The Artist

Most everyone knows the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, but what about Leonardo's other works? I was browsing a "dedicated to Da Vinci" site, again foregoing my own transversal of time and space, and it occured to me that he must have really liked women. I mean appreciated the beauty of women. So many of his portraits were of women, garbed in what was, no doubt, the style of the time. You dog, Leonardo!

This provocative peice brings to mind the old saying "pets look like thier owners". Like an infant distracted from a breast-feed, the ermine looks away and the eyes of her mistress follow. The good people at Stanford make the bold statement that this is one of the most important works of art in the Western world.

Did I say the last image was provocative? Let me take that back, as I am mesmerized by this vixen's sleepy demeanor. Okay, she is not the entire work. Her image comes from the masterpeice that is the central panel in the altar backdrop at the chapel of the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in S. Francesco, Milan.

Well, religious figures aren't exempt from the rakish strokes of Leonardo's brush, but Saints? St. Anne was depicted by our hero with sketching that look guided by the divine, and in such a pose as to convert the most base offenders of decency.

In our day, sex sells. It seems that Leonardo had an understanding of the primal nature of common humans, and subtley added beacons to sinners in his works for religious institutions.

I will be posting again soon. I think while surfing my own net.