Description
The Madonna Litta – the beautiful painting whose author we cannot be sure of
The Madonna Litta is one of the best-loved Madonnas of the Renaissance and also one of the most disputed. The museum that holds it lists it as a Leonardo; a substantial part of the scholarly world is convinced it was painted by one of his pupils. That dispute is not a footnote – it is really the story of the painting. Our hand-painted reproduction on canvas brings this tender scene into your home, painted in oil on canvas.
What the painting shows
Mary nurses the child – a subject art history calls the Madonna lactans. Her gaze is lowered and turned inward, while the child’s turns straight out at the viewer, which strips the scene of any sweetness. In his left hand he holds a goldfinch; in Renaissance painting the bird is a settled sign of the Passion, so the quiet domestic moment is once again quietly inscribed with what is to come. Behind Mary two windows open onto a mountain landscape dissolving into blue in the distance.
The name of a Milanese noble house
The painting takes its name from the Litta family, a Milanese noble house in whose collection it remained for much of the nineteenth century. In 1865 Tsar Alexander II of Russia bought it from Count Antonio Litta. After the purchase the Hermitage transferred it from panel to canvas – an intervention normal at the time and considered risky today, in the course of which the work was also repainted. The original is executed in tempera on canvas, transferred from panel, and measures 42 × 33 cm.
Leonardo, Boltraffio, or Marco d’Oggiono
Here the story becomes complicated. The Hermitage lists the painting as an autograph Leonardo. A considerable part of the field disagrees and sees a pupil’s hand: the names raised most often are Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Marco d’Oggiono. The art historian David Alan Brown argues for Marco d’Oggiono, and in 2017 Martin Kemp wrote plainly that in his judgement it is a Boltraffio. The question is not settled. We give both positions because doing anything else would be misleading – the painting is superb regardless of which hand carried it out.
A hand-painted reproduction for your home
Every reproduction of the Madonna Litta is entirely hand-painted in oil on canvas – not a print, but a real painting created for you by an experienced artist. It is available in eight sizes, stretched on a wooden frame on request and in a frame from our 3D range. The quiet blue-and-red palette and the intimate subject make the work rewarding in a bedroom or a child’s room. Among our canvas wall art you will also find Leonardo’s other Madonnas: The Benois Madonna, The Madonna of the Yarnwinder and The Virgin of the Rocks.
- Subject: The Madonna Litta, Leonardo da Vinci (attribution disputed), c. 1490
- Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, reproduction
- Sizes: 8 dimensions, stretched on a wooden frame on request
- Fact: the Hermitage lists it as Leonardo; in 2017 Martin Kemp wrote that it is a Boltraffio – the dispute continues
