Description
The Madonna of the Yarnwinder – the painting stolen and returned four years later
The Madonna of the Yarnwinder is a work with two lives: it exists in two versions of equal standing, and one of them vanished from a Scottish castle in 2003 and came back only four years later. Our hand-painted reproduction on canvas brings this tender and simultaneously dark subject into your home, painted in oil on canvas.
Two versions, not a copy and an original
The composition was begun in 1499 or later and survives in two principal versions. The Buccleuch version measures 48.3 × 36.9 cm, is painted in oil on walnut, and is today on long-term loan to the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. The Lansdowne version measures 50.2 × 34.6 cm and is in a private collection in the United States. Both are recorded in the literature as the work of Leonardo and another artist: Leonardo’s invention and part of the execution, the remainder from the workshop. The art historian William Suida concluded, for the Lansdowne version, that the Christ child and the landscape are Leonardo’s and the rest was carried out by a Milanese pupil. Our reproduction follows the Buccleuch version.
What the painting shows
Mary holds the child, who grips the yarnwinder – the tool for spinning – with both hands. The yarnwinder is shaped like a cross, and the child studies it with such concentration that the scene is no longer merely domestic: a mother watches her son play with the sign of his own death. It is precisely this doubleness, which Leonardo achieves without a single threatening stroke, that makes the composition unforgettable. Behind them opens a rocky landscape dissolving into blue in the distance.
The Drumlanrig theft and the Glasgow recovery
In 2003 two men posing as tourists carried the Buccleuch version out of Drumlanrig Castle in Scotland. To visitors they passed on the way out they called that there was nothing to worry about, that they were police and this was only practice. The painting was missing for four years. In 2007 an English lawyer approached the Duke’s insurers offering to arrange its return within 72 hours; undercover officers posed as an art expert and as the Duke’s agent, the work was handed over at a Glasgow law office, and during the negotiation units from four agencies moved in and made four arrests. The painting was undamaged.
A hand-painted reproduction for your home
Every reproduction of the Madonna of the Yarnwinder 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 upright format and quiet palette make the work rewarding in a bedroom or beside a bookcase.
- Subject: The Madonna of the Yarnwinder (Buccleuch version), Leonardo da Vinci and workshop, from 1499
- Technique: hand-painted oil on canvas, painting reproduction
- Sizes: 8 dimensions, stretched on a wooden frame on request
- Fact: stolen in 2003 from Drumlanrig Castle, returned in 2007 in Glasgow – undamaged
