| Bernardino Luini’s "Madonna with Child and the Young St John" is a "Madonna dell’Umiltà" of c. 1515 from the Lombardy School. Luini combined Leonardo da Vinci’s innovations with the Milanese tradition. In this picture, the influence of the famous master is revealed in the modelling, for example. Leonardo’s sovereign ability to create soft, fluent transitions between individual planes of colour is called "sfumato" (Italian: evaporated, cleared like mist) and also features as a stylistic device in Luini’s paintings. A pentimento at the trunk of the tree suggests that he wanted to add the figure of Saint Anne to the group. A pentimento (Italian: pentirsi, to repent) is a change made by the artist that is also considered to be a sign that the painting is an original, as it is part of the creative process. Luini did in fact realize this idea in a later version of the painting that is in Budapest. Here, too, the influence of Leonardo is probably apparent: his Madonna and Child with "St Anne" (Musée du Louvre, Paris). Luini’s pictures were popular both with critics and collectors from about 1790 to the end of the nineteenth century. The Liechtenstein painting entered the Princely Collections around 1890. But unlike many other pictures by Luini that were collected internationally at that time, it was not trans- ferred to canvas from the wooden support, so that it has survived to this day almost completely in its original condition. |
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