Chèramy painting, in order to reach the most recent quotas of criticism from the 1990s to today. At the time of the publication of Marani's essay, one could count on the just completed restoration of this work by Pinin Brambilla Barcilon and on some laboratory investigations useful for understanding the original support. During the restoration, in fact, it was possible to ascertain that the painting, originally made on a wooden support, then transferred to canvas between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (?), was not only deprived of its arching, but was altered in the lower part by a band, painted with glimpses of sky and rocks, evidently originally placed in the upper seat and placed at the bottom to fill the damage to the base. In fact, apart from the intriguing question about the paternity of the canvas, Marani's essay had the precious merit of proposing, in the midst of the discussions surrounding the Virgin of the Rocks, the problem of the existence of a forgotten version which, in addition to offering new ideas on the reception of Leonardo's teachings by his pupils, was at the center of another question: that linked to the length of stay in Milan of the editorial staff of the Louvre, before his departure and his subsequent arrival in France. Subsequently, and until 2017, following the traces that Marani had initially indicated, it was decided to recognize in this painting an intermediate version between the editions of the Louvre and that of London, consolidating the attribution judgment to the master of Vinci and his collaborators through the stylistic reading and the relief of some details missing from the group of editions taken from the French original. In fact, apart from pointing out the achievement of qualitative heights which at times are equal to those of the master, the two scholars did not miss a detail concerning the presence, in the background, of a structure with a cross-shaped dome on a semicircular plan, to which a forepart with a medieval-style bell tower is connected, and which precisely recalls some of Leonardo's studies for religious architecture. The singular detail – barely visible due to surface oxidation in the Chèramy version and recognizable very generically in some copies of the Virgin of the Rocks, including that of Copenhagen and that of the Ursulines in Milan – could constitute a precious clue to establish the chronological terms of this painting, since it refers precisely to some thoughts by Leonardo executed between 1485 and 1490 concerning theories for the dome of the Milan cathedral. The inclination of these studies, which underlie an idea of architectural projection developed in space, is useful for us to reason on the coherence of the syntactic relationship existing between this canvas and some sketches of church complexes developed by Leonardo. A typological orientation, useful at this moment for reasoning on the coherence of this syntactic relationship, can certainly be gathered generically in the various sketches for religious architecture, and also in a sheet with studies for a Nativity at Windsor (RL 12560, c. 1485), where the sketch of a bell tower can well represent an ideological premise for the virtuous invention of the small architectural complex depicted in the Chèramy canvas.

The very high pictorial quality of this Virgin of the Rocks, not available in any of the copies of the painting now in the Louvre, once again becomes the hub of a reflection built on the collaboration between Leonardo and some of his most talented students, as well as on the evidence of certain technical and expressive affinities developed around the master's theories. Indeed, it is precisely the transposition of certain stylistic dispositions of Leonardo on works such as the Madonna Litta or the second version of the Virgin of the Rocks, che offre la possibilità di esplorare specificamente il campo su cui la ex Chèramy può aver trovato i termini della sua creazione. Procedendo su questa traccia speculativa, osservando alcune caratteristiche del dipinto è possibile stabilire quanto il canone vinciano abbia finito per condizionare la nervatura stilistica di un collaboratore che, evidentemente, rivendicava e mostrava le prove della sua abilità di interprete di tali presupposti ideologici, dalla resa dei toni cerulei al calcolo concettualmente progressivo delle fonti di luce. Nello specifico, rileggendo e decodificando le inclinazioni del dettaglio formale, ci si trova al cospetto di un documento di lavoro che esprime efficacemente la sintesi di una collaborazione tra maestro e discepolo, dove quest’ultimo sembra declinare gli assiomi teorici leonardiani in canoni tecnici che appaiono sperimentati e forse già collaudati.  

