Description
Leonardo da Vinci – Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani
The painting the world knows as the Lady with an Ermine is the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, and one of very few female portraits Leonardo ever made. It was painted while he was court painter to the Sforza in Milan – oil on a walnut panel, in the High Renaissance manner. It is held by the National Museum in Kraków under inventory number MNK XII-209 and displayed at the Czartoryski Museum. The dark background you see today is not Leonardo’s: by the museum’s own account the original background was modelled with light, so that the figure emerged from semi-darkness, and it was repainted in the 19th century.
Who Cecilia Gallerani was
Cecilia Gallerani (c. 1473–1536) was a lady-in-waiting and the mistress of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. She was barely out of her teens when the portrait was made. Her identity was unknown for a long time – the museum notes it remained uncertain until around 1900. The picture is one of only four female portraits Leonardo painted in his entire life.
The ermine is not an ornament
The animal in her arms is often called a weasel in older texts, but it is an ermine – and it is not there by accident. In 1488 Ludovico Sforza received the Order of the Ermine from the King of Naples, so the animal points first of all to the Duke. The ermine is at the same time an old emblem of purity. And third: the Greek word for the animal, galé, echoes the surname Gallerani, so Leonardo folded the duke, the virtue and a pun on the sitter’s own name into a single creature.
Our hand-painted reproduction
Every hand-painted painting on canvas is made to order in our workshop and never printed. As canvas wall art or a painting on canvas it sits well in a living room, a bedroom or an office. If Leonardo’s female portraits interest you, see the other two of the four: La Belle Ferronnière and Ginevra de’ Benci; the fourth is of course the Mona Lisa.
- Original: oil on walnut panel, 54.8 × 40.3 cm
- Dating: c. 1490 per the holding museum (1489–1491 in the literature)
- Held at: National Museum in Kraków, inv. MNK XII-209, displayed at the Czartoryski Museum
- Our version: hand-painted on canvas, from 40 × 55 cm to 150 × 200 cm, from €600
