Description
The Madonna of the Carnation – the only Leonardo permanently on view in Germany
The Madonna of the Carnation is an early Leonardo with an unusual path: a panel once owned by the Medici of Florence later turned up in German private collections, and from there in Munich. Today it is the only Leonardo painting permanently on display in Germany. Our hand-painted reproduction on canvas brings this richly furnished scene into your home, painted in oil on canvas.
An early work from Verrocchio’s workshop
The painting was made around 1475, while Leonardo was still in Andrea del Verrocchio’s workshop. At first it was attributed to Verrocchio himself; today scholars agree it is Leonardo’s, from his apprentice years. You can see it: the face and hands are already entirely his, while the elaborate handling of fabrics, jewellery and the crystal vase remains wholly in the spirit of the workshop he came from. The original is painted in oil on a poplar panel and, by the museum’s own figures, measures 62 × 48.5 cm.
What the painting shows
Mary sits before two windows opening onto a bluish mountain landscape, a carnation in her hand. The flower is no ornament: in Renaissance painting the red carnation is a settled sign of the Passion, and the child reaches for it with a childish eagerness that gives the scene a moving doubleness. On the little table before them stands a glass vase of flowers, painted with such precision of reflections that it is a small pictorial performance in itself.
From a Medici collection to a Bavarian town
The painting’s early fortunes belong to Florence: it was owned by Giulio de’ Medici, later Pope Clement VII. It then vanishes from the record for a long stretch and passes through German private collections in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Alte Pinakothek in Munich acquired it in 1889; by the collection’s own entry it was bought from Dr A. Haug in Günzburg. The story one sometimes reads, of an estate auction and a laughably small purchase price, is not confirmed by the museum’s record, and so we do not repeat it here.
A hand-painted reproduction for your home
Every reproduction of the Madonna of the Carnation 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. Its dense detail carries larger formats well, where the fabrics and the glass vase finally come into their own.
- Subject: The Madonna of the Carnation, Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1475
- Technique: hand-painted oil on canvas, painting reproduction
- Sizes: 8 dimensions, stretched on a wooden frame on request
- Fact: the only Leonardo permanently exhibited in Germany – in Munich’s Alte Pinakothek since 1889