However, the extraordinary solution of some details of Chèramy, read from the perspective that perhaps was not expected to be very faithful to the French passage, suggests that Vinci's commitment was not limited to the sole role of director of the enterprise, on the contrary. Although some parts of the painting, such as the faces of the Madonna and the angel, reveal a state of wear that does not allow the progressive intensity of the original force to be fully revealed, it is not difficult to grasp the fullness of the volumes and the plasticity with which they are rendered, where even the figures of the Baptist and the Child, in which the anatomical lesson lends itself to being investigated by chiaroscuro effects of sublime technicality, join in a shadow cone that is extremely distant from the glare that invests the scene of the Louvre version. It is precisely in this particular section of the painting that the creative field takes on a conceptual approach that is profoundly independent from the original: the light, transferred from above, invests the scene and strikes the yellow folds of the Virgin's drapery, allowing that same bundle of radiant cloth to become the point from which details such as the formidable trickle of green fabric sprouting from the brooch holding the edges of the Madonna's mantle are investigated.

This revolutionary technical expedient, derived from optical principles explored by Leonardo on the so-called reverberations of reflected light and shadows, makes it possible to best show a compositional detail that was not legible in the first version but was already present in the London piece and in many subsequent copies; not to mention that this kind of assumption could also favor the hypothesis of the circulation of cartoons from which the Copenhagen copy and the other subsequent reinterpretations would derive. Again, what is striking about the Chèramy Virgin is the use of an ambiguous chromatic genre that could also explain the choice to essentialize the richness and investigation of the botanical representation: the extensive darkness, interrupted only by the cuts of light and by the resonance of these on the bodies, seems calculated to access a more pragmatic and less virtuous idea than the sophisticated representation of the talented tour de force geologico della prima versione. É come se, assicurata la soluzione strutturale e ribadito il procedimento inventivo e sintattico, si fosse impostata una accelerazione o stabilito un termine assai ridotto per la sua creazione. Questa sensazione di incompletezza, forse da recepire proprio nello snellimento dell’ingombro vegetativo, potrebbe anche spiegarsi con l’ipotesi di un impegno risolto tutto d’un fiato, probabilmente per accomodare le esigenze di un committente a cui era stata concessa la visione della prima versione. Per decifrare l’organicità espressiva e ottenere indizi più precisi sulla genesi e gli sviluppi della pittura Chèramy, è stato deciso di avviare un protocollo di indagini scientifiche che consentissero di individuare eventuali tracce di disegno sottogiacente, nonché riconoscere le zone di degrado e oggetto di restauri. Tale processo di studi è stato diretto dai laboratori della ARTMYN che nello specifico ha condotto esami come la riflettografia infrarossa, la fluorescenza ultravioletto e la scansione del piano di superficie della pellicola pittorica. L’esito di questo protocollo di indagini ha rivelato una certa difformità di conduzione del dipinto, vale a dire una grammatura gestativa che nel complesso sembrerebbe ricondurre all’ipotesi di una collaborazione a quattro mani e forse anche ad una meditazione tipologicamente esclusiva. Dalla raccolta delle immagini all’infrarosso è stato possibile intercettare alcuni tratti di un disegno preparatorio a carboncino, dove è reperibile un’articolazione grafica che, anche a causa di alcuni ripensamenti, appare imbevuta di una sensibilità più sapiente rispetto a quanto la parte dipinta mostri in superficie. In questa specifica rilettura si è arrivati a comprendere la perfezione formale di dettagli straordinari come l’intensa e sublime sagomatura a carbone che delimita i contorni della mano dell’angelo, o il movimento elegantissimo delle dita della Vergine che trattengono il sottile velo di seta che cinge il busto del Battista; o ancora i tratti scultorei in cui divergono e si accartocciano i panneggi e infine il plasticismo attraverso il quale sono modellati i corpi dei fanciulli, dove addirittura le pieghe delle carni si raccontano con un vigore tecnico ed una qualità grafica di suprema sapienza. La restituzione di questo sorprendente e inaspettato invaso sottogiacente, per lo più da riconoscersi in un vero e proprio bacino di inesplorate potenzialità espressive, potrebbe ora stabilire che il contributo di Leonardo in quest’opera non sia da individuarsi solo nei resoconti più evidenti della pittura, ma dovrebbe intendersi estendibile anche nel processo metodico e creativo dell’impianto sottogiacente. 

L’affondo sui materiali di laboratorio e l’estensione trasversale del confronto con l’originale del Louvre, può ora offrire un respiro più dinamico alla valutazione della Chèramy, che segna con giustezza un prezioso punto di interesse per la comprensione delle dinamiche di collaborazione tra Leonardo e i suoi più dotati allievi. 

Nicola Barbatelli