The Virgin of the Rocks , like The Last Supper, is a masterpiece at depicting a variety of psychological, internal states. Like his portrait of Ginevra de'Benci or La gioconda, The Virgin of the Rocks displays human psychology in intimate harmony and balance with the surrounding natural world.

We can always tell a Leonardo work by his treatment of hair, angelic in its fineness, and by the lack of any rigidity of contour. One form glides imperceptibly into another (the Italian term is sfumato), a wonder of glazes creating the most subtle of transitions between tones and shapes. The angel's face in the painting known as the Virgin of the Rocks in the National Gallery, London, or the Virgin's face in the Paris version of the same picture, have an interior wisdom, an artistic wisdom that has no pictorial rival.

Back